Introduction: Visualizing Space and Narrating Work

Abstract

Miriam Glucksmann's ethnography of factory work,Women on the Line, was republished in 2009, nearly thirty years after the publication of the first edition in 1982 under the pseudonym, Ruth Cavendish. The original text is unchanged, but the new edition includes a new introduction and additional images. It is an account of Glucksmann's time working in a factory in the late 1970s, something she undertook as a political act and not with the intention of writing an ethnography, as she herself discusses below. The book was quickly recognized as a seminal account of women's work and one which disentangled the operation of gender at work. It exposed the construction of sexual difference and drew attention to forms of solidarity between women of different ethnic backgrounds. Indeed,Women on the Lineis considered to be “a paradigmatic example of gender as central to understanding work” and one that has been studied closely and critiqued as well as admired. Two other “feminist ethnographies”—as they came to be described—were published at around the same time: Anna Pollert'sGirls, Wives, Factory Livesin 1981, and Sallie Westwood'sAll Day, Every Dayin 1984. They continue to be widely cited and remain key references in sociology text books and on student reading lists.