The origins, occupational background and attitudes, migration patterns, adjustment to urban life and family relations of the workers studied have been discussed in considerable detail. In concluding, I shall assess the place of factory workers in the wider society, the factors promoting and inhibiting modernity among them and the implications of this study for the ‘industrial man’ hypothesis.

FACTORY WORKERS AND THEIR SOCIETY

Factory workers constitute only a small proportion of the Ghanaian population. It has been shown that they are by no means homogeneous in their background, attitudes, or behaviour. They range from illiterate labourers of northern origin who are only very partially committed to urban employment and spend all of their spare time with townsmen or tribesmen to men who completed middle school in Accra, are fully committed to spending the rest of their lives working in the city and whose friends are chosen for compatibility rather than by tribe, religion, or occupation. Young school leavers are attracted to factory work, but many others who are neither young nor educated find work in factories. In fact, if clerical workers are included (as they have been in this study), there are factory workers who are typical of almost all sectors of the urban population except the elite.

Factory workers may be differentiated from the general public in some ways because of the nature of their jobs.