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Music and Meaning on the Factory Floor

Loughborough University Business School

This article examines an unexplored topic within industrial sociology—the terrain of music for meaning making on the factory floor. The article is based on ethnographic research undertaken in a blinds factory. Although contemporary popular music appears to speak only rarely to the arena of work, this article shows that workers reappropriated music to articulate their experience of working in the factory. Many workers independently created meaning systems through music, which displayed both a negative experience of the work and an active resistance and defiance. The way in which this functioned was through the process of avowal in which choruses of songs allowed deeply felt, but usually tacit, feelings to be given direct articulation. Social listening in the factory played a key role in shaping the way in which music was used to create meaning.

Key Words: music • factory • meaning • resistance • ethnography • social listening

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