Space of Discipline and Governmentality: The Singer Sewing Machine Factory, Clydebank, in the Twentieth Century

Abstract

This paper examines work at the Singer factory, Clydebank, in the first half of the twentieth century. It employs a geographical reading of the temporal and spatial strategies of worker control in the factory. Using both archival and oral history data to critique commonly accepted understandings of factory work, I argue that although the factory space can be read as disciplinary, this must not obscure the resistive spatial and social strategies employed by workers. I draw on Foucault's ideas of discipline and governmentality but also consider the arguments of commentators analysing the modern work space and the ways in which the worker may evade and display ambivalence towards discourses aimed at them.

Keywords:

• discipline
• governmentality
• factory work
• oral history
• discourse

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Dr. David Beckingham, Dr. Philip Howell and two anonymous reviewers for their comments in preparing this paper. In Clydebank, I would like to thank those Singer workers who agreed to be interviewed as well as those who put me in touch with them. Additionally I extend my thanks to the staff of Clydebank library local history department for helping me access the archives. All images and tables here are reproduced with the permission of West Dunbartonshire Libraries and Museums Service.