Genre, co-research and document work: the FIAT workers’ enquiry of 1960–1961

Abstract

This article examines the document work involved in a workers’ enquiry conducted at the FIAT plant in Turin at the beginning of the 1960s. The study in question soon became well known in Italy both as an influential early example of post-war workplace sociological research, and for its unusual conclusions predicting an impending period of heightened industrial conflict at the auto firm. Taking a genre approach, this article attempts an archival excavation of a series of those ‘support documents’ (fieldnotes, interview schedules and transcripts) that were utilised in the original enquiry. Bringing critical attention to bear upon the creation and use of such documents, and charting their relationship to the ways in which the study’s findings were subsequently reported, the article highlights their key, if often undervalued role in the document work bound up with the enquiry itself. In the process, it also raises a number of relevant questions, including the significance of such support documents within the holdings of a community archive itself.