The Lives of Campus Custodians: Insights Into Corporatization and Civic Disengagement in the Academy by Peter Magolda (review)

In The Lives of Campus Custodians: Insights Into Corporatization and Civic Disengagement in the Academy, Peter Magolda presents the stories of custodians on two college campuses in order to shed light on campus custodians, frequently marginalized collegiate subculture, and to present an alternative way for readers to think both about the corporatization of higher education and knowledge production.

The book is organized into four parts. Part 1 addresses the study, the research sites, and the role of the researcher. Part 2, “The Custodial Life: Family and Fear” discusses what leads custodians to become custodians in the first place, the tensions between custodians and their supervisors, the fears that custodians experience about job security, and the relationships among custodians at both institutions. Part 3, “Corporate Managerialism and Civic Disengagement” addresses the structures that have produced the contexts in which custodians work. Finally, Part 4, “Education and Possibilities,” discusses the ways in which “…custodians thrive – to not simply survive in the corporate managerial environments in which they work but find ways to civically engage in campus-wide discourses that facilitate teaching and learning” (p. 174). The book concludes with an epilogue, which provides updates on custodians from each of the research sites, a rich description of the methodologies, and a confessional tale (Van Maanen, 2011) about negotiating the complexities of doing ethnographic research.

The Lives of Campus Custodians is the result of nearly three years spent conducting ethnographic research at two universities. Harrison University is a residential, Midwestern institution, whose focus on lean operations and deficit-reduction has left custodians feeling powerless and “lacking trust and confidence” (p. 21) in the university. Compton University is a private Midwestern institution, whose custodial services have gone from “an independent ‘ma-and-pa’-like business to a campus corporate-like department” (p. 25). Magolda conducted fieldwork at the two research sites; fieldwork included cleaning alongside the custodians he studied. Data also comes from interviews with approximately seventy individuals over the course of two years, and an exploration of relevant documents, including employee policy manuals. His target audiences are custodians and higher education scholars, and he successfully manages to write to both audiences.

As an ethnographer, Magolda incorporates the traditional data collection methods–participant observation, interviews, and document analysis. However, it is through his participant observation that he invites readers to get to know the custodians with whom he interacts. Such an approach allows readers to get to know the individuals portrayed, but more importantly, it allows a frequently silenced subculture the opportunity to share their voices. Magolda himself describes his approach to participant observation as having moved from passive to active participation. This is a starkly different approach than the one used by earlier ethnographers, in which good participant observation consisted of observing “natives” in their natural habitat, but without involving oneself in their daily lives. Magolda says that he chose this approach for practical reasons: helping custodians complete their assigned tasks meant they had time to talk to him. However, what he gained by using this approach was rapport with the custodians and a rare opportunity to take the perspective of “the other.”

Magolda is both a gifted ethnographer and storyteller, and he is at his best when telling custodians’ stories using their own words, such as the following quote from Samuel, a custodian at Harrison University: “I am not on their level. I am kind of way down low at the bottom, below the secretaries. That’s where I am. I do the most menial tasks” (p. 68). Magolda also interprets his interactions with participants through the use of thick description, a hallmark of the ethnographic writing tradition:

I struggle to make myself comfortable in this tiny utility closet that Chip has converted to his man cave/office. The mostly 1970s-ish desks, chairs, and file cabinets (that I suspect he salvaged from the building during previous renovations) along with a mini refrigerator...