Work and Politics
The Division of Labour in Industry
Published on 27. April 1984
Book
Paperback/Softback
320 pages
978-0-521-31909-6 (ISBN)
Description
Work and Politics develops a historical and comparative sociology of workplace relations in industrial capitalist societies. Professor Sabel argues that the system of mass production using specialized machines and mostly unskilled workers was the result of the distribution of power and wealth in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Great Britain and the United States, not of an inexorable logic of technological advance. Once in place, this system created the need for workers with systematically different ideas about the acquisition of skill and the desirability of long-term employment. Professor Sabel shows how capitalists have played on naturally existing division in the workforce in order to match workers with diverse ambitions to jobs in different parts of the labor market. But he also demonstrates the limits, different from work group to work group, of these forms of collaboration.
Reviews / Votes
'Work and Politics is an imaginative and suggestive look at contemporary Western European and U.S. industrialism, with occasional historical digressions ... Sabel argues that different types of workers approach employment not only with different skills and habits but with different expectations and desires as well. Using a wide range of examples - petrochemical workers in Germany and Britain, auto workers in Turin and Hamtramck - Sabel portrays the social personalities of each major subgroup within the working class, from common laborers to workers with plant-specific skills to craftsmen with generalized problem-solving abilities.' The Nation 'Sabel's main contributions are demonstrations that simple pluralistic and class models of work politics are inadequate, that economic structures are influenced politically, and that relations among working class strata centrally explain collective behavior. Sabel's firm grasp of the French, German, and Italian literature is also impressive.' Contemporary SociologyMore details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Cambridge
United Kingdom
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Product notice
Paperback (trade)
Illustrations
Worked examples or Exercises
Dimensions
Height: 229 mm
Width: 152 mm
Thickness: 19 mm
Weight
522 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-521-31909-6 (9780521319096)
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Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Book
07/1982
Cambridge University Press
€43.40
Article exhausted; check for reprint
Previous edition
Book
07/1982
Cambridge University Press
€43.40
Article exhausted; check for reprint
Content
List of tables and figures; Preface; 1. Workers and world views; 2. The structure of the labor market; 3. Careers at work; 4. Interests, conflicts, classes; 5. The end of Fordism?; Notes; Bibliography; Index.