New genres and obsolete expertise in the new textiles economy

ABSTRACT

This paper examines the role of distinctions between genres in conflicts over expertise in an American textile mill. Riverway is a struggling 150-year-old New England textile mill where members of a diverse workforce focus on producing high quality fabric in a context that demands daily adaptive expertise. Based on fieldwork from 2015–19, we examine how Riverway workers interacted with documentation systems at the mill. They engaged with managers and coworkers around new forms of technology and shifting valuations about skill and expertise, and, in the process, made sense of their roles as workers in a declining industry where their skills and forms of expertise were nearly obsolete. Through analysis of conflicts in the mill, we examine how members of the mill's community of practice made sense of a changing genre ecology of tools for communicating, recording information, communicating asynchronously, and asserting expertise. We show how technologies for making fabric and communicating about fabric production became symbols of valuations tangentially linked to production. These technologies became lightning rods for debates about expertise, skill, and knowledge, and for everyday distinctions that workers and managers made about the value of their work during a time of economic change marked by mill closures.

KEYWORDS:

• Capitalism
• labour
• work
• technology
• STS

Acknowledgement

Thank you to Ilana Gershon and Michael Prentice, as well as participants at an August 2019 Indiana University workshop, for comments on earlier versions of this paper. Thank you also to the journal reviewers for extremely helpful comments that helped us to clarify our arguments.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 The person named ‘Rob,’ and his activities once he received the roll of fabric, are largely fictionalized to convey the customer experience, as are the specific words Chuck used in conversation with José. However, the story about the creation of the 'Love U' fabric, the customer complaint, and the aftermath is based on fieldwork interviews, discussions, and observations at Riverway and at the customer’s facility, with Chuck, José, and the customer. The analysis of José in this paper is indebted to analysis (with a different focus) that Caitrin Lynch has done with Debbie Chachra (Lynch and Chachra, under review).

2 Communication genres in organizations can be defined as

socially recognized types of communicative actions – such as memos, meetings, expense forms, training seminars – that are habitually enacted by members of a community to realize particular social purposes … . A genre established within a particular community serves as an institutionalized template for social action – an organizing structure – that shapes the ongoing communicative actions of community members through their use of it. (Orlikowski and Yates 1994, p. 542)

We will argue, however, that genres can become more than merely habitual enactments, as this definition suggests.

3 We use the term ‘genre ecology’ after Spinuzzi and Zachry:

A genre ecology includes an interrelated group of genres (artifact types and the interpretive habits that have developed around them) used to jointly mediate the activities that allow people to accomplish complex objectives. In genre ecologies, multiple genres and constituent subtasks co-exist in a lively interplay as people grapple with information technologies. (Spinuzzi and Zachry 2000, p. 172)

4 Caitrin Lynch was PI of a grant that supported the entire team National Science Foundation, Standard Grant: Textiles, Technology, and the Return of Manufacturing in the United States. Award Abstract #1654944.

5 These statistics are prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, which further impacted the industry. A November 2020 report (Friedman 2020) indicated that 5.8 percent of US textile/garment supply chain manufacturers ‘are likely to face severe risk’ due to pandemic-related manufacturing downturns. A May 2021 (Just Style 2021) industry article about the US textile and garment industry noted that ‘Covid-19 has created unprecedented demand destruction for apparel and textiles.’

6 Similar to our use of the term ‘lightning rod,’ Prentice (2019, p. 360) describes PowerPoint as a ‘social crucible.’ We are indebted in this paper to Prentice’s analysis of how values inhere in and are played out in PowerPoint in Korean offices.

7 Today’s ERP systems can be traced back to manufacturing tracking systems of the early twentieth century, but the term ‘Enterprise Resource Planning’ appears to have emerged in 1990. See Dechow and Mouritsen 2005; Elbanna 2006; Grant et al. 2006.

8 ‘Sliver,’ which rhymes with ‘diver,’ refers to long bundles of carded fiber that are fed into knitting machines for thick, fluffy, pile-knit fabric.

9 A ‘run’ is like a line with no fiber that runs down snagged tights or pantyhose.

10 Though, in reality, that paperwork is not failproof. Unanticipated factors, such as the humidity of the knitting room, can impact the fabric. (This is not a highly climate-controlled mill.)

11 The following discussion of Ursula Franklin’s work is indebted to analysis that Caitrin Lynch has done with Debbie Chachra (Lynch and Chachra, under review).

12 Heavy weight, press-offs, holes, streaks, and end-outs are terms that describe defects in fabric that can result during production: fabric that exceeds the weight required in the spec; portions of fabric where there is too much yarn; sections where there are holes/gaps created by malfunctioning needles (‘press-offs’); or vertical lines with missing yarn (‘end-outs’).

13 Cf. Pye’s (1968, p. 20) ‘the workmanship of risk,’ by which he means ‘workmanship using any kind of technique or apparatus, in which the quality of the result is not predetermined, but depends on the judgment, dexterity and care which the maker exercises as he works.’

14 Cf. Caitrin Lynch 2012 for an ethnography of aging and work in another factory setting in the United States.

15 For a discussion of ghosts at Riverway and in the adjacent abandoned mill, see Lynch and Coppola, in press.

16 Cf. Prentice 2019, p. 353, regarding PowerPoint in Korean businesses where ‘everyday activities like drafting documents are potent sites for encountering tensions between the individual and the institutional.’

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by NSF [grant number: 1654944].

Notes on contributors

Caitrin Lynch

Caitrin Lynch is Dean of Faculty and Professor of Anthropology at Olin College of Engineering. She is the author of two books (Retirement on the Line: Age, Work, and Value in An American Factory, and Juki Girls, Good Girls: Gender and Cultural Politics in Sri Lanka's Global Garment Industry) and the co-editor, with Jason Danely, of Transitions and Transformations: Cultural Perspectives on Aging and the Life Course.

Adam Coppola

Adam Coppola is a graduate of Olin College of Engineering, where he studied Electrical and Computer Engineering.

Andrew Holmes

Andrew Holmes is a graduate of Olin College of Engineering, where he studied Mechanical Engineering.

Margaret Rosner

Margaret Rosner is a graduate of Olin College of Engineering, where she studied Mechanical Engineering.