Shunters at Work : Creating a World in a Railway Yard

This book is an ethnographic account of a group of railway workers, called shunters, who spend their working lives, partly standing between buffers, but mainly thinking about how best to assemble coaches into trains. While describing a particular work place in Sweden and a particular kind of work, this thesis aspires to contribute to a wider discussion about the relationship between work, worker and technology. Looking at how the beginners learn the trade, as well as at what skilful shunting is seen to entail, the study shows how work and skill come to communicate and symbolize social relations. The author demonstrates that women are not discriminated against in the shunting yard, but that learning strategies are genderized, a fact which affects the further careers of male and female shunters. The shunters embrace a strong egalitarian ethos, which collides with the strict hierarchy of the work teams. Another paradox lies in the unrefuted identification with the group on the one hand and a stress on individualism and an appreciation of singularity, even eccentricity, on the other. The study explores how these contradictions are expressed and handled in everyday life in the yard. Fundamental changes are being introduced in the shunting trade. A computerized switchboard plant, from which switches are operated, remote controlled engines and new forms of organization change the work, as well as the conceptions about work. Skilful shunting is no longer the same and the shunters have to adjust to the new world, as they perceive of it.