Social Theorists and Work

Early pioneers in the discipline of sociology, including Max Weber, Karl Marx, and Émile Durkheim, all recognized the centrality of work in modern society. As the first social theorists to write critically about the emergence of capitalism and the transition from a preindustrial to an industrial society, they argued that industrial organizations were instrumental in driving these waves of social change. Thus, the study of work and economy has been interwoven with the origins of the discipline in a way that few topics are. All three social theorists were concerned about the ways in which industrialization reconfigured economic institutions and relationships. All three also believed that the troubling dynamics of markets and industrial organizations spread far beyond the confines of the factory walls or of bureaucracies.

For Marx, capitalism, as a distinct mode of production, was built on the exploitation and alienation of the vast majority of workers who labored for the few who owned the means of production, and who, in so doing, were alienated from their products, from their fellow humans, and from their very human essence. For Marx, this alienation was pervasive throughout capitalist society, extending into state, polity, and culture, to be remedied only with a revolutionary overthrow of this distinct economic system. For Weber, the rationalization processes characteristic of bureaucratization could enable industry leaders to create greater efficiencies, yet at the same time, he feared that these processes would increasingly restrict the degree to which people could work autonomously and democratically. Weber traced the dynamics of bureaucratic organizations from factories to the offices of trade unionists and politicians, predicting that all spheres of modern society would be reshaped and ultimately trapped by rationalization processes. The shape of industrial organizations would leave its imprint on all other social institutions. Durkheim posited that the division of labor in an increasingly complex and specialized society would provide no less than the foundation of moral order. Durkheim was optimistic that capitalism and industrial organization had the capacity to create new efficiencies, interdependencies, and solidarity between people, but worried that, if improperly regulated, it also had the capacity to heighten anomie, a form of alienation and breakdown of societal norms.

Scope of Sociology of Work

As we have moved into the 21st century, Marx, Weber, and Durkheim's belief that work is core to the human experience continues to be relevant.Sociology of Work: An Encyclopedia takes up this and many other issues. The goal of the volumes is to comprehensively identify the numerous factors, at both the macro- and microlevels, that create, sustain, and characterize work organizations and social relations. It uses a wide-angle lens to examine how state and federal institutions regulate treatment of workers while zooming in on topics like viewing gossip as an interactional force that binds workers together every day in their jobs. Its scope is as broad as occupational segregation (the systematic and widespread division of distinct groups of workers into different jobs) and as finegrained as the social significance of office cubicles. It broadly theorizes about workplace culture and explores distinct empirical strands of culture, such as the design of fun workplaces, the premium on face time, and the expression of identity through displaying family photos in one's workspace.

By presenting causal explanations for and identifying effects of structural arrangements and practices, readers can better understand important policy issues including, “How has immigration changed employment practices?”; “With discrimination having been outlawed by federal legislation, why do we continue to see evidence of workplace-generated race, ethnic, and gender inequality?”; “What would have to change to encourage more workers to take advantage of family supportive policies?”; and “How has industrial and economic restructuring affected family life in the United States and other advanced industrial economies?”

It is both descriptive (providing data on important outcomes such as job segregation, the wage [Page xxxi]gaps between women and men and between whites and people of color, unemployment, changing household demographics, and wage inequality more generally) and analytical (presenting theories and explanations for the processes that create those outcomes, such as the job queueing theory; feminization of work; homosocial reproduction; statistical, institutional, and direct discrimination; and organizational mechanisms of inequality). In other words, these volumes cover the gamut of institutions, practices, processes, cultures, and policies that explain trends in work, labor force participation, and employment relationships.

Thematic contributions: Aside from this agenda, this encyclopedia also makes six thematic contributions to the sociology of work. First, many of these entries incorporate critical gender and race analyses. Understanding race, ethnic, and gender stratification (and stratification based on sexual orientation) is one of the most pressing agendas we face in a diverse, multicultural society. Work plays a singular role in creating social inequality in contemporary society—our access to certain types of jobs, benefits, and protections. Many of the entries in this volume explain how this has happened over time and shed light on structural arrangements, cognitive biases, organizational mechanisms, and organizational cultures that systematically serve to include some subpopulations in “better” jobs and keep other subpopulations out of them.

Historical perspective: A great many of these entries take a comparative historical perspective. Comparing the historical origins and cross-national manifestations of work—its institutions, culture, practices, social relations—is critical. It is a common misconception that the arrangements of contemporary capitalist, industrial societies represent the way things have always been done and always will be done; that there is something natural and inherently desirable to these institutional forms. To the contrary: Institutions and practices have shifted and have been contested over time. Understanding the past enables us to see how political struggles and employers’ and political leaders’ strategies have given rise to current arrangements, and thus to imagine and theorize about what can be constructed differently in the future. Understanding cross-national variation similarly enables us to see what is exceptional about our own practices and why, and whether we can improve those practices and institutions.

Households and families: This encyclopedia is also predicated on the understanding that the world of paid work in labor markets is crucially intertwined with the world of unpaid (and sometimes paid) work in households. A sociological understanding of labor market activities is impossible without examining how it is sustained by activities in households and how activities in households are engendered by adults’ paid labor market activities. Families make it possible for adults and youth to participate in the labor force through the provision of food, shelter, and emotional sustenance. Family members perform unpaid labor (health care of family members, volunteer work in children's schools) in order to compensate for diminishing household incomes and community revenue. Parents often decide that both adults will work for pay in the labor market to compensate for the declining wages of the main wage earner. Family members engage in various economic activities in their homes to supplement wages earned in the workplace. At the same time, labor force participants increasingly bring their work home with them (work spillover), made possible in particular by new technologies that connect workers to their workplaces. Today, we see a great deal of “boundary blurring” between the two realms and creative strategizing to enable families to weave together their paid work/home work activities. Many of these arrangements and processes are highly gendered: patterns of labor force participation (rates of participation, the type of schedules worked) and the division of labor in the home (housework, child care, emotion work) differ for men and women.

New developments: A number of entries address cutting-edge developments in the world of work. They include changes in the way people are hired (e.g., a result of the growth of third-party labor market intermediaries, such as temporary help agencies and headhunters) and how they are dismissed (restructured, downsized, disposed of); new types of careers (external, boundaryless), and occupations (cool jobs, lifestyle work, Wall Street jobs); changes in the normative life course (retirement, heightened job insecurity and labor [Page xxxii]market preparation), labor market practices (the rise of contingent, nonstandard workforces), and organizational templates (“McDonaldization,” networked organizations, the open source movement); transformations in the way goods and services are distributed around the world (the logistics revolution, supply chains); new technologies (such as the Internet and various social media) that change our work and where and how we carry it out; and how the widespread use of nonstandard scheduling (night shifts, weekends, flexible scheduling) is transforming gender relations within the home. Some entries highlight new demands placed on workers and citizens and new ways of possibly exploiting them, as corporations unceasingly search for new sources of revenue (the pressure to remain employable, the way Facebook profits from our labor, the rise of the prosumer, internships, consumption, volunteer work).

Social movements: Another contribution explores people striving to survive, to make do, to fight against, and to exploit structural changes in the economy that systematically disadvantages them. Entries on the moral underground, consumer boycotts, human rights campaigns, corporate social responsibility, social movement unionism, community-based worker centers, resistance, and new union organizing strategies all suggest that individuals and groups are cognizant of the power of collective responses to corporate power. These entries bring actors and their agency to the center of the sociological understanding of work.

Micro- and macrolevel structures: Finally, work institutions and the economy comprise macro-level structural arrangements and microlevel behaviors, interactions, and values. No sociological perspective on any topic is complete without a broad and deep appreciation for both, mutually constitutive levels. This reference provides considerable insight to each. Readers will learn about the origins of the large multidivisional firm and of labor markets, the emergence of new production systems, and the growth of the global economy. At the same time, readers will learn how job holders act and interact on the ground, how they construct and manage their identities (based on gender, class, and race; “corporate closet” “doing gender”; and “impression management”), their willingness or resistance in following the orders of bosses and employers, all of which sustain these institutions and reshape them.

Conclusion The sociology of work is a vibrant field of scholarship. The implications of work and its social and material organization reach far beyond the walls of the factory floor, the office, the fast food restaurant, or corporate headquarters. As a field of inquiry, it encompasses a wide and deep range of phenomena: from unrelenting globalization processes that change industries and people's lives with breathtaking speed to direct sales organizations in which economic profit is built on one small interaction at a time; from the contours of the 24/7 economy to human trafficking and slavery; from the emergence of post-Fordism to distinct consumption practices; and from resisting degradation to having fun on the job. I hope this volume will be helpful to everyone striving to understand these vastly diverse and complex dimensions of the contemporary world of work.

I would like to thank Sue Moskowitz and Geoff Golson for their support, and Sue, especially, for her expert and patient guidance through the extremely detailed and demanding process of assembling volumes like these. I now understand the occupation of “author manager”—how fortunate that my introduction to it was through Sue. Finally, I am very indebted to everyone who agreed to contribute to this volume. This is an exciting lineup of topics and contributors, many of whom are leading experts in the sociology of work. Readers will enjoy the unique impression these scholars have stamped on their areas of expertise. Observing the quiet and somewhat invisible labor of these 250-plus encyclopedia contributors, I've gained a new respect for colleagues’ generosity and for their willingness to share their knowledge and time for the benefit of producing a high-quality resource for readers trying to learn about our field.