School of Social and Political Sciences - Theses
Permanent URI for this collection
Search Results
1 - 1 of 1
-
ItemExchange in American and Australian public bars: tipping as a social fact( 2013)This comparative ethnography explores the ambiguous and contingent nature of exchange relationships, through an analysis of ‘tipping’ in the form of money given to service-employees. Previous attempts to explain tipping have proved inadequate and the phenomenon remains a credible threat to the validity of economic doctrine, particularly its foundational axiom of utility maximisation. I present tipping as a Durkheimian ‘social fact’ possessing multiple dimensions, including a combination of economic and social characteristics. Its ability to be understood objectively as well as experienced subjectively affords tipping various meanings and an ability to facilitate multiple types of relationships. This conceptualisation of tipping sits in stark contrast to that used by previous researchers, who usually present tipping as a commodity traded for service. This dissertation provides answers to three questions: Why is tipping so prevalent in the USA and so uncommon in Australia? How do people incorporate tipping into their interactions with each other? What does tipping mean to both givers and recipients? Historical comparison demonstrates how attitudes and practices regarding tipping evolved differently in the USA and Australia. Different demographic compositions in the late-nineteenth century underpinned distinctive labour relations and ultimately how service-employees acquired most of their income—informal tips in the USA and formal wages in Australia. Participant observation within two public bars was undertaken to appreciate how these legacies were incorporated into people’s everyday interactions. Consistent with national histories, American participants exchanged informally, with tipping being seen as both customary and crucial to interactions. Australian participants tended to undertake exchange according to formal rules, with tipping being rare and marginal to proceedings. Tipping acquired different meanings in each setting, but these meanings were consistent with, and supported, the social structures and modes of interaction in which they took place. As these meanings of tipping reflected and reinforced the relationships of which they were a part, what tipping means to people is taken to be a crucial component of why it is practiced. This dissertation demonstrates the recursive relationship between social structures and cultural values. National ideologies underpinned the creation of particular social structures in America and Australia, which have led to distinct income arrangements for service-employees. These income arrangements (such as the variable tips and fixed wages discussed here) influenced people’s incentives regarding tipping and working. Economists appreciate that people respond to incentives but anthropologists recognise that such responses depend upon the value system within which the actor operates. This comparative examination suggests that each incentive structure is associated with both distinct behaviours and different modes of being regarding bar life—including different approaches to exchange, distinctive forms of bartender-patron relationships, particular understandings of ‘space,’ and different expectations regarding ‘bartending work’ in each venue. Considering the history of labour relations in the USA and Australia in conjunction with ethnographic detail of two public bars within those nations suggests that social structures and cultural values operate upon each other, and that a single expression of either (tipping, for example) cannot be understood without considering both.