Strawmanning and Labour Process Analysis

The practice of building and knocking down straw men, or Strawmanning, is elaborated here by describing a number of different variants of this phenomenon through analysis of a recent article in this journal (O’Doherty and Willmott, 2001). Four types of Strawmanning are identified. In addition, three tools which can be used to generate straw men are identified: monism, deconstruction and disciplinary media. Concepts are offered that may help develop a more useful approach to subjectivity in the labour process that builds on previous work in the field, rather than dismissing it using various forms of Strawmanning. These concepts are briefly related to general issues of structure and agency in sociological theory.