Little did I know how fascinating a group of workers pouring concrete could be. Yet Dale Cyphert’s rhetorical analysis of the practice makes it so. Really. Her interpretation of the “dance of decision-making” that workers perform as they shovel, pour and level reveals a cultural logic of cooperation that stands in sharp contrast to middle-class assumptions about individualism, instruction, and order. On this worksite knowledge is collective and problem-solving is shared; tacit rhythms rather than explicit dictates govern action.
A Journal of Community-Engaged Writing and Rhetoric