Relating to Work: Generation, Discourse and Social Change By Karen R. Foster A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Affairs in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Sociology Carleton University Ottawa, Ontario ©2011 Karen R. 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Foster ABSTRACT This dissertation intervenes in a public and scholarly conversation about generational differences and conflicts in contemporary workplaces and the workforce more broadly. In contrast to many scholars and public voices in this conversation, which take generation for granted as an a priori and age-based group of people, this thesis begins by exploring generation as a matter of discourse, through the historically-situated working life stories of 52 working people aged 25 to 86. On the basis of qualitative interview data, set against a rich statistical and historical backdrop, this dissertation argues that generation plays two discursive roles in the experience, interpretation and accomplishment of making a living. First, develops the concept of generation-as-discourse, showing how generation functions as a vehicle for thought and action - a mental structure that provides people with, and limits them to, specific way(s) of understanding, speaking about, and acting in the world. It argues that generation-as-discourse has the capacity to foreground intersections of biography and history, encouraging sympathetic interpretations of other people's lives, but it is also malleable enough to be used to foreground only individual choice and psychology, wrenching work-related behaviours and values out of socio-historical context and encouraging intergenerational tension. Second, it develops the idea of generational discourses, arguing that generation as a phenomenon or social location can actually shape other discourses - in this case, discourses about the place of work in a life well-lived. Specifically, it finds three distinct ways of relating to paid work in the post-industrial, advanced capitalist economy, evident in three different types of working life stories: namely, narratives of faith, ambivalence and disaffection. These three relationships are shown to underpin the clashes and divides that participants identified as "generational," and this thesis argues that they are generational in that they follow a generational pattern, and correspond with economic restructuring and other socio-political transformations. ii Acknowledgments To my incomparable advisors, Andrea Doucet and Janet Siltanen, whose consistent and caring support, balanced by keen and always constructive critique, sustained me throughout my degree and made this project better. As a committee member, Bruce Curtis's comments and especially his encouragement - which I like to think doesn't come cheap - were a source of inspiration and confidence. The brilliant, positive and intellectually curious Susan McDaniel was the antithesis of the scary external examiner I'd dreamed up in the weeks leading to my defence, and Chris Stoney's breadth and engagement as an internal examiner was unexpected and highly valued. My peers in the doctoral program provided the intellectual conversation and the social release every student and scholar needs. The unwavering pride of my parents, Barbara and James MacAlpine, and my brother, Jim MacAlpine, were a safe place to turn when I felt my argument unraveling or my writing blocked, even if they still don't really know what I've been up to for the last five years. The finish line would not have been quite so exciting if it were not for the cheering from Tamara Krawchenko, who knows a thing or two about writing a dissertation, and Tyler Knowlton, who knows a thing or two about virtually everything. Finally, to my husband, Brian Foster: thank you. I don't know that I would have written a single page had I not joined you on your journey to Carleton; my analysis would have been history-blind and much thinner, and my conclusions closer to the surface, had I not had you to talk to and learn with and from every hour of the day. Let's do that for the rest of our lives. iii RELATING TO WORK: GENERATION, DISCOURSE AND SOCIAL CHANGE CONTENTS Introduction 1 What Is a Generation? 15 Questions, Concepts, Data and Methods 38 Generation as Discourse in Working Life Stories 65 Generational Discourses and Relating to Work 103 Why Now? Explaining Generational Discourses around Work 149 Explaining Generation as Discourse 190 Conclusion: Generation and Work as we know it 211 Bibliography 220 Appendices 231 iv Karen Foster Relating to Work January 9th, 2012 INTRODUCTION They want more. They always want more... They just expect more, right? Our company graciously gives us between Christmas and New Year's, you know, free, as holidays, you don't have to put more time in otherwise to get those days - and they just kind of expect that. They're gratitude-less. They're not grateful. The company provides them with a bonus, usually annually, and that's just sort of like, a given, like that should be given. We should supply them with ice cream, we should supply them with coffee, a separate make-your-own, individually, not this urn because the coffee gets cold... You can never satisfy. You offer something up and it becomes an expectation. There's a real sense of - well, an entitlement. I had asked 51-year-old Penny whether she noticed any age-related differences among the people at the software company where she worked. The question barely left my lips before she answered. "Yeah I do," she said. "I find that there's an entitlement If s quite, well - it's quite annoying." I asked her what she meant by 'entitlement* even though this wasn't the first time I'd heard the word in an interview. She answered, "if s just the sense that the company should be there for them, because they deserve it But yet there isn't that sense of loyalty." Instead of loyalty, Penny saw in her younger co-workers an attitude of '"I want to be the recipient but I don't want to be the giver to the company'." The quote above is what came next I interviewed Penny by telephone in June 2010. Just as I did in every one of the interviews conducted for this dissertation, I asked Penny to talk me through her 'working life story", from her earliest memory of work—for some it was a first job, at a grocery store or baling hay at the family farm; for others the smell of their father after a day of work at the factory—through the present and 1 Karen Foster Relating to Work January 9th, 2012 into the imagined and planned-for future. By the time we arrived at the question of generational and age differences at work, I had already learned that Penny started out as a secretary after taking some courses at community college in the late 1970s. She and her husband met, married, and had two children by the early 1980s, and Penny stayed home with them and volunteered for sixteen years before eventually returning to paid work. Two and a half years after her re-entry onto the labour market, she enrolled in a 1-year Human Resources Management program, and upon graduating, she found work through a placement agency. She found a permanent job not long after, but was let go during company restructuring. She took some time to "recuperate", and then found another job, at the software company she worked for when I interviewed her. While it would later emerge as one of the most pivotal interview moments, at the time, her response about the twenty and thirty-somethings at her office was little more than uncomfortable. The elephant in the room—or in the telephone lines—was that I was a twenty-something, too, presumably in possession of many of the qualities Penny found so "annoying" in her co-workers.