Introduction: labour, design and culture
Part I: Image, space, voice
1. The visual at work: oral history and institutional
photographs
2. Spatial and architectural memory in oral histories of working
life
Part II: Technological transitions
3. The continuity of craft masculinities: from letterpress to
offset-lithography
4. 'Going with the technology': the final generation of hot-metal
compositors
Part III: Challenges and creative resilience
5. (Re)making spaces and 'working out ways': women in the printing
industry
6. Making things on the side: creativity at a time of institutional
decline
7. Conclusion: factory closures, material culture and loss
Index
Jesse Adams Stein is Chancellor's Research Fellow in the School of Design at the University of Technology, Sydney
‘Jesse Adams Stein’s book is a fascinating and accessible study of
the declining fortunes of the Government Printing Office, located
on Harris Street, Ultimo. It is greatly enriched by the oral
histories of the (mostly) men and some women who found themselves
in an almost Kafkaesque position, facing rapid technological
change, corporatisation – which undermined traditional unionism –
neo-liberalism and post-industrial capitalism in the later decades
of the 20th century. Its special contribution comes from its
thoughtful analysis of the role of objects in this process. ‘Work’,
the author notes, “is inextricably bound up with a world of things,
with and through which the social and gendered processes of
workplace life are enacted and experienced. Understanding how we
interact with and interpret design is crucial for appreciating the
complexities of the labour experience, particularly at times of
technological disruption.” This original and cross-disciplinary
book brings together design, design history, oral history, labour
history, gender and material culture studies. It sheds a powerful
light on the transformation and loss of blue-collar work and the
demise of printing as a craft.’
U: Magazine, April 2017 Edition
‘It’s an ambitious work. Printers, and the printing trades have
been the subject of quite a lot of
scholarship over a long time, which produced some truly classic
works. Yet in this book the author has found a way to bring a new
approach to contribute to a well ploughed field. She succeeds
admirably. She takes a workplace which is a building, with a single
employer, a skilled workforce, an institutional identity which
extends beyond the work, and a long history, and gives us a
cohesive and compelling account of working life. It is at once a
study of people and their relationship to technology, and a record
of a period of history that is usually treated from quite different
perspectives. It shows us how labour history can lead the way that
history is written. In that, it is pathbreaking and important. This
a terrific story. It is a critical reflection on the mistakes of
economic rationalism, and the losses from deindustrialisation
without becoming only a story of loss with nostalgia for a golden
era. Its findings are salutary.’
Diane Kirkby, Recorder Issue 228 – March 2017
‘Jesse Adams Stein combines meticulous and imaginative research
with sophisticated analysis to produce a highly original, engaging
and illuminating account of the final decades of an Australian
state enterprise, the Government Printing Office (known as the Gov)
in Sydney, Australia.’
Labour History, Number 112, May 2017, Raelene Frances, Monash
University
‘This inventive book about new approaches to material culture and
labour history is a remarkable intervention in the field of design
history. It will, I am confident, incite future scholars to
investigate the people, spaces and objects that define and
complicate the world of work.’
David Brody, Journal of Design History
‘…this is a fitting comprehensive record, and an exciting template
for future studies in this area of technological change and
material affect.’
Alex Griffin, The University of Melbourne, Australia, Media
International Australia
‘Stein successfully uses the case study as a jumping off-point to
explore much broader conceptual questions. Her creative leaps of
analysis are productive and energising; they will hopefully provoke
further study in the areas of material culture, design and space,
and contribute to methodological approaches in oral and
photographic histories.’
Emma Robertson, La Trobe University, Law and History, 5:1
(2018)
‘It demonstrates the powerful attachments that past workers felt
for the building’s internal spaces, for the revolving door of
material culture items associated with printing, and the
camaraderie and contestation between workers. It is a persuasive
and moving study of human feelings and workplace meanings.’
Dr Steve Brown, Lecturer in Archaeology (Heritage Studies),
University of Sydney, Australia Oral History Australia Journal
2018
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