Men Apart: The Concept of “Total Institution” and the Analysis of Seafaring

Gerstenberger, Heide

doi:10.1177/084387149600800110

Cited by 19 publications

(7 citation statements)

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“…When discussing the differences between ships and total institutions in the classical sense -such as prisons and mental hospitals -authors point out free choice, the difference in conditions depending on one's rank and type of ship, occasional returns home and to one's family, and the contact with different cultures while docked in ports (Gerstenberger, 1996;Maurizio, 2013;Kołodziej-Durnaś et al, 2021). Ships do not involve complete isolation, especially since the advent of the Internet, which crews have access to from time to time.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Contributions to the Debate on the Ship as a Total Institution: A Survey among Dalmatian Seafarers

2022

Sip

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The paper applies the concept of total institution (E. Goffman) to the specific reality of seafarers. During shipboard service, the mentioned social category has a limited choice of physical space, content, and social contacts. Seafarers are required to adapt to the conditions on board and to the authority of the company and of higher-ranking crew members that govern their daily lives. The challenges of working and living at sea result in the trend of increasing numbers of experienced and highly educated seafarers leaving the profession. The study aims to investigate the seafaring conditions among Dalmatian seafarers, as well as their future career projections. It was conducted between June and July 2020 using the method of online survey, which included a snowball sample of 112 respondents. The results indicate a lack of satisfaction in relation to most of the considered aspects of seafaring, except for earnings, including the possibility of promotion and communication with family and friends. While most of the seafarers surveyed consider these conditions sufficient to spend their entire working lives at sea, one in three respondents has no such intention (31.4%). More specifically, 42.6% of the respondents intend to stay at sea only because they believe finding a better job ashore would

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Contributions to the Debate on the Ship as a Total Institution: A Survey among Dalmatian Seafarers

2022

Sip

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“…The scene neatly encapsulates the rigid sexual division of labour that is reproduced by the Philippine state in its gendered approach to labour exports, whilst also hinting at the key role of (mainly female) social reproduction on land for a male‐dominated seafaring sector. The work of Gopal Balachandran (2012), Heide Gerstenberger (1996), Margaret Creighton and Lisa Norling (1996) have, among others, made clear the centrality of onshore affective, reproductive and—in complex ways—disciplinary labour among wives, relatives and lovers of those out at sea. Balachandran (2012) relates how nineteenth‐ and early twentieth‐century South Asian seafarers for instance, were remunerated through ‘family allotments’ whereby shipowners made monthly payments to families of absent seafarers through a port‐based registrar.…”

Section: Life Timementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Balachandran (2012) relates how nineteenth‐ and early twentieth‐century South Asian seafarers for instance, were remunerated through ‘family allotments’ whereby shipowners made monthly payments to families of absent seafarers through a port‐based registrar. Similarly, Gerstenberger narrates how the onshore lifeworld of northern German seafarers affected workplace relations and vice versa: ‘social connection between the different circles of relatives, friends and acquaintances [of sailors] was close enough for anyone who behaved deviantly to understand that relatives, friends, the girl he hoped to marry—in short, everybody in his world—would sooner or later be informed’ (Gerstenberger, 1996, p. 177).…”

Section: Life Timementioning

confidence: 99%

Maritime temporalities and capitalist development

Colás

Campling

2023

Geography Compass

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This intervention develops arguments in our book Capitalism and the Sea on the complex temporalities attached to capitalism's intense and peculiar relationship to the global ocean. Technological innovations like the steamship or containerisation plainly transformed the pace and intensity of maritime commerce, and aspects of the global economy.We take this further to argue that the very origins and periodisation of capitalism are connected to the global ocean; as will be our futures, given the unpredictable implications of the oceans acting as the biosphere's 'heat sink'. We consider several stylised expressions of time at sea: deep-time, logistical-time, life-time, and revolutionary time suggesting that the ocean world as a geographical space articulates these in distinctive and contradictory ways.

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“…Ships have been compared to and have been found to bear similarity to 'total institutions' (TIs) in some respects, even though they clearly differ from TIs in others (Baum-Talmor, 2018;Davies, 1989;Gerstenberger, 1996;Goffman, 1961). On the one hand, the ship is a place of residence and work, where seafarers as 'like-situated individuals' (Goffman, 1961, p. 11) are physically isolated from the shore and other people for extended periods of time (Baum-Talmor, 2018;Davies, 1989).…”

Section: The Global Shipping Industrymentioning

confidence: 99%

“It’s okay even if you are a spy”: issues in researcher positioning within a precarious workplace

Baum-Talmor

2019

JOE

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Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine some of the complexities associated with the trust-building process between participants and researcher in the context of a precarious work environment. Specifically, the paper seeks to discuss issues arising from the power dynamics, mistrust and tensions between different stakeholders in the research (i.e. employers, employees and the researcher), and the implications of such relationships for establishing rapport and trust with research participants. Design/methodology/approach This paper uses the case of the shipping industry and is based upon findings from two research projects. One project examined similarities and differences between the merchant vessel and Goffman’s theoretical conceptualisation of “total institutions” (Goffman, 1961); the other focused on the increasing flexibility of labour in the global labour market, using the case of shipping. Both projects incorporated ethnographic research methods which included three voyages on board merchant vessels, as well as interviews and informal conversations with over 100 participants. Findings The researcher encountered several obstacles throughout the projects, many of which related to the access to the restricted workplace setting of a cargo ship. However, this paper is based on her positioning in the field after permission to access the ship had been granted by the shipping company. It was often challenging to overcome participants’ suspicions of the researcher as being sent by the company to spy on them. The researcher generally managed to overcome such suspicions in the course of her fieldwork by building relationships with participants over time. Nevertheless, these relationships were influenced by the complex power dynamics amongst the different stakeholders in the field. The challenges encountered in the field sites suggest that researchers should be open and fluid in the ways they present themselves in the field. The findings potentially offer useful insights for novice researchers whose research focuses on workplace settings characterised by precariousness of employment and for those conducting shipboard research. Originality/value The main contribution of this paper lies within its ability to shed light on the often-delicate relationships between different stakeholders in a research project, and the influence of these relationships on a researcher’s continuous access to the field. The experiences described in this paper are based on the global shipping industry, but they are also relevant to other closed, isolated and/or restricted research settings. Specifically, experiences described in this paper are similar to those of researchers studying “closed” research environments that are not accessible to the general public; this is particularly the case where a hierarchical work structure controls to some extent the roles played by different stakeholders within the precarious work environment, potentially influencing the way someone from outside the workplace approaches it. These include, for example, government owned establishments such as prisons, mental hospitals as well as privately owned closed business organisations.

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Men Apart: The Concept of “Total Institution” and the Analysis of Seafaring

Cited by 19 publications

References 0 publications

Contributions to the Debate on the Ship as a Total Institution: A Survey among Dalmatian Seafarers

Contributions to the Debate on the Ship as a Total Institution: A Survey among Dalmatian Seafarers

Maritime temporalities and capitalist development

“It’s okay even if you are a spy”: issues in researcher positioning within a precarious workplace

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