Learning Real Feelings

This paper describes how the author came to learn, through nine months of participant observation, how high steel ironworkers feel and act towards the dangers of their work. Ironworkers define much of their work situation as dangerous, and have developed, out of interactions about this common problem, collectively shared perspectives for enhancing control over the work situation. These processes of control include testing and assessing other workers, communicating these evaluations to others, and establishing worker reputations. Similar processes of control are applied to bosses, contractors, and others whose actions impinge on worker autonomy and self-interest. These processes of control are very analogous to those describing other dangerous occupations. The perception of danger by workers in quite different occupations leads them to develop similar mechanisms of control over their work fellows and environment.