Tyson places her subjects among the large class of service workers whose job it is to deliver corporately scripted experiences to customers in a manner which the customers and the workers themselves can experience as authentically and pleasantly “personal.” Museum interpreters, like all teachers, must get their facts straight, but facts are often less important than critical analysis, and, by definition, the outcome of critical analysis cannot be controlled in advance, nor is there any guarantee that its results will be pleasing to students. in brief, a critical pedagogy can lead to unpleasant personal encounters, which is not good business for sites such as Historic Fort snelling, which are competing with the likes of Disney (or, more proximately in this case, the Mall of America) for the public’s leisure-time dollars. First-person interpreters face yet another complicating factor: when they meet the public, they are “in character,” and their professional ethics require them to be true to their character. Thus, as Tyson vividly shows, frontline workers at livinghistory museums find themselves torn between multiple selves: the self in search of meaningful employment, the self dedicated to excellent customer service, and the self giving voice to another self, that of a hisThis straightforward, analytically clear, and quietly passionate monograph focuses on frontline historical interpreters at Historic Fort snelling in st. Paul, Minnesota. After an initial season working there in 1999, Tyson returned for six more seasons as both an interpreter and researcher. Drawing on her own work experiences, observations of her co-workers and the site, archival documents, and thirty-two extended interviews, she has written a study of a history museum that focuses on the “emotional labor” of its frontline employees. The macro-sociological context of Tyson’s study is the neoliberal restructuring of the global economy, which began in the 1970s, at the same time that outdoor history museums in North America were being re-animated by living-history interpretation—itself underpinned by the “new social history” emanating from the academy. Paradoxically, the move to a left-wing, critical social history accompanied the creation of a seasonal workforce of badly paid, institutionally downtrodden costumed interpreters. Tyson focuses on the core dilemma of these people’s working lives: their attachment to jobs that they find meaningful (in a world where meaningful jobs can be hard to find) yet also economically insecure and professionally marginal.
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Apr 16, 2024
Michael Walsh 
Open Access