http://soc.sagepub.com Sociology RSS feed -- current issue October 2009 Sociology 0038-0385 http://soc.sagepub.com:80/icons/banner/title.gif http://soc.sagepub.com http://soc.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/43/5/811?rss=1 This 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 complexity.

]]> Fri, 23 Oct 2009 04:06:42 PDT info:doi/10.1177/0038038509341307 British Sociological Association 5 43 828 2009-10-01 811 Articles http://soc.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/43/5/829?rss=1 The paper offers reflections on the author’s working experience as an industrial sociologist from the 1960s. It seeks to contextualise this in more general considerations of the part played by industrial sociology in the development of sociology in the UK. This is evidenced in thematic concerns, the importance of historical perspectives as well as the use of case studies and the development of ethnographic work. It discusses the role which industrial sociology has played in bringing issues of power, authority, control and class into sharp focus.

]]> Fri, 23 Oct 2009 04:06:42 PDT info:doi/10.1177/0038038509340748 British Sociological Association 5 43 845 2009-10-01 829 Articles http://soc.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/43/5/846?rss=1 This article responds to the Special Issue call for sociologists’ individual perspectives on developments in the sociology of work. In this article I reflect on my own approach to studying work, the intellectual resources I draw on, and how I see the sociology of work developing at the present time. I have located my own very modest contribution within the traditions of gender studies, highlighting thereby the longstanding links between the sociology of work and other substantive fields of inquiry. I take a relatively personal approach. This is because, while there is nothing notable about my personal life, like many feminists I see my ideas as having evolved in the interstices of the professional and personal and the values and divisions of labour that underpin them.

]]> Fri, 23 Oct 2009 04:06:42 PDT info:doi/10.1177/0038038509340741 British Sociological Association 5 43 860 2009-10-01 846 Articles http://soc.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/43/5/861?rss=1 Alongside many significant changes, there are considerable continuities between the work activities and work institutions of the 21st century and those of earlier periods studied by the sociology of work. These continuities are easily neglected if we get too taken up with what is allegedly ‘new’ in the world which we study or if we constantly seek new theoretical ‘directions’ or ‘turns’. A successful future sociology of work needs to achieve a balance between attention to change and continuity, both in what it looks at empirically and in the devices it uses in its analyses and theorizing as well as in its communication beyond the academy. The idea of the sociological imagination, which brings together American Pragmatist thinking with the European ideas of Weber and Marx can help considerably in reinvigorating the sociology of work.

]]> Fri, 23 Oct 2009 04:06:42 PDT info:doi/10.1177/0038038509340726 British Sociological Association 5 43 877 2009-10-01 861 Articles http://soc.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/43/5/878?rss=1 The division of labour, an enduring concept of the sociology of work, has yet to receive fundamental critical re-evaluation. The need for this is exposed especially by developments in global work and employment, and the ensuing complexity and variety of contemporary connections and divisions of labour. The aim of this article is to initiate a process of conceptual renewal. Having reviewed classical and 20th-century formulations of the concept, I propose a broader and multidimensional framework. Here, overall socio-economic formations of labour are viewed as constituted through the interplay between three forms of integration and differentiation: the technical division and allocation of labour, interdependencies between work across socio-economic modes, and across overall instituted processes of labour in production, distribution, exchange and consumption. The framework may be used to explore connections and divisions of labour at different scales and levels of generality.

]]> Fri, 23 Oct 2009 04:06:42 PDT info:doi/10.1177/0038038509340727 British Sociological Association 5 43 895 2009-10-01 878 Articles http://soc.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/43/5/896?rss=1 The sociology of class and the sociology of work have, historically, occupied two sides of the same coin, sharing foundational studies such as the Affluent Worker series and Braverman’s vivisection of the labour process. Recently, however, the par tnership has been questioned. Though the seeds of the split were sown by Erik Wright and John Goldthorpe, the overdue de-hegemonizing of Marx and Weber in research on class with the growing influence of Pierre Bourdieu and the broader ‘cultural turn’ in sociology has weakened the bond and forged a new alliance between class and the sociology of culture. This is, by all means, a positive development, but the connection between processes in the sphere of work and class has become less clear. This ar ticle therefore seeks to explore the new theoretical nexus between class and work, demonstrating that a Bourdieusian approach fruitfully reverses the connection put in place by Goldthorpe and Wright.

]]> Fri, 23 Oct 2009 04:06:42 PDT info:doi/10.1177/0038038509340718 British Sociological Association 5 43 912 2009-10-01 896 Articles http://soc.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/43/5/913?rss=1 This article opens by suggesting that the decline in the sociology of work in the UK has been overstated; research continues, but in locations such as business schools. The continued vitality of the field corresponds with material changes in an increasingly globalized capitalism, with more workers in the world, higher employment participation rates of women, transnational shifts in manufacturing, global expansion of services and temporal and spatial stretching of work with advanced information communication technologies. The article demonstrates that Labour Process Theory (LPT) has been a crucial resource in the sociology of work, especially in the UK; core propositions of LPT provide it with resources for resilience (to counter claims of rival perspectives) and innovation (to expand the scope and explanator y power of the sociology of work). The ar ticle argues that the concept of the labour power has been critical to underpinning the sustained influence of labour process analysis.

]]> Fri, 23 Oct 2009 04:06:42 PDT info:doi/10.1177/0038038509340728 British Sociological Association 5 43 930 2009-10-01 913 Articles http://soc.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/43/5/931?rss=1 Labour process analysis (LPA) is a well-established approach to the sociological study of work which attends to the instabilities of capitalism and, more specifically, to the volatile and contested nature of social relations at work. However, an unreflexive ‘neo-orthodoxy’ has emerged in recent years that is constrained by a series of dualistic and (critical) realist assumptions which inhibit the development of this distinctive sociology of work. This article contends that the potential of LPA can best be fulfilled through a renewal of critical reflection upon the foundational assumptions of LPA that can open up an acknowledgement and appreciation of the embroilment of subjectivity in the reproduction and transformation of production relations. This development is consistent with the central analytical importance ascribed to the ‘indeterminacy of labour’ in LPA but invites the adoption of a negative ontology in order to advance a less narrow conception of its meaning and significance. Studies of the new media and creative industries are engaged to indicate how a revitalized labour process analysis might embrace this ontology as a way of exploring and explaining the radical contingency of organization in contemporary social relations.

]]> Fri, 23 Oct 2009 04:06:42 PDT info:doi/10.1177/0038038509340742 British Sociological Association 5 43 951 2009-10-01 931 Articles http://soc.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/43/5/952?rss=1 This article charts the historical and contemporary absences in the sociology of service work. Although studies of service work have now become the empirical mainstream in the sociology of work, there have been few attempts to conceptualize broad patterns of worker—customer relations in ser vice work. This neglect is to be regretted because whether the customer is an alienating figure for service workers constitutes a key unasked question in contemporary sociology of work. The article highlights three factors that are likely to have a key influence on workers’ sense of alienation vis-a-vis the customer. It highlights divergent literature in each of these areas and hence ends with a call for research on this topic.

]]> Fri, 23 Oct 2009 04:06:42 PDT info:doi/10.1177/0038038509340725 British Sociological Association 5 43 967 2009-10-01 952 Articles http://soc.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/43/5/968?rss=1 Interactive service occupations, requiring face-to-face contact, are rapidly growing in the US as they are typically not susceptible to larger trends of off-shoring and computerization. Yet conventional paradigms of understanding the nature of that work, and in particular the skill demands, are often ill equipped to deal with the ‘interactive’ aspects of these gendered and racialized occupations. As a result, discussions of lower-end service occupations have typically grouped together a variety of jobs that require little or no higher education, without examining the actual skill content and job requirements of these occupations. In this article we delve more deeply into the rapidly growing non-professional service occupations in the US and the level of skills these jobs require, with the intention of creating a framework that will reorient future sociological research in this area.

]]> Fri, 23 Oct 2009 04:06:42 PDT info:doi/10.1177/0038038509340735 British Sociological Association 5 43 989 2009-10-01 968 Articles http://soc.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/43/5/990?rss=1 This article explores some of the similarities and differences between two approaches to the study of work that use moving images. The first approach, most notably practised by Frank and Lillian Gilbreth, ‘dissected’ the movement of workers’ bodies in the pursuit of efficiency. The second approach has emerged in the last few decades from ethnomethodology and conversation analysis. The ar ticle notes how shared technologies for data collection and shared interests in work practice belie more fundamental differences in analytic orientation. The article uses this comparison to highlight the potential contributions that the more recent corpus of studies can make to our understanding of work; an understanding that prioritizes the methodic practices in and through which members of society accomplish, experience and constitute work and organization.

]]> Fri, 23 Oct 2009 04:06:42 PDT info:doi/10.1177/0038038509340723 British Sociological Association 5 43 996 2009-10-01 990 Articles http://soc.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/43/5/997?rss=1 Fri, 23 Oct 2009 04:06:42 PDT info:doi/10.1177/0038038509340740 British Sociological Association 5 43 1006 2009-10-01 997 Articles http://soc.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/43/5/1007?rss=1 Fri, 23 Oct 2009 04:06:42 PDT info:doi/10.1177/0038038509340749 British Sociological Association 5 43 1013 2009-10-01 1007 Articles http://soc.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/43/5/1014?rss=1 Fri, 23 Oct 2009 04:06:42 PDT info:doi/10.1177/0038038509340750 British Sociological Association 5 43 1018 2009-10-01 1014 Articles http://soc.sagepub.com/cgi/reprint/43/5/1019?rss=1 Fri, 23 Oct 2009 04:06:42 PDT info:doi/10.1177/0038038509341690 British Sociological Association 5 43 1023 2009-10-01 1019 Articles