Our 'nameless benefactors'

Kelley Walker kelley at interpactinc.com
Mon Apr 23 10:02:21 PDT 2001


At 09:31 AM 4/23/01 -0700, Ian Murray wrote:


>Didn't some anthro professor do what BE did a few years ago and write it
>up for one
>of the university press'?
>
>Ian

I don't know of anything but Greta Foff Paules' _Dishing it Out: Power and Resistance among Waitresses in a New Jersey Restaurant_. If there's another one I'd love to know the name. I've drawn on her work here, occasionally, when i've talked about how the social relations of service work pit employees against the customer/client, an antagonism that aligns them with management. Such alignments and antagonisms are obvious in most low-level service sector labor, but waitress work is an interesting exception because of the way in which waitstaff are paid: tips give them an autonomy from management and that, in part, is what Paules explores. Another fun read is Gary Alan Fine's _Kitchens_ which is about cooks. Captured it all quite nicely as I saw it, and not a bad read.



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