May 30, 2025 • 60 mins
Guest: Dr. Drew Whitelegg, Globe Academy
First broadcast May 30 2025. Transcript at https://hdl.handle.net/1853/77965
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"I think the United States is the only English-speaking country that doesn’t use the phrase 'cabin crew.'"
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Episode Transcript
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(00:00):
DREW WHITELEGG (00:08):
What was difficult was getting
the balance right, Ithink, between the academic
and the non-academic.
They don't really need to knowpost-modern academic theories.
It's just goingto get in the way.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
CHARLIE BENNETT (00:46):
You are listening to WREK Atlanta,
and this is Lost in theStacks, the research library
rock and roll radio show.
I'm Charlie Bennettin the studio
with a bunch of post-modernacademic theor-- no.
With Fred Rascoe, Alex McGee,Marlee Givens, and Cody Turner.
Each week on Lost in theStacks, we pick a theme
and then use it to create amix of music and library talk.
(01:07):
Whichever you are herefor, we hope you dig it.
MARLEE GIVENS (01:09):
Our show today is called
How to Write a BookAbout Cabin Crews.
As we broadcast,it is May 30, 2025,
which means tomorrow isinternational cabin crew day.
So we thought we'd join in thecelebration as well as we could.
ALEX MCGEE (01:25):
If you are an international listener,
you are clear on whatwe are talking about.
But you might not knowthe term cabin crew
if you're an American listener.
A member of the cabin crewis a flight attendant.
FRED RASCOE (01:35):
So tomorrow is also international flight attendant
day.
CHARLIE BENNETT (01:39):
Exactly.
ALEX MCGEE (01:40):
This is like the word soccer and football.
I think the United Statesis the only English speaking
country that doesn't usethe phrase cabin crew.
CHARLIE BENNETT: Whichever term you (01:47):
undefined
use for the people whowork in the airplane cabin,
helping passengers,supporting the flight crew,
we are celebrating them today.
We even have a familyconnection to them,
and we're doing that in the mostLost in the Stacks way possible.
We're going to discussan academic book written
about flight attendants.
ALEX MCGEE (02:05):
Hey.
MARLEE GIVENS (02:06):
The book, Working The Skies, The Fast-Paced,
Disorienting World ofthe Flight Attendant,
came out in 2007,published by NYU Press.
We spoke with the author abouthow he proposed, researched,
and wrote the book.
FRED RASCOE (02:19):
And our songs today are
about the people whomake air travel happen,
seeing beyond thesurface or popular image,
and about women beingthe driving force.
Let's start with asong about staying down
to Earth, no matter howhigh and how far you go.
This is "Fly" by Wishy, righthere on Lost in the Stacks.
(02:40):
[WISHY, "FLY"]
CHARLIE BENNETT (02:48):
That was Fly by Wishy.
Our show today is called How toWrite a Book About Cabin Crews.
Our guest is Dr. DrewWhitelegg, author
of Working The Skies, TheFast- Paced, Disorienting
World of the Flight Attendant.
I'm just going to let Dr.Whitelegg introduce himself.
DREW WHITELEGG (03:04):
Well, I'm Drew Whitelegg.
I teach social studiesat Globe Academy.
I teach sixth gradesocial studies.
I used to work atEmory University.
Before that, I worked in variouscolleges in the United Kingdom.
I got my PhD in geographyfrom King's College London.
(03:25):
Before that, I wasat a place called
the Institute ofUnited States Studies,
where I did my mastersin American studies.
And before that, Iwas at the University
of Birmingham in England.
Not the one in Alabama.
So I was in the academicsector for 15, 16 years,
and then switched basicallyto teaching in schools.
(03:47):
I've sort of feltas though I'd gone
as far as I needed to goin the academic sector,
and the elusive tenure track jobwas not really on the horizon.
To be honest, I gotto the point where
I wasn't sure I really wantedto stay in the academia.
I got into soccer coaching,believe it or not,
and found I kind of had a knackwith 10, 11, 12-year-old kids.
(04:11):
And so started-- and justtook a job as a teacher,
and it sort ofwent on from there.
CHARLIE BENNETT (04:17):
I think soccer coach might actually be better
for the world than academic.
DREW WHITELEGG (04:21):
Yes, I agree.
CHARLIE BENNETT (04:23):
When you were at Emory, you were part of the--
and I want to get it correct,the Center for Myth and Ritual
in American Life.
DREW WHITELEGG (04:31):
Yeah.
CHARLIE BENNETT: I feel like there (04:32):
undefined
must be very detaileddescriptions,
but can you summarizewhat you all
were trying to do at theCenter for Myth and Ritual?
DREW WHITELEGG (04:40):
Yeah.
It was funded by theSloan Foundation.
This was back in 2001, 2002,2003, that sort of time.
And the Sloan Foundation weretrying, through various research
centers, to, I think,get enough data together
to push for the kindof work-life balance,
paid maternal leave, possiblypaid paternal leave as well.
(05:04):
That was their bigkind of agenda.
And I think theywant, in the days
when people look touniversities to provide
some sort of academic heft,they funded various centers
around the country andone of them was at Emory.
It was pretty muchrun through a sort
of anthropological approach,and it was looking specifically
(05:26):
at middle class Americanfamilies, the myth and ritual,
in a way, the patternsof their lifestyles.
I came on board because I'dmoved to the United States
and was lookingaround for work, and I
knew that they had thesepostdoctoral research
fellowships at-- it wascalled the Mariel Center.
And so I just wroteand I pitched them.
(05:48):
I said to them, thatthey're doing stuff on--
because one of the thingsthat they were interested in
was this anthropologicalapproach where
you study the unusualto extrapolate ideas
about the usual.
That's a kind of ananthropological mindset, really.
And so I sort ofsaid to him, well,
if you're studying work-lifebalance for the unusual, what
(06:13):
better career to try and lookat than flight attendants who
have the almost ultimatework-life balance challenges.
I knew at the time that thedirector of the center's wife
worked for United Airlinesas a flight attendant,
and so I kind ofthought, if I pitch this,
it might be a way ofattracting his attention.
And it did.
And he loved the idea.
(06:33):
And so I went on--
he took me on board ona post-doctoral research
fellowship, which I then wentfor, I think three years.
Three to four years,I think I was there.
And the book was theculmination of that.
CHARLIE BENNETT (06:47):
How did your PhD in geography
get you to interest in flightattendants or cabin crews?
DREW WHITELEGG (06:53):
I mean, just to backtrack a little, just
a slight little bit,I mean, I grew up
in an area that was heavilydominated by aviation.
I grew up two miles fromthe de Havilland factory
where they built the firstjet airliner, the Comet.
Friends of mine fromschool would go on
to work on building airliners.
And so there was always thispersonal aviation background.
(07:16):
I'd go plane spotting atHeathrow Airport, things like--
there was still a sort ofglamour of the jet age.
Then I was also veryinterested in cities,
and I did a masters onthe development of Atlanta
just when it got theOlympics, because when Atlanta
got the Olympics-- inthe United Kingdom,
it was interesting because noone had really heard of Atlanta.
(07:36):
When I told people from Atlantathis, they weren't very happy.
But it was, where?
It's Gone With The Wind.
That's all they knew about it.
And so that then ledme to look at Atlanta.
And of course, my interest inaviation as well, obviously
led me to Delta, to DeltaAirlines and the development
of Hartsfield.
Well, now Hartsfield-Jackson.
(07:57):
From there, I then wenton and extended that
into my PhD doctoratethesis, which
was on thedevelopment of Atlanta
and the kind ofproduction, what I always
called the productionof image in Atlanta.
This idea thatAtlanta has always
projected certain images ofitself as a city too busy
to hate and the modernicon of the new American
(08:21):
South and things like that.
And so you couldn'treally talk about Atlanta
without talkingabout jet aviation,
because Delta wasreally part of that.
And so the flight attendantthing came in from two angles,
really.
One was reading ArlieHochschild's book, The Managed
Heart.
What she kind ofposited was the idea
(08:41):
that if Karl Marx waswriting Capital now,
he wouldn't writeabout manufacturing.
He would write aboutthe service industry
because more people workin the service industry.
It was really, how has laborcommodified in the service
industry?
And what she kind ofargued was that there
was this thing calledemotional labor,
that the performance of the jobitself became a commodity, which
(09:05):
was kind of boughtand sold by customers,
reified in the idea of theflight attendant smile,
and that this was something thatthe airlines marketed and sold
and customersbought and expected.
And when they didn't getsmiled at, they got annoyed.
That's a kind of crude sort ofdescription of her argument.
That interested me.
And then also, there was a laborbackground just from growing up
(09:27):
in Britain in the 1980s, withthe miners strike and things
like that.
So I was always drawn toissues involving labor.
Having finishedthe PhD, the more
I looked at theaviation industry,
the more I realizedthat there was
a real dearth of actualserious academic work on flight
attendants.
Most of the stuffon flight attendants
(09:50):
were either coffee, tea,or me sort of stuff.
Or it would be written by flightattendants themselves, which--
and some of thosebooks were very good.
But there wasn't a kind oflike an academic theorization
of the job.
I think it waspartly interesting.
It was also partly tryingto maybe go into an area
(10:11):
that not many peoplehad gone into before,
which I thought might be a goodway of forwarding a career.
But just going back to,you asked about the PhD
in geography.
There's various geographiesinvolved with flight attendants.
You've got the kind ofgeographic-- the geography
(10:31):
of space in terms of theactual physical world
that they move around in.
But there's alsoissues, like geographers
talk about the geographyof the body as well.
The whole issues over thingslike weight tests and uniform
and expectations of how flightattendants should look and dress
and stuff like that, thatwas also part of a growing
(10:53):
feminist geography movement.
One really important writerin terms of geography
was a guy calledDavid Harvey, who
was a Marxistgeographer who talked
about the way that geography--
an integral part of the way thatthe capitalist system worked,
that this was a sort ofcoalescence of a whole series
(11:15):
of different strands that wereboth personal and academic
that contributed to ending updoing this research at Mariel.
MARLEE GIVENS (11:24):
This is Lost in the Stacks,
and we will be back with more ofhow to write a book about cabin
crews after a music set.
ALEX MCGEE (11:31):
File this set under TL547.B4.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
That was "Boeing Boeing 707" byRoger Miller, and before that,
(11:51):
"Airplanes" by Adron, songsabout taking an interest in air
transportation and in thepeople who make it happen.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
MARLEE GIVENS (12:05):
This is Lost in the Stacks,
and today's show iscalled How to Write
a Book About Cabin Crews.
Our guest is Dr. Drew Whitelegg,author of Working The Skies,
The Fast-Paced, DisorientingWorld of the Flight Attendant,
which he wrote during histime at Emory University's now
dissolved Center for Mythand Ritual in American Life.
CHARLIE BENNETT (12:26):
So after they said, we like it.
Why don't you write that book?
Had you alreadydone some writing?
Did you have articles kind of--
DREW WHITELEGG (12:34):
Yeah.
I was on the editorialboard of a journal called
the Journal ofTransport History,
and they were published byManchester University Press.
I'd already had work publishedin academic journals on Atlanta.
But I'd also had a couple ofworks published on the flight
attendants as well.
I did some stuff on what theycall cabin crew in the United
(12:56):
Kingdom.
But I had one pieceon cabin crew done,
which I'd sort of started tojust investigate on my own
without any researchfunding at all.
So I'd sort of got ahead start, really,
in terms of writingand knowing what
journals would be interestedin this kind of stuff.
CHARLIE BENNETT: What was that like (13:14):
undefined
to say to yourself,all right, it
looks like I'm going to have totalk to a whole bunch of people
and synthesize that work?
Like, what was the strategyor what were you scared of
or what were you excited about?
DREW WHITELEGG (13:28):
It was really interesting, I've got to say.
I mean, the flightattendants themselves--
I mean, in a way, one ofthe things I wanted to do
was to make sure this was theirbook, without that sounding
grandiose, because it was tryingto give a voice to a profession
that, in a way, was kind of--
I thought was quitemisrepresented, misunderstood.
(13:50):
The breakthrough thing interms of the interviews
was we did two things.
We did a focus group at Marielwith three or four United flight
attendants that the director'swife knew and brought in.
And then there wassomeone else at Mariel
who obviously knew Delta people.
It's not hard to findDelta people in the US.
(14:10):
And so we had these two groupsof flight attendants sitting
around a table talkingabout their profession.
They must have talkedfor about over two hours.
And it was onlyhalfway through that it
dawned on me that the Deltaflight attendants and the United
flight attendantshad never met before,
and they quicklysettled into this sort
of occupationalvernacular where they
(14:33):
were finishing each other'ssentences, that kind of stuff.
It was like theywere old friends.
It was reallyfascinating to watch.
And from that, Ithen got invited.
I got invited to go and speakto the Delta Flight Attendants--
retired, sorry.
Delta Retired FlightAttendants Association
at their monthly meetingat Maggiano's in Buckhead.
(14:54):
This was called theClipped Wings Association.
Yeah.
Along with playing FatherChristmas at my mom's
kindergarten back inEngland, that was easily
the most intimidatingthing I've ever done,
because small childrenand flight attendants have
got one thing incommon, and that is they
can spot a fraud a mile off.
And so I really had toget my act together.
(15:18):
The idea that I was justthis sort of charlatan
who was just kind of--
didn't really know that muchabout the profession and things.
But that wentreally, really well.
And so, again, so after that, Ihad various people come up to me
and say, hey, give me a call.
I'll talk to you.
Give me a call.
I'll talk to you.
Give me a call.
I'd use email, obviously,and I would just set up
various interviews with people.
(15:40):
Nearly always they wouldrecommend somebody else.
They'd say, oh,a friend of mine,
you should talk to this person.
You should talk to this person.
Once you got yourfoot in the door
and you were trusted, thatwas, I think, the key thing.
That they trusted younot to misrepresent them.
Nearly all of thepeople I approached
said, yes, we will talk.
This was in Atlanta, butalso up in DC as well.
(16:03):
I had a friend--
again, a friend lived inChevy Chase and his neighbor
or something on a swimmingpool worked for United.
And so I got aconnection there as well.
And also, I thinkout in San Francisco,
I managed to talkto people out there.
And I talked to peopleon planes as well.
I'd be quitecareful in the sense
that I would waitfor a quiet moment,
(16:24):
and I'd always have a cardwith me and say, look,
this is what I'm doing.
I use the term inthe book, but I
think Arlie Hochschildmight have coined it.
This idea of what's calledan occupational community,
where there's a very, verytight knit community of workers.
You think of miners having that.
Police as well, where it'sa very closed community
(16:45):
where they're very guarded andquite wary of to strangers,
I suppose.
Once you were a trusted name,they welcomed me with open arms.
MARLEE GIVENS (16:54):
Yeah.
I was curious if people trustedyou because you just said,
I'm doing research.
Or did you develop apitch of some kind?
DREW WHITELEGG (17:02):
Not really.
It was more thefact that I don't
know that that many people had,like I say, done this research
before.
I'm not trying to champion myown work or anything like that,
but it would seem to meas though it was almost
pushing at an open door.
I didn't get the sense thatI needed to sell myself
or anything like that.
(17:23):
It was more sort of naturalkind of conversations
that I would try and start,spark up with, especially
on the planes.
No, I didn't reallyhave a set pitch.
No.
CHARLIE BENNETT (17:36):
How were you recording these?
DREW WHITELEGG (17:38):
On the aeroplanes themselves
I would take notes.
Most of them wererecorded and then
we'd get therecordings transcribed.
This was very muchinductive research.
And so it led into thingslike grounded theory,
where I'd go throughall the interviews
and code them, basically.
It took a long time becauseI would code the interviews
(18:01):
and I would just write downwhat themes kept coming up.
What are the thingsthat they're mentioning?
What are the things thatthey're talking about?
These would then be groupedinto different segments.
From there, it would be like,OK, so these are obviously
the major ideas, the majorthemes that the book is then
going to be structured around.
That obviously took a long time.
Six, seven months, eight months.
CHARLIE BENNETT (18:22):
Do you remember how many hours of interview
you had?
DREW WHITELEGG (18:26):
Well, I interviewed, I think in all,
I think it must have beenover a hundred people.
That includes focus groups.
CHARLIE BENNETT (18:32):
Wow.
DREW WHITELEGG: So I imagine there (18:33):
undefined
must have been about 30 hours.
Maybe between 30 and40 hours of interviews.
And yeah, and I don'tknow where they went,
those interviews, actually.
CHARLIE BENNETT (18:42):
Oh, no.
DREW WHITELEGG (18:43):
Yeah.
I mean I didn't keep thembecause of the IRB regulations,
I think you had to destroy themafter five years or something.
CHARLIE BENNETT (18:52):
Right.
Of course.
DREW WHITELEGG: Because I had an idea (18:53):
undefined
that I'd turn them all overto the Association of Flight
Attendants or the DeltaMuseum, but in the end,
that didn't happen.
FRED RASCOE (19:01):
No, it's good.
Since the IRB demandedit, they're lost.
And if anybody'slistening, they're gone.
DREW WHITELEGG (19:08):
Yeah.
FRED RASCOE (19:10):
You are listening to Lost in the Stacks,
and we'll hear morefrom Dr. Drew Whitelegg
on the left side of the hour.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
PETE LUDOVICE (19:28):
You're listening to Lost in the Stacks
on WREK Atlanta.
AMEET DOSHI (19:32):
Do you believe in WREK?
STUDENT (19:33):
I believe in WREK.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
CHARLIE BENNETT: Today's show is called (19:44):
undefined
How to Write a Book aboutcabin cruise in honor
of internationalflight attendant day,
also known as internationalcabin crew day or world cabin
crew day, we are speaking withDr. Drew Whitelegg, author
of Working The Skies, TheFast-Paced, Disorienting
World of the Flight Attendant.
This is a how-to show, sowe're talking about research
(20:06):
and writing, not the currentstate of the profession.
In fact, Dr. Whitelegg hadthis to say about the time
in which he wrote the book.
DREW WHITELEGG (20:14):
You got to remember,
this was straight after 9/11that this was going on, that I
was researching it.
And leaving asidewhat happened on 9/11,
what was fascinating at the timewas the way that the airline
industry used the cutbacksin 9/11 to really go after
the flight attendants andto almost destroy the job
as a career.
(20:34):
The flight attendants had foughtfor so long, from the 1970s,
to make it into afull time career.
The airlines kind ofreally saw their moment
to try to get rid of that.
And so you had thingslike these start
up airlines, likeSong, which was
Delta's subsidiary, and theseother sort of low budget
airlines.
And what they tried todo was almost reglamorize
(20:56):
the profession.
Again, the smiling flightattendant, the coffee, tea,
or me stuff.
It kind of came backinto the industry
because what they wantedto do in the industry was
to get rid of the olderflight attendants,
because they cost so much.
And so what I'm saying isthere was this huge backdrop
to the book of 9/11itself, the event,
but also the economicfallout from 9/11 as well.
(21:18):
So that was the backdrop toeverything that I was doing.
And maybe that wasone of the reasons
why the flight attendantswanted to talk so much.
CHARLIE BENNETT (21:25):
File this set under HD8039.A432, no dot, U69.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
FRED RASCOE (21:41):
You just heard "Fly Now" by Brian Protheroe.
And before that,"Wristwatch" by MJ Lenderman.
Those are songs about seeing theperson beyond the surface image
and establishingtrust with them.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
CHARLIE BENNETT (22:04):
This is Lost in the Stacks,
and our show today is calledHow to Write a Book About Cabin
Crews, featuring aninterview with Dr. Drew
Whitelegg, the author of WorkingThe Skies, The Fast Paced,
Disorienting World ofthe Flight Attendant.
FRED RASCOE (22:19):
Drew, when you were synthesizing
all of these interviewsand doing your coding
and putting yourconclusions together,
did you also look atprevious research done
in other areas ofcommodification of services?
Like maybe folks thathad written about food
service employeesor things like that.
DREW WHITELEGG (22:40):
There were some people who
had done stuff on things like--
I mean, there wasBarbara Ehrenreich
had written quite abit about cleaners.
It was Nickeled andDimed, wasn't it,
that she wrote thatbook, which I think
was about fast foodworkers as well.
There were other people whoworked in the restaurants
I looked at.
I can't remember the names,though of some of them,
(23:02):
to be honest.
I think teaching as wellI might have looked at.
It was certainly occupationsthat were female dominated
or occupations thatone would associate
with being female dominated.
This was 20 years ago.
It might well have changed.
One thing that Ididn't really touch on
was any kind of gay identityor gay male identity
(23:24):
of the flight attendants.
I felt that was almostanother story, to be honest.
And it would go in a way thatI didn't really want it to go.
I was more interested inthe female side of it,
especially because of howwomen use the job very much
as a way of almost breakboundaries, I think,
(23:45):
and break spatial boundaries.
I mean, I think that was oneof the arguments I ended up
coming out with.
This was a job thatwas quite unique,
really in the way that itappealed to certain kinds
of women, especially inthe '50s and the '60s.
The flight attendant unions inthe '60s were one of the most
(24:05):
militant unions inthe United States.
They were on the front lineof fighting for things like--
through things like TitleVII and fighting for equal
pay and women's rightsand things like that.
CHARLIE BENNETT: In the book, you (24:18):
undefined
said that you found thestructure as the flight
attendants journey.
You sort of matched itup with certain concepts.
Was that always the structureyou were going to go with,
or did you try to figureout a couple different ones?
Was it ever going to be a StudsTerkel, interview excerpts
(24:41):
kind of thing?
DREW WHITELEGG (24:42):
No.
It was always goingto be structured.
I mean, the structuretook some time to emerge.
And I've got to say that Igot very lucky in the way
that the book wasactually ended up
getting taken on by NYU Press.
I'd been sort of touting itaround to various presses,
and as always happens,you get just knocked back
(25:04):
and, no, we'renot interested in,
we're not interested inthis, not interested in this.
A friend of mine in NewYork said, try this person.
And I tried this person.
And they wrote back to meand said, this isn't for me,
but I do know somebodywho I think is
going to be interested in this.
And then, out of the blue, I gotan actual email from an editor
at New York UniversityPress who just said,
(25:25):
my friend passedme this, and I want
to do it, which was an amazingemail to get out of the blue.
And she helped a lot in termsof talking about the structure
and how we would goabout structuring it.
And the more thatwe thought about it,
the more there was this sortof sense of, OK, what we'll do
(25:47):
is have a longintroduction which kind of
sets the scene forthe rest of the book.
And then the rest of thebook will be a journey,
and we can weave allthe stuff into that
as a unfolding, a senseof departure and return,
which also neatlyfitted into the Mariel
idea of looking at families.
(26:08):
Because in the backgroundall the time was this idea,
I do need to stress orhave some element of stress
on the family component.
So the work-lifebalance component,
because that's whatthe Center was about.
But the structure wasn'tthere at the start.
CHARLIE BENNETT (26:24):
But came together in the editing?
DREW WHITELEGG (26:26):
Yes.
It came together in thewriting and the editing.
I mean, after I'dwritten the first draft,
the editor said,yeah, this is good.
Now go and write it again.
Which I tell my students.
CHARLIE BENNETT: I've heard that, that (26:38):
undefined
that's the editors command isjust throw it away and write it
again.
DREW WHITELEGG (26:44):
Well, it's good because nowadays--
I mean, so editingis a lost skill.
I know people who's--
I mean, when I tell themhow hands on the editor
was for this book,they can't believe it.
I think it's rarer and rarer.
FRED RASCOE (26:59):
Have you ever been flying
since you published your bookand somehow identified yourself
to an attendant, or they knewwho you were or something
like that, and they gaveyou an opinion of your book,
or they'd heard of itor they've read it?
DREW WHITELEGG (27:13):
Not on a plane.
I have, though,every now and then,
got the most beautiful emailscompletely out of the blue
from flight attendantswho I've never met,
just saying how much thatthey enjoyed the book
and how much itresonated with them
and they felt like someonehad told their story.
And as you can imagine,that's the kind of email
(27:34):
that you want thatmakes it all worth it.
But no, I've never said anythingto anyone on the flights
anymore.
MARLEE GIVENS: Since you've written (27:45):
undefined
a doctoral thesis and you'vewritten an academic book--
and I think a lotof academics end up
turning their dissertation intoa book, which you did not do.
DREW WHITELEGG (27:57):
Yeah.
MARLEE GIVENS (27:58):
So I'm wondering if you can just comment briefly
on the difference inthose experiences.
DREW WHITELEGG (28:03):
Yeah, sure.
I mean, I wouldn't havepublished my doctoral thesis,
to be honest.
The book was so much better.
It was so much--
I just felt like it wasso much better written.
It had a kind of flair to itthat the doctoral thesis just
didn't reallyhave, to be honest.
(28:25):
And I mean, one of the thingsthat New York NYU Press wanted
me to do was to tryand write in a way that
was not overly academic.
To, yes, use academic concepts,but at the same time, to try
and make it sonon-academics would read it.
(28:48):
Whether that was successfulor not, I don't know.
But it made it moreenjoyable to write the book.
CHARLIE BENNETT (28:55):
So as just a last thought, what was easy
and what was hard aboutwriting this academic book?
DREW WHITELEGG (29:03):
Oof.
What was easy?
What was easy was the--
I think what was easy was theactual research, to be honest.
It was fascinating.
It was somethingthat was enjoyable.
I met a ton of people.
I had a hundred reallyfascinating conversations.
(29:25):
I mean, Mariel had a verysupportive expense account,
so they would allow meto fly to various places
to do research and variousto conferences and things
like that.
What was difficult?
Probably the mostdifficult thing
was again, just gettingthe right structure.
Getting the rightstructure to the book
and getting thebalance right, I think,
(29:46):
between the academicand the non-academic,
if that's a way to describe it.
There'd be times Iwould write stuff
and then I would think, no,this is getting too jargonistic.
It's getting too--they don't really
need to know postmodernacademic theory.
We don't need that in the book.
It's just goingto get in the way.
To be honest, I don't knowthat the Mariel Center at Emory
(30:08):
actually liked it, the book.
CHARLIE BENNETT (30:11):
Did someone tell you that?
DREW WHITELEGG: I got the feeling (30:13):
undefined
that they wanted it tobe more family based,
as opposed to coming atit from profession based.
That was the risk I took,and I thought, you know what?
So be it.
That was just thefeeling I got and
the passive aggressive commentsfrom various people would--
CHARLIE BENNETT (30:31):
Right.
DREW WHITELEGG (30:31):
But I didn't let it bother me.
CHARLIE BENNETT: Well, you know what? (30:33):
undefined
They're gone.
And I just read thebook, so I think--
DREW WHITELEGG (30:36):
Yeah.
CHARLIE BENNETT (30:37):
Yeah, you did all right.
Drew, thank you so muchfor talking to us today.
DREW WHITELEGG (30:40):
Well, thank you, Charlie, and thanks,
Fred, and thanks, Marlee,for your time as well.
It's been fun to revisitthis, I must admit.
CHARLIE BENNETT (30:47):
This is Lost in the Stacks,
and today's show was How toWrite a Book About Cabin Crews.
We spoke with Dr. DrewWhitelegg, sixth grade
social studies teacherat the Globe Academy
here in Atlanta, Georgia.
In his previouslife as an academic,
Dr. Whitelegg wrotethe book Working
The Skies, The Fast-Paced,Disorienting World of the Flight
Attendant, publishedin 2007 by NYU Press.
(31:11):
File this set underPS3562.E55, no dot, R8.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
MARLEE GIVENS (31:34):
That was "Do You Want Me Now?"
by Habibi and before that,"Paprika" by Japanese Breakfast.
Songs about women as thedriving force with flair.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
CHARLIE BENNETT (31:53):
Today's Lost in the Stacks
is called How to Write aBook About Cabin crews,
so I want to openthis up to everybody.
If you had a chance to writea detailed academic text
about a particularprofession, what would it be?
Mine would be electricians,especially the ones
who wired the West.
How about you, Fred?
FRED RASCOE (32:13):
Mine would be very specific and niche.
The occupation isthose who design
face masks for football helmets,tackle football helmets.
When I was a kid, I was alwaysfascinated with the face mask
design.
So I think I want towrite a book about that.
And I'm going to callit La Cage Aux Face.
(32:35):
CODY TURNER (32:39):
I'm not quite as prepared for that answer
as much as Fred was.
I would say whateverthe title is
for the liaison between localgovernment and the public.
I've seen in differentprojects, people
have to really face thebrunt of the public comment
section of explaining, no, no,no, this meeting is about this,
(32:59):
but we'll happily takequestions on that.
I feel like you just have tobecome an expert in the weave.
So I would like to see howdifferent cities approach that.
MARLEE GIVENS (33:09):
So mine is postal workers.
My grandfather workedfor the Postal Service
and I hardly everdo this, but I once
saw a mail carrier like inan elevator at the hospital,
and I was like, hey, mygrandfather used to do that.
He goes, did he like it?
And I just got the sensethat this guy really
(33:31):
loved what he did.
And so I just love to beable to tell that story.
What about you, Alex?
ALEX MCGEE (33:37):
Well, I love that answer.
I would probably say realtors,and by extension, realists
when the NationalRealtor Association said
that Black peoplecould not be realtors
and so they had to come up withtheir own realist profession.
CHARLIE BENNETT (33:53):
Oh, wow.
ALEX MCGEE (33:54):
Yeah.
So I think there'sa lot of fodder
in there for considerationto just the ebbs
and flows of real estate, so.
CHARLIE BENNETT (34:03):
I appreciate you making it real serious
right there at the end, Alex.
OK.
Roll the credits.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Lost in the Stacksis a collaboration
between WREK Atlanta andthe Georgia Tech Library.
Written and produced byAlex McGee, Charlie Bennett,
Fred Rascoe, and Marlee Givens.
MARLEE GIVENS (34:23):
Legal counsel and a first class upgrade
were provided by the BurrusIntellectual Property Law Group
in Atlanta, Georgia.
CHARLIE BENNETT (34:30):
Special thanks to Drew for being on the show,
to Lila Bennett for being thereason this episode happened,
to all the cabin crews in theair and on the ground right now.
And thanks, as always, toeach and every one of you
for listening.
MARLEE GIVENS (34:44):
Our webpage is library.gatech.e
du/lostinthestacks,where you'll find
our most recent episode, alink to our podcast feed,
and a web form.
If you want to getin touch with us.
ALEX MCGEE (34:55):
On next week's show, Charlie and Marlee
are going to have a chat abouta pair of topics that have
been on their mind for a while.
Slow librarianship andachievement culture.
CODY TURNER (35:05):
It is time for our last song today,
and let's close with atrack about the mechanics
and logistics of flight, guidedby a strong female presence.
This is "Regina" by TheSugarcubes right here on Lost
in the Stacks.
Have a great weekend, everybody.
And if you're flyingthe friendly skies,
(35:26):
thank a flight attendant.
[THE SUGARCUBES, "REGINA"]
DREW WHITELEGG (00:08):
What was difficult was getting
the balance right, Ithink, between the academic
and the non-academic.
They don't really need to knowpost-modern academic theories.
It's just goingto get in the way.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
CHARLIE BENNETT (00:46):
You are listening to WREK Atlanta,
and this is Lost in theStacks, the research library
rock and roll radio show.
I'm Charlie Bennettin the studio
with a bunch of post-modernacademic theor-- no.
With Fred Rascoe, Alex McGee,Marlee Givens, and Cody Turner.
Each week on Lost in theStacks, we pick a theme
and then use it to create amix of music and library talk.
(01:07):
Whichever you are herefor, we hope you dig it.
MARLEE GIVENS (01:09):
Our show today is called
How to Write a BookAbout Cabin Crews.
As we broadcast,it is May 30, 2025,
which means tomorrow isinternational cabin crew day.
So we thought we'd join in thecelebration as well as we could.
ALEX MCGEE (01:25):
If you are an international listener,
you are clear on whatwe are talking about.
But you might not knowthe term cabin crew
if you're an American listener.
A member of the cabin crewis a flight attendant.
FRED RASCOE (01:35):
So tomorrow is also international flight attendant
day.
CHARLIE BENNETT (01:39):
Exactly.
ALEX MCGEE (01:40):
This is like the word soccer and football.
I think the United Statesis the only English speaking
country that doesn't usethe phrase cabin crew.
CHARLIE BENNETT: Whichever term you (01:47):
undefined
use for the people whowork in the airplane cabin,
helping passengers,supporting the flight crew,
we are celebrating them today.
We even have a familyconnection to them,
and we're doing that in the mostLost in the Stacks way possible.
We're going to discussan academic book written
about flight attendants.
ALEX MCGEE (02:05):
Hey.
MARLEE GIVENS (02:06):
The book, Working The Skies, The Fast-Paced,
Disorienting World ofthe Flight Attendant,
came out in 2007,published by NYU Press.
We spoke with the author abouthow he proposed, researched,
and wrote the book.
FRED RASCOE (02:19):
And our songs today are
about the people whomake air travel happen,
seeing beyond thesurface or popular image,
and about women beingthe driving force.
Let's start with asong about staying down
to Earth, no matter howhigh and how far you go.
This is "Fly" by Wishy, righthere on Lost in the Stacks.
(02:40):
[WISHY, "FLY"]
CHARLIE BENNETT (02:48):
That was Fly by Wishy.
Our show today is called How toWrite a Book About Cabin Crews.
Our guest is Dr. DrewWhitelegg, author
of Working The Skies, TheFast- Paced, Disorienting
World of the Flight Attendant.
I'm just going to let Dr.Whitelegg introduce himself.
DREW WHITELEGG (03:04):
Well, I'm Drew Whitelegg.
I teach social studiesat Globe Academy.
I teach sixth gradesocial studies.
I used to work atEmory University.
Before that, I worked in variouscolleges in the United Kingdom.
I got my PhD in geographyfrom King's College London.
(03:25):
Before that, I wasat a place called
the Institute ofUnited States Studies,
where I did my mastersin American studies.
And before that, Iwas at the University
of Birmingham in England.
Not the one in Alabama.
So I was in the academicsector for 15, 16 years,
and then switched basicallyto teaching in schools.
(03:47):
I've sort of feltas though I'd gone
as far as I needed to goin the academic sector,
and the elusive tenure track jobwas not really on the horizon.
To be honest, I gotto the point where
I wasn't sure I really wantedto stay in the academia.
I got into soccer coaching,believe it or not,
and found I kind of had a knackwith 10, 11, 12-year-old kids.
(04:11):
And so started-- and justtook a job as a teacher,
and it sort ofwent on from there.
CHARLIE BENNETT (04:17):
I think soccer coach might actually be better
for the world than academic.
DREW WHITELEGG (04:21):
Yes, I agree.
CHARLIE BENNETT (04:23):
When you were at Emory, you were part of the--
and I want to get it correct,the Center for Myth and Ritual
in American Life.
DREW WHITELEGG (04:31):
Yeah.
CHARLIE BENNETT: I feel like there (04:32):
undefined
must be very detaileddescriptions,
but can you summarizewhat you all
were trying to do at theCenter for Myth and Ritual?
DREW WHITELEGG (04:40):
Yeah.
It was funded by theSloan Foundation.
This was back in 2001, 2002,2003, that sort of time.
And the Sloan Foundation weretrying, through various research
centers, to, I think,get enough data together
to push for the kindof work-life balance,
paid maternal leave, possiblypaid paternal leave as well.
(05:04):
That was their bigkind of agenda.
And I think theywant, in the days
when people look touniversities to provide
some sort of academic heft,they funded various centers
around the country andone of them was at Emory.
It was pretty muchrun through a sort
of anthropological approach,and it was looking specifically
(05:26):
at middle class Americanfamilies, the myth and ritual,
in a way, the patternsof their lifestyles.
I came on board because I'dmoved to the United States
and was lookingaround for work, and I
knew that they had thesepostdoctoral research
fellowships at-- it wascalled the Mariel Center.
And so I just wroteand I pitched them.
(05:48):
I said to them, thatthey're doing stuff on--
because one of the thingsthat they were interested in
was this anthropologicalapproach where
you study the unusualto extrapolate ideas
about the usual.
That's a kind of ananthropological mindset, really.
And so I sort ofsaid to him, well,
if you're studying work-lifebalance for the unusual, what
(06:13):
better career to try and lookat than flight attendants who
have the almost ultimatework-life balance challenges.
I knew at the time that thedirector of the center's wife
worked for United Airlinesas a flight attendant,
and so I kind ofthought, if I pitch this,
it might be a way ofattracting his attention.
And it did.
And he loved the idea.
(06:33):
And so I went on--
he took me on board ona post-doctoral research
fellowship, which I then wentfor, I think three years.
Three to four years,I think I was there.
And the book was theculmination of that.
CHARLIE BENNETT (06:47):
How did your PhD in geography
get you to interest in flightattendants or cabin crews?
DREW WHITELEGG (06:53):
I mean, just to backtrack a little, just
a slight little bit,I mean, I grew up
in an area that was heavilydominated by aviation.
I grew up two miles fromthe de Havilland factory
where they built the firstjet airliner, the Comet.
Friends of mine fromschool would go on
to work on building airliners.
And so there was always thispersonal aviation background.
(07:16):
I'd go plane spotting atHeathrow Airport, things like--
there was still a sort ofglamour of the jet age.
Then I was also veryinterested in cities,
and I did a masters onthe development of Atlanta
just when it got theOlympics, because when Atlanta
got the Olympics-- inthe United Kingdom,
it was interesting because noone had really heard of Atlanta.
(07:36):
When I told people from Atlantathis, they weren't very happy.
But it was, where?
It's Gone With The Wind.
That's all they knew about it.
And so that then ledme to look at Atlanta.
And of course, my interest inaviation as well, obviously
led me to Delta, to DeltaAirlines and the development
of Hartsfield.
Well, now Hartsfield-Jackson.
(07:57):
From there, I then wenton and extended that
into my PhD doctoratethesis, which
was on thedevelopment of Atlanta
and the kind ofproduction, what I always
called the productionof image in Atlanta.
This idea thatAtlanta has always
projected certain images ofitself as a city too busy
to hate and the modernicon of the new American
(08:21):
South and things like that.
And so you couldn'treally talk about Atlanta
without talkingabout jet aviation,
because Delta wasreally part of that.
And so the flight attendantthing came in from two angles,
really.
One was reading ArlieHochschild's book, The Managed
Heart.
What she kind ofposited was the idea
(08:41):
that if Karl Marx waswriting Capital now,
he wouldn't writeabout manufacturing.
He would write aboutthe service industry
because more people workin the service industry.
It was really, how has laborcommodified in the service
industry?
And what she kind ofargued was that there
was this thing calledemotional labor,
that the performance of the jobitself became a commodity, which
(09:05):
was kind of boughtand sold by customers,
reified in the idea of theflight attendant smile,
and that this was something thatthe airlines marketed and sold
and customersbought and expected.
And when they didn't getsmiled at, they got annoyed.
That's a kind of crude sort ofdescription of her argument.
That interested me.
And then also, there was a laborbackground just from growing up
(09:27):
in Britain in the 1980s, withthe miners strike and things
like that.
So I was always drawn toissues involving labor.
Having finishedthe PhD, the more
I looked at theaviation industry,
the more I realizedthat there was
a real dearth of actualserious academic work on flight
attendants.
Most of the stuffon flight attendants
(09:50):
were either coffee, tea,or me sort of stuff.
Or it would be written by flightattendants themselves, which--
and some of thosebooks were very good.
But there wasn't a kind oflike an academic theorization
of the job.
I think it waspartly interesting.
It was also partly tryingto maybe go into an area
(10:11):
that not many peoplehad gone into before,
which I thought might be a goodway of forwarding a career.
But just going back to,you asked about the PhD
in geography.
There's various geographiesinvolved with flight attendants.
You've got the kind ofgeographic-- the geography
(10:31):
of space in terms of theactual physical world
that they move around in.
But there's alsoissues, like geographers
talk about the geographyof the body as well.
The whole issues over thingslike weight tests and uniform
and expectations of how flightattendants should look and dress
and stuff like that, thatwas also part of a growing
(10:53):
feminist geography movement.
One really important writerin terms of geography
was a guy calledDavid Harvey, who
was a Marxistgeographer who talked
about the way that geography--
an integral part of the way thatthe capitalist system worked,
that this was a sort ofcoalescence of a whole series
(11:15):
of different strands that wereboth personal and academic
that contributed to ending updoing this research at Mariel.
MARLEE GIVENS (11:24):
This is Lost in the Stacks,
and we will be back with more ofhow to write a book about cabin
crews after a music set.
ALEX MCGEE (11:31):
File this set under TL547.B4.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
That was "Boeing Boeing 707" byRoger Miller, and before that,
(11:51):
"Airplanes" by Adron, songsabout taking an interest in air
transportation and in thepeople who make it happen.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
MARLEE GIVENS (12:05):
This is Lost in the Stacks,
and today's show iscalled How to Write
a Book About Cabin Crews.
Our guest is Dr. Drew Whitelegg,author of Working The Skies,
The Fast-Paced, DisorientingWorld of the Flight Attendant,
which he wrote during histime at Emory University's now
dissolved Center for Mythand Ritual in American Life.
CHARLIE BENNETT (12:26):
So after they said, we like it.
Why don't you write that book?
Had you alreadydone some writing?
Did you have articles kind of--
DREW WHITELEGG (12:34):
Yeah.
I was on the editorialboard of a journal called
the Journal ofTransport History,
and they were published byManchester University Press.
I'd already had work publishedin academic journals on Atlanta.
But I'd also had a couple ofworks published on the flight
attendants as well.
I did some stuff on what theycall cabin crew in the United
(12:56):
Kingdom.
But I had one pieceon cabin crew done,
which I'd sort of started tojust investigate on my own
without any researchfunding at all.
So I'd sort of got ahead start, really,
in terms of writingand knowing what
journals would be interestedin this kind of stuff.
CHARLIE BENNETT: What was that like (13:14):
undefined
to say to yourself,all right, it
looks like I'm going to have totalk to a whole bunch of people
and synthesize that work?
Like, what was the strategyor what were you scared of
or what were you excited about?
DREW WHITELEGG (13:28):
It was really interesting, I've got to say.
I mean, the flightattendants themselves--
I mean, in a way, one ofthe things I wanted to do
was to make sure this was theirbook, without that sounding
grandiose, because it was tryingto give a voice to a profession
that, in a way, was kind of--
I thought was quitemisrepresented, misunderstood.
(13:50):
The breakthrough thing interms of the interviews
was we did two things.
We did a focus group at Marielwith three or four United flight
attendants that the director'swife knew and brought in.
And then there wassomeone else at Mariel
who obviously knew Delta people.
It's not hard to findDelta people in the US.
(14:10):
And so we had these two groupsof flight attendants sitting
around a table talkingabout their profession.
They must have talkedfor about over two hours.
And it was onlyhalfway through that it
dawned on me that the Deltaflight attendants and the United
flight attendantshad never met before,
and they quicklysettled into this sort
of occupationalvernacular where they
(14:33):
were finishing each other'ssentences, that kind of stuff.
It was like theywere old friends.
It was reallyfascinating to watch.
And from that, Ithen got invited.
I got invited to go and speakto the Delta Flight Attendants--
retired, sorry.
Delta Retired FlightAttendants Association
at their monthly meetingat Maggiano's in Buckhead.
(14:54):
This was called theClipped Wings Association.
Yeah.
Along with playing FatherChristmas at my mom's
kindergarten back inEngland, that was easily
the most intimidatingthing I've ever done,
because small childrenand flight attendants have
got one thing incommon, and that is they
can spot a fraud a mile off.
And so I really had toget my act together.
(15:18):
The idea that I was justthis sort of charlatan
who was just kind of--
didn't really know that muchabout the profession and things.
But that wentreally, really well.
And so, again, so after that, Ihad various people come up to me
and say, hey, give me a call.
I'll talk to you.
Give me a call.
I'll talk to you.
Give me a call.
I'd use email, obviously,and I would just set up
various interviews with people.
(15:40):
Nearly always they wouldrecommend somebody else.
They'd say, oh,a friend of mine,
you should talk to this person.
You should talk to this person.
Once you got yourfoot in the door
and you were trusted, thatwas, I think, the key thing.
That they trusted younot to misrepresent them.
Nearly all of thepeople I approached
said, yes, we will talk.
This was in Atlanta, butalso up in DC as well.
(16:03):
I had a friend--
again, a friend lived inChevy Chase and his neighbor
or something on a swimmingpool worked for United.
And so I got aconnection there as well.
And also, I thinkout in San Francisco,
I managed to talkto people out there.
And I talked to peopleon planes as well.
I'd be quitecareful in the sense
that I would waitfor a quiet moment,
(16:24):
and I'd always have a cardwith me and say, look,
this is what I'm doing.
I use the term inthe book, but I
think Arlie Hochschildmight have coined it.
This idea of what's calledan occupational community,
where there's a very, verytight knit community of workers.
You think of miners having that.
Police as well, where it'sa very closed community
(16:45):
where they're very guarded andquite wary of to strangers,
I suppose.
Once you were a trusted name,they welcomed me with open arms.
MARLEE GIVENS (16:54):
Yeah.
I was curious if people trustedyou because you just said,
I'm doing research.
Or did you develop apitch of some kind?
DREW WHITELEGG (17:02):
Not really.
It was more thefact that I don't
know that that many people had,like I say, done this research
before.
I'm not trying to champion myown work or anything like that,
but it would seem to meas though it was almost
pushing at an open door.
I didn't get the sense thatI needed to sell myself
or anything like that.
(17:23):
It was more sort of naturalkind of conversations
that I would try and start,spark up with, especially
on the planes.
No, I didn't reallyhave a set pitch.
No.
CHARLIE BENNETT (17:36):
How were you recording these?
DREW WHITELEGG (17:38):
On the aeroplanes themselves
I would take notes.
Most of them wererecorded and then
we'd get therecordings transcribed.
This was very muchinductive research.
And so it led into thingslike grounded theory,
where I'd go throughall the interviews
and code them, basically.
It took a long time becauseI would code the interviews
(18:01):
and I would just write downwhat themes kept coming up.
What are the thingsthat they're mentioning?
What are the things thatthey're talking about?
These would then be groupedinto different segments.
From there, it would be like,OK, so these are obviously
the major ideas, the majorthemes that the book is then
going to be structured around.
That obviously took a long time.
Six, seven months, eight months.
CHARLIE BENNETT (18:22):
Do you remember how many hours of interview
you had?
DREW WHITELEGG (18:26):
Well, I interviewed, I think in all,
I think it must have beenover a hundred people.
That includes focus groups.
CHARLIE BENNETT (18:32):
Wow.
DREW WHITELEGG: So I imagine there (18:33):
undefined
must have been about 30 hours.
Maybe between 30 and40 hours of interviews.
And yeah, and I don'tknow where they went,
those interviews, actually.
CHARLIE BENNETT (18:42):
Oh, no.
DREW WHITELEGG (18:43):
Yeah.
I mean I didn't keep thembecause of the IRB regulations,
I think you had to destroy themafter five years or something.
CHARLIE BENNETT (18:52):
Right.
Of course.
DREW WHITELEGG: Because I had an idea (18:53):
undefined
that I'd turn them all overto the Association of Flight
Attendants or the DeltaMuseum, but in the end,
that didn't happen.
FRED RASCOE (19:01):
No, it's good.
Since the IRB demandedit, they're lost.
And if anybody'slistening, they're gone.
DREW WHITELEGG (19:08):
Yeah.
FRED RASCOE (19:10):
You are listening to Lost in the Stacks,
and we'll hear morefrom Dr. Drew Whitelegg
on the left side of the hour.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
PETE LUDOVICE (19:28):
You're listening to Lost in the Stacks
on WREK Atlanta.
AMEET DOSHI (19:32):
Do you believe in WREK?
STUDENT (19:33):
I believe in WREK.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
CHARLIE BENNETT: Today's show is called (19:44):
undefined
How to Write a Book aboutcabin cruise in honor
of internationalflight attendant day,
also known as internationalcabin crew day or world cabin
crew day, we are speaking withDr. Drew Whitelegg, author
of Working The Skies, TheFast-Paced, Disorienting
World of the Flight Attendant.
This is a how-to show, sowe're talking about research
(20:06):
and writing, not the currentstate of the profession.
In fact, Dr. Whitelegg hadthis to say about the time
in which he wrote the book.
DREW WHITELEGG (20:14):
You got to remember,
this was straight after 9/11that this was going on, that I
was researching it.
And leaving asidewhat happened on 9/11,
what was fascinating at the timewas the way that the airline
industry used the cutbacksin 9/11 to really go after
the flight attendants andto almost destroy the job
as a career.
(20:34):
The flight attendants had foughtfor so long, from the 1970s,
to make it into afull time career.
The airlines kind ofreally saw their moment
to try to get rid of that.
And so you had thingslike these start
up airlines, likeSong, which was
Delta's subsidiary, and theseother sort of low budget
airlines.
And what they tried todo was almost reglamorize
(20:56):
the profession.
Again, the smiling flightattendant, the coffee, tea,
or me stuff.
It kind of came backinto the industry
because what they wantedto do in the industry was
to get rid of the olderflight attendants,
because they cost so much.
And so what I'm saying isthere was this huge backdrop
to the book of 9/11itself, the event,
but also the economicfallout from 9/11 as well.
(21:18):
So that was the backdrop toeverything that I was doing.
And maybe that wasone of the reasons
why the flight attendantswanted to talk so much.
CHARLIE BENNETT (21:25):
File this set under HD8039.A432, no dot, U69.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
FRED RASCOE (21:41):
You just heard "Fly Now" by Brian Protheroe.
And before that,"Wristwatch" by MJ Lenderman.
Those are songs about seeing theperson beyond the surface image
and establishingtrust with them.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
CHARLIE BENNETT (22:04):
This is Lost in the Stacks,
and our show today is calledHow to Write a Book About Cabin
Crews, featuring aninterview with Dr. Drew
Whitelegg, the author of WorkingThe Skies, The Fast Paced,
Disorienting World ofthe Flight Attendant.
FRED RASCOE (22:19):
Drew, when you were synthesizing
all of these interviewsand doing your coding
and putting yourconclusions together,
did you also look atprevious research done
in other areas ofcommodification of services?
Like maybe folks thathad written about food
service employeesor things like that.
DREW WHITELEGG (22:40):
There were some people who
had done stuff on things like--
I mean, there wasBarbara Ehrenreich
had written quite abit about cleaners.
It was Nickeled andDimed, wasn't it,
that she wrote thatbook, which I think
was about fast foodworkers as well.
There were other people whoworked in the restaurants
I looked at.
I can't remember the names,though of some of them,
(23:02):
to be honest.
I think teaching as wellI might have looked at.
It was certainly occupationsthat were female dominated
or occupations thatone would associate
with being female dominated.
This was 20 years ago.
It might well have changed.
One thing that Ididn't really touch on
was any kind of gay identityor gay male identity
(23:24):
of the flight attendants.
I felt that was almostanother story, to be honest.
And it would go in a way thatI didn't really want it to go.
I was more interested inthe female side of it,
especially because of howwomen use the job very much
as a way of almost breakboundaries, I think,
(23:45):
and break spatial boundaries.
I mean, I think that was oneof the arguments I ended up
coming out with.
This was a job thatwas quite unique,
really in the way that itappealed to certain kinds
of women, especially inthe '50s and the '60s.
The flight attendant unions inthe '60s were one of the most
(24:05):
militant unions inthe United States.
They were on the front lineof fighting for things like--
through things like TitleVII and fighting for equal
pay and women's rightsand things like that.
CHARLIE BENNETT: In the book, you (24:18):
undefined
said that you found thestructure as the flight
attendants journey.
You sort of matched itup with certain concepts.
Was that always the structureyou were going to go with,
or did you try to figureout a couple different ones?
Was it ever going to be a StudsTerkel, interview excerpts
(24:41):
kind of thing?
DREW WHITELEGG (24:42):
No.
It was always goingto be structured.
I mean, the structuretook some time to emerge.
And I've got to say that Igot very lucky in the way
that the book wasactually ended up
getting taken on by NYU Press.
I'd been sort of touting itaround to various presses,
and as always happens,you get just knocked back
(25:04):
and, no, we'renot interested in,
we're not interested inthis, not interested in this.
A friend of mine in NewYork said, try this person.
And I tried this person.
And they wrote back to meand said, this isn't for me,
but I do know somebodywho I think is
going to be interested in this.
And then, out of the blue, I gotan actual email from an editor
at New York UniversityPress who just said,
(25:25):
my friend passedme this, and I want
to do it, which was an amazingemail to get out of the blue.
And she helped a lot in termsof talking about the structure
and how we would goabout structuring it.
And the more thatwe thought about it,
the more there was this sortof sense of, OK, what we'll do
(25:47):
is have a longintroduction which kind of
sets the scene forthe rest of the book.
And then the rest of thebook will be a journey,
and we can weave allthe stuff into that
as a unfolding, a senseof departure and return,
which also neatlyfitted into the Mariel
idea of looking at families.
(26:08):
Because in the backgroundall the time was this idea,
I do need to stress orhave some element of stress
on the family component.
So the work-lifebalance component,
because that's whatthe Center was about.
But the structure wasn'tthere at the start.
CHARLIE BENNETT (26:24):
But came together in the editing?
DREW WHITELEGG (26:26):
Yes.
It came together in thewriting and the editing.
I mean, after I'dwritten the first draft,
the editor said,yeah, this is good.
Now go and write it again.
Which I tell my students.
CHARLIE BENNETT: I've heard that, that (26:38):
undefined
that's the editors command isjust throw it away and write it
again.
DREW WHITELEGG (26:44):
Well, it's good because nowadays--
I mean, so editingis a lost skill.
I know people who's--
I mean, when I tell themhow hands on the editor
was for this book,they can't believe it.
I think it's rarer and rarer.
FRED RASCOE (26:59):
Have you ever been flying
since you published your bookand somehow identified yourself
to an attendant, or they knewwho you were or something
like that, and they gaveyou an opinion of your book,
or they'd heard of itor they've read it?
DREW WHITELEGG (27:13):
Not on a plane.
I have, though,every now and then,
got the most beautiful emailscompletely out of the blue
from flight attendantswho I've never met,
just saying how much thatthey enjoyed the book
and how much itresonated with them
and they felt like someonehad told their story.
And as you can imagine,that's the kind of email
(27:34):
that you want thatmakes it all worth it.
But no, I've never said anythingto anyone on the flights
anymore.
MARLEE GIVENS: Since you've written (27:45):
undefined
a doctoral thesis and you'vewritten an academic book--
and I think a lotof academics end up
turning their dissertation intoa book, which you did not do.
DREW WHITELEGG (27:57):
Yeah.
MARLEE GIVENS (27:58):
So I'm wondering if you can just comment briefly
on the difference inthose experiences.
DREW WHITELEGG (28:03):
Yeah, sure.
I mean, I wouldn't havepublished my doctoral thesis,
to be honest.
The book was so much better.
It was so much--
I just felt like it wasso much better written.
It had a kind of flair to itthat the doctoral thesis just
didn't reallyhave, to be honest.
(28:25):
And I mean, one of the thingsthat New York NYU Press wanted
me to do was to tryand write in a way that
was not overly academic.
To, yes, use academic concepts,but at the same time, to try
and make it sonon-academics would read it.
(28:48):
Whether that was successfulor not, I don't know.
But it made it moreenjoyable to write the book.
CHARLIE BENNETT (28:55):
So as just a last thought, what was easy
and what was hard aboutwriting this academic book?
DREW WHITELEGG (29:03):
Oof.
What was easy?
What was easy was the--
I think what was easy was theactual research, to be honest.
It was fascinating.
It was somethingthat was enjoyable.
I met a ton of people.
I had a hundred reallyfascinating conversations.
(29:25):
I mean, Mariel had a verysupportive expense account,
so they would allow meto fly to various places
to do research and variousto conferences and things
like that.
What was difficult?
Probably the mostdifficult thing
was again, just gettingthe right structure.
Getting the rightstructure to the book
and getting thebalance right, I think,
(29:46):
between the academicand the non-academic,
if that's a way to describe it.
There'd be times Iwould write stuff
and then I would think, no,this is getting too jargonistic.
It's getting too--they don't really
need to know postmodernacademic theory.
We don't need that in the book.
It's just goingto get in the way.
To be honest, I don't knowthat the Mariel Center at Emory
(30:08):
actually liked it, the book.
CHARLIE BENNETT (30:11):
Did someone tell you that?
DREW WHITELEGG: I got the feeling (30:13):
undefined
that they wanted it tobe more family based,
as opposed to coming atit from profession based.
That was the risk I took,and I thought, you know what?
So be it.
That was just thefeeling I got and
the passive aggressive commentsfrom various people would--
CHARLIE BENNETT (30:31):
Right.
DREW WHITELEGG (30:31):
But I didn't let it bother me.
CHARLIE BENNETT: Well, you know what? (30:33):
undefined
They're gone.
And I just read thebook, so I think--
DREW WHITELEGG (30:36):
Yeah.
CHARLIE BENNETT (30:37):
Yeah, you did all right.
Drew, thank you so muchfor talking to us today.
DREW WHITELEGG (30:40):
Well, thank you, Charlie, and thanks,
Fred, and thanks, Marlee,for your time as well.
It's been fun to revisitthis, I must admit.
CHARLIE BENNETT (30:47):
This is Lost in the Stacks,
and today's show was How toWrite a Book About Cabin Crews.
We spoke with Dr. DrewWhitelegg, sixth grade
social studies teacherat the Globe Academy
here in Atlanta, Georgia.
In his previouslife as an academic,
Dr. Whitelegg wrotethe book Working
The Skies, The Fast-Paced,Disorienting World of the Flight
Attendant, publishedin 2007 by NYU Press.
(31:11):
File this set underPS3562.E55, no dot, R8.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
MARLEE GIVENS (31:34):
That was "Do You Want Me Now?"
by Habibi and before that,"Paprika" by Japanese Breakfast.
Songs about women as thedriving force with flair.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
CHARLIE BENNETT (31:53):
Today's Lost in the Stacks
is called How to Write aBook About Cabin crews,
so I want to openthis up to everybody.
If you had a chance to writea detailed academic text
about a particularprofession, what would it be?
Mine would be electricians,especially the ones
who wired the West.
How about you, Fred?
FRED RASCOE (32:13):
Mine would be very specific and niche.
The occupation isthose who design
face masks for football helmets,tackle football helmets.
When I was a kid, I was alwaysfascinated with the face mask
design.
So I think I want towrite a book about that.
And I'm going to callit La Cage Aux Face.
(32:35):
CODY TURNER (32:39):
I'm not quite as prepared for that answer
as much as Fred was.
I would say whateverthe title is
for the liaison between localgovernment and the public.
I've seen in differentprojects, people
have to really face thebrunt of the public comment
section of explaining, no, no,no, this meeting is about this,
(32:59):
but we'll happily takequestions on that.
I feel like you just have tobecome an expert in the weave.
So I would like to see howdifferent cities approach that.
MARLEE GIVENS (33:09):
So mine is postal workers.
My grandfather workedfor the Postal Service
and I hardly everdo this, but I once
saw a mail carrier like inan elevator at the hospital,
and I was like, hey, mygrandfather used to do that.
He goes, did he like it?
And I just got the sensethat this guy really
(33:31):
loved what he did.
And so I just love to beable to tell that story.
What about you, Alex?
ALEX MCGEE (33:37):
Well, I love that answer.
I would probably say realtors,and by extension, realists
when the NationalRealtor Association said
that Black peoplecould not be realtors
and so they had to come up withtheir own realist profession.
CHARLIE BENNETT (33:53):
Oh, wow.
ALEX MCGEE (33:54):
Yeah.
So I think there'sa lot of fodder
in there for considerationto just the ebbs
and flows of real estate, so.
CHARLIE BENNETT (34:03):
I appreciate you making it real serious
right there at the end, Alex.
OK.
Roll the credits.
[MUSIC PLAYING]
Lost in the Stacksis a collaboration
between WREK Atlanta andthe Georgia Tech Library.
Written and produced byAlex McGee, Charlie Bennett,
Fred Rascoe, and Marlee Givens.
MARLEE GIVENS (34:23):
Legal counsel and a first class upgrade
were provided by the BurrusIntellectual Property Law Group
in Atlanta, Georgia.
CHARLIE BENNETT (34:30):
Special thanks to Drew for being on the show,
to Lila Bennett for being thereason this episode happened,
to all the cabin crews in theair and on the ground right now.
And thanks, as always, toeach and every one of you
for listening.
MARLEE GIVENS (34:44):
Our webpage is library.gatech.e
du/lostinthestacks,where you'll find
our most recent episode, alink to our podcast feed,
and a web form.
If you want to getin touch with us.
ALEX MCGEE (34:55):
On next week's show, Charlie and Marlee
are going to have a chat abouta pair of topics that have
been on their mind for a while.
Slow librarianship andachievement culture.
CODY TURNER (35:05):
It is time for our last song today,
and let's close with atrack about the mechanics
and logistics of flight, guidedby a strong female presence.
This is "Regina" by TheSugarcubes right here on Lost
in the Stacks.
Have a great weekend, everybody.
And if you're flyingthe friendly skies,
(35:26):
thank a flight attendant.
[THE SUGARCUBES, "REGINA"]
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