1,721,038 research outputs found
In search of the sociology of work: past, present and future
No full textThis paper traces relations between the study of work and the evolution of British sociology as an academic discipline. This reveals broad trajectories of marginalization, as the study of work becomes less central to Sociology as a discipline; increasing fragmentation of divergent approaches to the study of work; and — as a consequence of both — a narrowing of the sociological vision for the study of work. Our paper calls for constructive dialogue across different approaches to the study of work and a re-invigoration of sociological debate about work and — on this basis — for in-depth interdisciplinary engagement enabling us to build new approaches that will allow us to study work in all its diversity and complexit
Routledge International Handbook of Working-Class Studies
No full textThe Routledge International Handbook of Working-Class Studies is a timely volume that provides an overview of this interdisciplinary field that emerged in the 1990s in the context of deindustrialization, the rise of the service economy, and economic and cultural globalization. The Handbook brings together scholars, teachers, activists, and organizers from across three continents to focus on the study of working-class peoples, cultures, and politics in all their complexity and diversity
Routledge International Handbook of Deindustrialization Studies
No full textThe Routledge International Handbook of Deindustrialization Studies is a timely volume that provides an overview of this interdisciplinary field that emerged in response to the widespread decline of manufacturing and heavy industry from the 1980s onward. Edited by prominent figures in the field, the volume brings together many of the leading scholars from a range of countries across the globe to offer a multifaceted overview of deindustrialization and its impact.
Deindustrialization has been cited as one of the factors behind the rise of the far right, and to a lesser extent the far left, across Europe, the rise and success of Trumpism in the US, and the Brexit vote as well as the more recent and sudden erosion of UK Labour’s ‘Red Wall’ of the North of England. This collection brings together scholars of deindustrialization around the globe and from a wide variety of academic disciplines including history, sociology, politics, geography, economics, anthropology, literature, arts practice, photography, heritage, and cultural studies. In doing so, the volume explores the roots of deindustrialization across the world, highlights the key themes and issues in the field, illustrates the intersectional and interdisciplinary character of the field, and shows how deindustrialization lies at the heart of many of the key political, cultural, social, and economic issues of our time.
Written in a clear and accessible style, the Handbook is a comprehensive interdisciplinary volume for this young but maturing field. The volume is a valuable resource for students, teachers, and researchers interested in industrial decline, closure, and the multifaceted impacts they cause. It speaks to readers across the arts, humanities, and social and political sciences concerned with deindustrialization broadly defined
New Divisions of Labour? Comparative thoughts on the current recession
No full textThis article argues that it is useful to compare the current recession with that which occurred three decades ago. Drawing on research undertaken at that time by Ray Pahl, it is suggested that four questions are once again revealing in the study of the current economic downturn: \'How have we come to be where we are currently?\', \'Who gets what?\', \'How do we know what we claim to know?\', and \'What sorts of lessons can be drawn to inform thinking about the future?\' The usefulness of asking these questions is discussed, even though the answers must await further research
Work Identity at the End of the Line? Privatisation and Culture Change in the Uk Railway industry
No full textWhat do we mean by workplace culture? Is culture change in an organization possible, and what happens when managers and politicians try? Work Identity at the End of the Line? is the story of workplace culture and identity in the railway industry before, during and after privatisation in the mid-1990s. Drawing on original interviews as well as autobiographies from those who worked for British Rail, the author analyses the experience of the privatisation process. By placing those events in their historical context of previous private and state ownership, this book provides a critical and highly readable understanding of what happened to the railway industry and its workforce during the 1990s. It provides a powerful critique of the attack on the wider public sector and the culture of its workforce since the 1980s. The book will be of interest to sociologists, cultural and economic historians, policy makers, as well as those studying culture change in business and management
Beyond the Dockyards: Changing Narratives of Industrial Occupational Cultures in Medway
Full text linkIn 1984, Chatham Dockyard in the Medway Towns closed, displacing over 7,000 local workers. Industrial workplaces like the Dockyard, were sheltered spaces for generations of the working-class where they could perform their inherited classed and gendered identities within a sphere that legitimised and encouraged them. When industries closed, the opportunities to develop a craft-based identity lessened. Working class communities, identities and cultures are systematically 'devalued' in normative discourses (Skeggs, 1997; 2004; 2011 Sayer, 2005; Lawler, 2005). In response, working-class people will revalue the spheres that exclude them and forge their own cultural spaces where their identities and norms are 'valued'. One of the many places where this process occurs is in the workplace. In this thesis I explore how deindustrialisation dismantled workplaces like Chatham Dockyard which were protective spaces for working-class 'value' to be reproduced. Based upon forty six oral history interviews with former workers of Chatham Dockyard and their counterparts undertaking industrial apprenticeships post-closure, this thesis examines the shift in discourses of 'value' altered by deindustrialisation. Predominantly, how these discourses are created, shared and changed in apprenticeships. I show how industrial learning once taught workers the boundaries of respectability in the workplace, and how inherited classed and gendered identities were nurtured as
apprentices were moulded into working-class, male craft workers. Today, young people undertaking industrial apprenticeships face a more liminal landscape to their learning marked by precariarity and the devaluation of the cultural identity once legitimised through now lost forms of work. I argue that the transformation of apprenticeships in these circumstances enables us to see the manifestation of the 'half-life' of deindustrialisation; the connecting thread and gradual changes that mark the transformation of the industrial past into deindustrial present (Linkon, 2018). By mapping the industrial apprenticeship across pre- and post-closure, I show that industrial cultures still exist and recreate value. Therefore, workplace socialisation and apprenticeships remain important battlegrounds for what becomes 'valued' through working identities
Session 3.4: Author Meets Readers: Betsy Leondar-Wright\u27s Missing Class: How Seeing Class Cultures Can Strengthen Social Movement Groups
No full textHow Class Works Conference -- 2014 | http://www.stonybrook.edu/workingclass
'Swinging the Lamp': The Watch Manager's Career, Role and Occupational Identity within the Modernising Agenda of the UK Fire and Rescue Service
Full text linkThis research focuses on the career and work identity of watch managers in the Fire and Rescue Service (FRS). Their role is to manage firefighters who are infamously known in political circles to possess grass root cultures that remain resistant to forms of change and modernisation. Watch managers are not only tasked with leading emergency teams at incidents but they are also at the receiving end of a relentless stream of political pressure to achieve change. This research draws on qualitative data collected within two fire services consisting of thirty-nine face-to-face interviews, four focus groups and field observations, which in combination highlight various ways the watch manager becomes an important construct in relation to the momentum of organisational change.
Previous FRS research has explored the creation and enactment of masculinities in the watch and 'how' and 'why' the watch sustains highly masculinised images (Salaman 1986, Baigent 2001, Ward and Winstanley 2006). Despite Woodfield (2016) and Perrott's (2016) recent contributions focusing on women inhabiting FRS managerial and leadership roles, there has been limited emphasis in broader FRS research on how managerial work identities develop against watch cultures resistant to change, or in relation to male dominated 'informal' hierarchies in the watch. In order to manage their team successfully, watch managers show themselves to possess differing forms of managerial masculinities, and in so doing, draw on various combinations of charismatic, traditional and rational-legal authority. These phenomena highlight new understandings of the invisible and hidden processes by which watch managers attend to power tensions between them, the watch, and senior management. My findings suggest these power dynamics impact on the shaping of the watch manager's own sense of work identity and in reverse, the ways these tensions are handled also influence the way they are socially constructed as managers by firefighters and senior managers. Particularly revealing are the ways transformations of work identity develop as watch managers move from new to time-served firefighter, then upward to the watch manager role, and how differing identity-enabling resources are drawn from to manage and keep an equilibrium between firefighters and the watch they manage
The modernization of the postal service: Identity, public service, and the meaning of work
Full text linkThis thesis attempts to understand the occupational culture and identity of postal workers between 1970 to 2000, investigating the importance of the ethic of public service. The study explores the importance of the experience of the Second World War in establishing a culture within the postal service, whereby a high value was placed on work as a service for the good of the public, and the way in which postal workers came to identify with this ethic. It examines how processes of modernization, that began with the removal of the postal service from the civil service in 1969 and accelerated with the election of the Conservative government in 1979 and the subsequent commercialization and marketization, led to a weakening of this service ethic, and erosion of the working culture and means of occupational identity of postal workers. However, this was not just a story of transformation, there were important continuities. The research is a case study of postal workers who were employed in the postal service in the Cannock Chase area of Staffordshire during this time, utilising an oral history method
From a "job for life" to a gig economy: An exploration of food delivery couriers in the UK
Full text linkThis thesis examines the construction of gig couriership in the UK and the implications it has for the future of work. Embedded in the sociology of work, the research challenges the novelty of the gig economy by examining familiar features such as the (mis)classification of employment status or the desire for ‘flexible’ work. However, the thesis also posits that the disruption caused by the gig economy is indicative of paradigmatic shift in the organisation of work and society. At the beginning of this project, the gig economy was fringe and still emerging, yet today, the gig economy is the symbol of an on-demand world and it is anticipated that the majority of people will be involved in the gig economy by the end of the 2020’s. We are living in a transformative time in the world of work, and even though the consequences of the gig economy are yet to be fully realised, it is difficult to overstate how important the gig economy is for work and economic life. Conducted during the 2020 coronavirus pandemic, the study uses semi-structured interviews with gig couriers in the food delivery sector from across England. Contributions of this thesis include a discussion on the methodological obstacles to studying 21st century work, a novel typology that characterises gig courier work, a discussion on new ways to conceptualise organisational socialisation, waiting and the impact of new capitalism on social and economic life
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