Tendencies in the sociology of work to play down the plurality of interests at work have been powerfully criticised by Castillo (1999a). He points to the Massachusetts Institute of Technology as a key purveyor (‘MIT Productions Inc.’) of analyses which, in effect, betray the critical legacy of sociology. He sees too many sociologists of work ‘penning pastoral odes to just-in-time production, to composing night serenades to work commitment, almost Wagnerian symphonies to flexibility, or Mozartian divertimentito lean production and “high technology work districts”’. There may be a degree of exaggeration in this attack. There is also perhaps a degree of over-excitement in the polemic (leading to the mistaken idea that Wagner composed symphonies) but, in Mills’ (1970) terms, the charge here is that the ‘private’ problems of members of society generally are not being related to broader ‘public issues’ in much of the contemporary social scientific study of work institutions and practices. In effect, the issues are less ‘public’ or democratic ones than issues for corporate, and especially American, capitalist interests (cf. Hutton 2002).