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This article presents research on skills development and workplace change complexities within two automotive assembly plants in Pretoria, South Africa. Auto assembly companies are also termed Original Equipment Manufacturers (OEMs). Since 1995, South African OEMs have become fully integrated into the global networks of their foreign parent companies. As South Africa’s leading manufacturing sector, the automotive industry’s increasing importance is reflected in its exports, investments, and contribution to the country’s gross domestic product. The two companies are global multinationals situated in one of South Africa’s most globally integrated sectors that have undergone significant mechanization and automation since the 1990s. Therefore, these companies present a relevant site for studying changes in the labor process and the tendencies of deskilling in these workplace environments. The research is based on a qualitative research design that used semi-structured interviews with workers, supervisors, and managers across two plants that assemble motor vehicles in South Africa. The objective of the research was to understand the nature of changes to workplace production methods that influence the character of skills amongst the workforce. This paper studies workers’ experiences on how changes in work processes have impacted their work skills and contributed to the processes of deskilling. Present studies of skills in South Africa have prioritized large-scale labor market aggregate data analysis or reforms in education and training policies of the state. This paper brings a perspective on the labor process changes that are informed by concrete analysis of the production process and how technological changes shape the character of skills formation within automotive assembly plants. The value of such an approach is that it brings to the discussion of technology and workplace change a more specific set of experiences that transcends the often speculative and mythical discussion about the impact of technology on work. This article highlights the importance of understanding workers’ voices, shift supervisors, and managers on the contested nature of skills development within capitalist enterprises. The findings illustrate the contradictory nature of technological change and skills development. This is shown by discussing the following themes that emerged from the findings: 1) worker responses to the introduction of robots in the workplace environment, 2) the deskilling challenge on the two plants, and 3) grappling with the turnover times of capitalist production. I conclude the paper by revisiting the key findings of the research and showing the implications for future studies of deskilling in contemporary capitalist enterprises. The significance of these findings ultimately points to the importance of locating labor processes and deskilling in the context of the political economy of the capitalist mode of production and how it is reshaping the content of work in modern automotive assembly plants.

This article discusses the theory formulated by promoters of the “new economic sociology,” according to which economic sociology experienced an “eclipse” in Europe as a whole, and in particular in France after the Second World War. According to this theory, in that time and place the dynamism of the “sociology of work” neglected the economic question. A close study of the content of the Treatise on the Sociology of Work directed by Georges Friedmann and Pierre Naville (1961-1962) and the journal Sociologie du travail from 1959 to 1968 shows that this theory is unfounded.

Tens of thousands of Romanian migrants work in the German construction sector. Their work is often characterized by unpaid wages, long workdays and by the withholding of sick or holiday payments. The risky and exploitative nature of the conditions under which Romanian migrants work on German construction sites is reflected in their negative evaluation of their engagements as “slave labor” by Romanian workers. Starting from such a clearly negative evaluation, the paper asks how Romanian construction workers in Germany classify their work and what role such classifications have within the context of labor exploitation. Based on qualitative interviews with and participant observation among Romanian construction site workers in Germany and in Romania, the article reconstructs four work classifications. Work may be interpreted as the fulfillment of obligations or as necessary for economic revenue; hard work itself can be a symbolic contribution to one’s own sense of identity or it can have the meaning of being part of everyday normalcy. Each of the work classifications offers a different reason to make hard work plausible in the eyes of the workers and employers actively turn such interpretations into a mechanism of vulnerability. Without direct physical coercion, these ideas motivate workers to take on work that they themselves criticize as ‘slave labor.’ The paper concludes by arguing that the recognition of such classifications and their social effects are crucial for an understanding of labor exploitation.

The relevance of the study is determined by the expansion of theoretical findings in the field of sociology of work, in particular, in the study of job satisfaction of arbitration managers under the State Duma’s consideration of the draft law No. 1172553-7 “On Amendments to the Federal Law ‘On Insolvency (Bankruptcy)’ and Certain Legislative Acts of the Russian Federation”. To assess the level of job satisfaction of arbitration managers, the authors conducted an analysis of the features of their professional activities with an expert survey - to reveal their opinions on the state of the institution of insolvency (bankruptcy), its upcoming reform, and the level of their job satisfaction. Unlike most studies in this field, in which the emphasis is made on the social-legal status of arbitration managers, the authors consider the main social-psychological criteria for their job satisfaction, including remuneration, additional benefits and working conditions in the field of insolvency. The information base of the study includes a secondary analysis of the statistics of insolvency procedures in 2016-2020 and an expert survey (25 active arbitration managers with more than three years of experience were interviewed). The authors conclude that arbitration managers have a low level of job satisfaction, which is explained, first of all, by the extremely high workload and responsibility (including the risk of disqualification for three years for committing formal offenses that do not pose a danger to public relations and do not lead to violations of the rights of creditors, the debtor and society), conflict of procedures, lack of sociallabor guarantees, the variability of legislation, and several ‘control centers’ with opposing interests. These factors reduce interest in the profession of arbitration manager, which may lead to a crisis in the insolvency industry due to a shortage of highly qualified specialists.

Dilip Kumar has been praised for his sublime dialog delivery, for his restrained gestures, and for his measured and controlled underplay of emotions in tragic stories as well as in light-hearted comedies. His debut in 1944 with Jwar Bhata (Ebb and Tide) met with less-than-flattering reviews. So did the next three films until his 1948 film, Jugnu (Firefly), which brought him recognition and success. Unlike his contemporaries such as Raj Kapoor and Dev Anand, who propelled their careers by launching their own production companies, Dilip Kumar relied on his talent, his unique approach to characterization, and his immersion in the projects he undertook. In the course of his career that spanned six decades, Kumar made only 62 films. However, his work is a textbook for other actors that followed. Not only did he bring respectability to a profession that had been shunned by the upper classes in India as a profession for “pimps and prostitutes,” but he also elevated film-acting and filmmaking to an academic discipline, making him worthy of the title ‘Professor Emeritus of Acting’. Rooted in the theoretical framework of Howard S. Becker’s work on the “production of culture” and “doing things together,” this paper discusses Kumar’s approach to acting, character development, and the level of his involvement and commitment to each of his projects. The author of this article argues that more than the creative control as a producer or a director, it is the artistic involvement and commitment of the main actors that shape great works of art in cinema. Dilip Kumar demonstrated it repeatedly.

Bu çalışmada Tekirdağ uygulama örneğiyle son on senedir giderek artan öneme sahip olan sosyal hizmetler faaliyet alanında mevcut uzmanlaşma katsayısına göre düşük uzmanlaşma başlangıcı, uzmanlaşma başlangıcı, yüksek uzmanlaşma başlangıcı ve tam uzmanlaşma başlangıcından ne kadarlık ıraksamanın olduğunun tespitine odaklanılmıştır. Analize konu olan on yıllık veri seti (2008 - 2017) SGK istatistik yıllıklarından derlenmiştir. İstatistik yöntem olarak bölgesel uzmanlaşma düzeyini tanımlamada son seksen yıldır kullanılan lokasyon katsayısı (LQ) tekniğinden yararlanılmıştır. Tekirdağ’da 2008-2017 arasında sosyal hizmetler alanında lokasyon katsayısı değerleri 0,2 - 0,6 arasında gerçekleşmekte olup, alt sınır olan 0,7’ ye hiçbir yıl ulaşılamamıştır. Buna karşılık il bütününde istihdamda yaşanan %72’lik artışa karşılık, sosyal hizmetler faaliyet alanındaki artış 32,3 katı aşmıştır. Bu artış sosyal hizmetler faaliyet alanında Türkiye bütünündeki 13,5 katlık artışın da üzerindedir. Tekirdağ’daki mevcut istihdam düzeyi 2008 - 2017 arasında, 0,7’lik sınırdan 49 – 685 kişi, 1,25’lik sınırdan 87 - 1223 kişi, 2’lik sınırdan 139 - 1956 kişi, 3’ lük sınırdansa 208 - 2934 kişi ıraksamıştır.

To celebrate La Nouvelle Revue du Travail issue number 19, the editorial board has organised a public round table hosted by MSH Paris-Saclay and involving all the authors of this special issue focusing on seven different types of world sociology originating from Germany, Argentina, China, United States, Spain, Mexico and Great Britain. The topics to be discussed build upon developments that the authors had formulated in earlier articles, thereby elucidating the foundations of these seven national varieties of sociology. Each will take a reciprocal view of the sociology of work on a planetary scale, embedding it each time in a national space, particularly with reference to the sub-discipline’s funding modes and relationships with partners and users.

This NRT Corpus offers a presentation of the sociology of work (SoW) in seven countries other than France. The list includes older European cradles of social sciences such as Germany or the United Kingdom (the Spanish sociology have started much later) along with the United States. Countries often referred to as possessing an “emerging” school - such as Mexico, Argentina and China – are also treated here. Each article has its own way of analysing and critiquing how research objects have been transformed; how issues and paradigms have emerged or disappeared; and how paradigms have dominated or faded. Each also reflects convergences between intellectual currents ­—a circulation of ideas within which the effects of capitalism’s transformations can be read — while also noting the differences between all these branches of sociology.

In Mexico, the sociology of work was born out of a demand for critical thinking and a desire to link economic and productive restructuring processes to the transformation of work. The institutionalisation of the discipline developed against a backdrop of globalisation. regional economic integration (North American Free Trade Agreement) and hegemonic neoliberal thinking. The end result was that the research agenda, in its early days, focused on analysis of the productive reorganisation processes typifying certain strategic sectors; the impact of market liberalisation on collective bargaining (including in state-owned enterprises); and maquiladora industry characteristics. It remains that the robustness attributed to the sociology of work in Mexico would run up against its limits in interpretations of the plurality of activities and working experiences that exist outside of the framework of salaried work. On one hand, this tests the rigidity of a dichotomous thinking where employment and work is interpreted according to a formal-informal, classic-non-classic, typical-atypical scheme. On the other, it tests the discipline’s willingness to address labour heterogeneity and all the different economies found within a national business environment. In an attempt to identify the discipline’s strengths and limits, the article reviews the main themes typifying work analyses since the 1980s, while accounting for the discipline’s geographic and thematic expansion and incorporation of new objects of research and areas of investigation. Lastly, it also speaks to the conceptual challenges that arise when dealing with the heterogeneous reality of work - something that requires, in turn, a certain openness to other disciplinary approaches.

The development of the sociology of work in Argentina must be understood in light of the history of economic and political instabilities in that country after military coup of 1976. The macroeconomic instabilities and the imperative need to understand volatile scenarios gave rise to a broad and diverse discipline, both thematically and theoretically. This was encouraged by a field of studies that from its beginnings was configured as a space for interdisciplinary dialogue and production. With an initial imprint that recovered the founding perspective of the French sociology of work, and later expanded to the Anglo-Saxon, it currently seeks to strengthen a Latin American perspective, in which the center of the debate, a world of work in permanent conflict, strongly precarious and informal and where organized workers are key actors.

This NRT Corpus offers a presentation of the sociology of work (SoW) in seven countries other than France. The list includes older European cradles of social sciences such as Germany or the United Kingdom (the Spanish sociology have started much later) along with the United States. Countries often referred to as possessing an “emerging” school - such as Mexico, Argentina and China – are also treated here. Each article has its own way of analysing and critiquing how research objects have been transformed ; how issues and paradigms have emerged or disappeared ; and how paradigms have dominated or faded. Each also reflects convergences between intellectual currents ­—a circulation of ideas within which the effects of capitalism’s transformations can be read — while also noting the differences between all these branches of sociology.

This article seeks to contribute to the reflection about the challenges of the left in the face of the new technological revolution in progress, the so-called Fourth Industrial Revolution or Industry 4.0. To this end, he will briefly visit some authors who have faced technological revolutions in the past decades, particularly in the world of work, to show the various possibilities for positive and negative interpretations of these processes. Then, it will point out some questions about the ongoing revolution, in particular the transformations in work and social relations produced by “digital platforms”. Finally, without any intention of exhausting the debate, it will outline some issues that it considers challenges for the left and critical thinking in the face of these changes.

This essay considers how social actors in news have come to shape the contours of news and journalism and what these changes may suggest for other industries. It looks more specifically at the question of who does journalism and news and what that may signal for power dependencies, status, and norms formation. It examines how authors who contributed to this thematic issue define who gets to decide what is news and journalism, what forms of power are exerted amongst groups, who gets to claim status, and how norms and epistemologies are formed. Ultimately, this essay illustrates how conformity to groups and organizations varies with the investments that these social actors have to core and more peripheral journalism and media groups.

The article focuses on the problem of life strategies adapted by the representatives of young Polish middle-class in the (post)transformation period in Poland towards different aspects of social change. On the basis of two research projects focused on the consequences of the Polish systemic transformation, I discuss issues related to biographical experiences of this process. The main theoretical and methodological background is concentrated on using the autobiographical narrative interview to analyze coping strategies in relation to the class position of examined cases. The interviews taken under consideration have been conducted with young men who could be described as middle-class members.

Industry is one of the most important segments of the national economy. The changes, which take place affect the business aspect of the labor market, and more specifically the employment of people in specific industry sectors. It can significantly influence on the way and the number of employment of people in the industry, so, therefore, it was purposeful to analye whether there were significant changes in the number of employees in selected industry sectors. The aim of the paper was to analyse the basic statistical data from the Central Statistical Office in Poland if there were any changes of employment in the main industry sectors in Poland. The sectors that were analyzed were mining and quarrying; manufacturing; electricity, gas, steam and air conditioning supply; water supply, sewerage, waste management and remediation activities. The research methodology was the analysis of trends from data from the period 2012–2017 (no data after 2017) from a reliable source, i.e. the Central Statistical Office in Poland. It was concluded that the important changes in the number of employment of people in the main industry sectors could be observed as evidenced by, among others, by the trends. The results of the analysis can be the basis for assessing the economic situation in the analyzed industry sector, and also to make next analyses targeted on the analysis of causes the trends in employed area in selected industry sectors in Poland.

This article presents an overview of the theoretical stance within the BMBF-funded project "geste - Educational Aids as Work on the Common Good - Between Effect-Oriented Management and Equal Participation in Germany and England", focussing on the subproject of sociology of work. For approaching the working conditions of employees in residential child and youth care, the authors propose to understand participation in work as a power struggle. This perspective enables a critical stance concerning employees’ participation with regard to their working conditions that is discussed for the German case.

Despite their specificities, legal stakeholders don’t escape to the contemporary changes in the world of work. They are facing the intensification of their activity, are involved in social struggles, while the “glass ceiling” is still blocking women’s access to certain functions. Such developments in the worlds of law and justice plead to offer some elements of a sociology of work for these professionals. This requires breaking down the barriers of the fields of sociology, like the American approaches which have analyzed the work of jurists. In doing so, the following introduction presents the different articles of the Corpus from two perspectives: that of the traditional legal professions and that of the jurists of large organizations.

Recognizing that national and international studies on work, inequalities and classes can be analyzed in an articulated way, this article reviews some of the theoretical traditions that have arisen in these areas, in conjunction with more recent studies on Portuguese society. In addition to normative frameworks that shape the labour context in Portugal, this article seeks to combine the more general sociological reflection with some of the lines of research – in which, by the way, precariousness seems omnipresent –, especially those developed in the PhD program in Labour Relations, Social Inequalities and Trade Unionism that the authors coordinate via the Centre for Social Studies and the Faculty of Economics of the University of Coimbra.

This article provides an analysis concerning the position of downshifters in the labor market and social structure of modern Russian society. The specifics of career strategy are also being examined. «Downshifting» is understood as a phenomenon of voluntary downward vertical social mobility, characterised by voluntary long-term change of style in everyday life, which can manifest itself in the change of employment, everyday practices, social and geographical mobility. Within the concept of individualization downshifting presented as destandartised model of biography, implying the rejection of typical for a given society stages, phases of the life cycle. The results of the in-depth interviews with downshifters which were needs to better understand and analyze the «beyond» lifestyle in a consumer society. We focus on two important characteristics of the lifestyle of downshifters: labor organization and financial issues. The results reveal that downshifters is a prime example of non-standard, individualized employment and career. The results of the study allow us to describe the scenarios of the development of life of downshifters after the decision they made and the features of new forms of labor behavior.

The authors point to the contribution of Božo Milošević's to Serbian sociological thought, through his scientific papers published in the journal Sociološki pregled/Sociological Review, since the end of the 1980s until today. His contribution is mostly reflected in the advancement of the theoretical foundations of the Sociology of Work, without neglecting any other sociological topics necessary for essential understanding of contemporary social processes and relations.

Studies on culture and art and on the “world of work” are often found in separate fields, although some reference works on the art professions, art production chain and the labor market of artists such as those from Howard Becker and Pierre-Michel Menger. In order to analyze cultural production in the so-called “new world of work”, and the category of cultural producer in contemporary Brazil, I seek to develop a sociology of work with art and culture, making use of the theoretical framework of the sociology of work based on the analysis of André Gorz’s and Boltanki and Chiapello on contemporary changes in the world of work (and the influence of the counterculture in this process), complementing them with the sociology of work with art and culture of Menger and Becker. For that reason, I begin with the discussion about the so-called “new world of work” from the perspectives of the evolution of Gorz’s thought and Boltanski and Chiapello’s classic The New Spirit of Capitalism. Next, I present Menger’s approach to labor markets with culture and art, bringing his analysis closer to those discussed earlier, and complementing it with Becker’s study Worlds of Art. From then on, I try to think about the work with culture and art in contemporary Brazil from the perspective of “cultural producers”.

Since the 1970s, a theoretical and empirical interest in the processes of transformation of the working classes has developed in France. Pierre Bourdieu's sociology has offered an analytical framework for analysing such processes, which are investigated through various field studies that follow in the 1980s and 1990s. In particular, the long ethnography by Stéphane Beaud and Michel Pialoux among the workers of the Peugeot factory in Sochaux-Montbéliard, the largest French factory, applies a generational reading key to the decline of the French working class, which is read in terms of crisis of its social reproduction. Following this research, in the years 2000s and 2010s a broad sociological debate on the reconfigurations of the working classes opened up, showing that their heterogeneity, according to the geographical location, the fields of activity and the type of employment, the prevailing sex and nationality/ethnicity, may have consequences on the reproduction of class culture.

Nautical activities (sailing, surfing, kitesurfing…) are frequently conceived by sea resort municipalities as products for the tourist industry and therefore associated with vacation time. But they are also working time for those who are in charge. Nautical sports instructors are forced to work on the off-beat. They must integrate temporalities - school holidays, public holidays or week-ends - which are different from the ordinary working world. That is sometimes problematic, especially when conciliating work and family life.This paper focuses on the way sports teachers experience working on the off-beat, and how they perceive the situation. It will try to identify and to characterize the resources and strategies used for dealing with the various effects and consequences of working on the off-beat. The results presented are based on fieldwork with interviews and observations carried out on the coast of the Pays-de-la-Loire Region.

Based on proposed objectives, this article shows the deep structural crisis in which work is involved in Postmodernity. That has meant the loose of security in the context of the weakness of the economic prosperity, the Welfare State, the State itself and the Democracy. Certainly, nowadays work appears as risky, precarious, insecure, uncertain, without a defined space, fragmented, accelerated, flexible, unregulated, informal, hit by new technologies, “brasilianizated”, hierarchical, unequal, individualized and the reason of the corroded character of the worker. Thus work gets devaluated, becomes illegible and lost its sense. Moreover, if we consider that the solutions put on the table by Occident are clearly insufficient and uncreative, it seems that we are facing the collapse or the end of an era, of the work, of the capitalism itself, and even the social-liberal-democratic State.

In classical theory, the labour market operates as any other market, that is, the supply and demand determines the equilibrium between wages and the number of employees. The Keynesians went a step further by pointing out that the labour market does not follow the same principle as other markets and that wages do not change due to numerous rigidities, i.e. that the equilibrium is not achieved with full employment. The neoclassical macroeconomics reverts to the classical theory, noting that the labour market equilibrium is achieved immediately. The weakness of these theories is that they do not sufficiently consider specific features of the labour market and/or human labour. However, the new Keynesians went a step further in this direction by developing the efficiency wage model incorporating both economic and sociological explanations in the labour market interpretation. Nevertheless, it seems that there is still enough room for further improvements of this model and the paper communicates certain suggestions to that end.

Based on the results of a qualitative study conducted in several sites where the Belgian cleaning service providers operate, this article shows the importance of gender inequalities in the sector and decomposes the mechanisms related to the specific work regimes and to the specific modalities of work organization and manpower management. This study also brings to light that women’s employment in such activity registers the effects of a double segregation: first of all, a segregation related to the particular conditions of subordination which characterize the cleaning work, performed more and more often within the framework of subcontracting relations and, then, a segregation ensuing from the tensions which affect particularly the women, on the one hand non-negotiable work regimes and working schedules - compulsory part-time work and segmented and shifted schedules – and on the other hand the constraints of the private life.

O presente trabalho tem como objetivo analisar o debate sociológico contemporâneo acerca da perda da centralidade da categoria trabalho surgido nas últimas décadas do século XX. O artigo analisa a pertinência da categoria trabalho no pensamento social, evidenciando sua afirmação antes do surgimento da sociologia. Também são analisadas as propostas de Habermas, Gorz, Offe, Schaff e Kurz, considerados os precursores mais importantes desse debateThis paper aims to discuss the contemporary sociological debate on the decline in the centrality of work as a category over the final decades of the 20th century. It also analyzes the importance of the work category in sociological thought, showing how it in fact appeared before the emergence of sociology. Finally the paper examines the approaches of Habermas, Gorz, Offe, Schaff and Kurz, considered as the most important precursors to this debate

Los estudios sistemáticos de la sociología del trabajo en América Latina se remontan a una época relativamente reciente, la década del sesenta. Desde los primeros trabajos hasta la actualidad han variado los temas y enfoques, siguiendo el pulso de los cambios socioeconómicos que se producen en la región. En este escrito proponemos realizar una reflexión crítica del devenir teórico y metodológico que ha atravesado esta disciplina a partir de la sistematización realizada por tres autores latinoamericanos en el Tratado Latinoamericano de Sociología del Trabajo (coordinado por Enrique De La Garza Toledo): Francisco Zapata, Laís Abramo y Cecilia Montero.Systematic studies of Sociology of work in Latin America go back to a relatively recent times, the Decade of the sixties. From early work until today topics and approaches have varied, according to the pulse of the socio-economic changes that occur in the region. In this paper we propose to perform a critical reflection of the theoretical and methodological becoming who has crossed this discipline. We consider as "satarting point" the systematization made by three Latin American authors in the Tratado Latinoamericano de Sociología del Trabajo (coordinado por Enrique De La Garza Toledo): Francisco Zapata, Laís Abramo and Cecilia Montero.

What is new or different in a perspective of sociology of work applied to vocational training professions ? Can this emergency research practise provide a best account of what adult education signifies ? In a first part, the article points that the sociology of professional groups, a largely dominant perspective, clearly disregards the question of vocational training professions work. In the second part, the benefits of some researches (about vocational training professions) led in sociology of work are showed. It appears necessary to examine the practices and to replace them inside of their social configurations. After, the text purposes a research program about this sociological perspective applied to vocational training professions. In particular, empirical investigations are encouraged. The conclusion synthesizes the principal gains of this orientation.

This article introduces some of the work and sociological research of Pierre Naville (1904-1993) on employment and automation skills. On the basis of Naville´s research, this paper aims to discuss critically the construction of the object characteristic of the classical Soci-ology of Work. It argues that sociologically relevant ´work´ is one which refers to a general social mediation, similar to the concept of ´abstract work´ in the late writings of Marx.

Within the scope of the Sociology of the Organizations, the enterprise culture has opened an interesting field from the decade of the 80. Discipline began to trust the possibility of directing great companies with the support of a more intimate knowledge of his culture. Therefore, the set of disciplines that approach the organisational theory was attracted by their study, given the demonstrated utility to standardize behaviours within the company, as well as the possible alteration of the own culture to repel in production and benefits. These premises took us to the study of case of Maersk Spain in Algeciras. We approached the reality of the company, generating an own model of analysis that it has facilitated to us to explore its enterprise culture, applying different quantitative and qualitative techniques. This diagnosis has allowed us to know the consequences of the integration of different work subcultures - habitual in multinationals-, when entering the study of essential distinctions, like which it takes place between the Danish enterprise culture (origin) and Andalusian (destiny), as well as the peculiarities from its adaptation the local surroundings (Campo de Gibraltar).

Este artigo investiga a questão da produtividade do trabalho sob o prisma da interioridade recíproca entre o tempo e o trabalho. Essa interioridade revela, no plano conceitual, o enfrentamento entre duas concepções do tempo: o tempo espacializado, quantitativo e físico, medido pela sucessão de instantes materializados no relógio; e o tempo-devir, qualitativo e psicológico, entendido como duração, na qual há um ímpeto permanente da totalidade do passado em direção ao futuro. Esses tempos apresentam frente ao trabalho modos diferentes de manifestação social: o tempo espacializado se manifesta como disciplina e regulação dos atos de trabalho e o tempo-devir como mobilização da experiência passada e antecipação do porvir. Mostra-se, finalmente, que, embora estejam necessariamente vinculados ao trabalho, sendo ambos produtos sociais efetivos, existe um desequilíbrio claro na manifestação dos dois tipos de tempo.This article investigates the subject of work productivity through the optics of the reciprocal interiority between time and work. This interiority reveals, in the conceptual plane, the confrontation of two time concepts: the spacialized time, quantitative and physic, measured by the instants successions materialized on the clock; and the time-to-come, qualitative and psychological, understood as duration, in which there is a permanent impulse of the past totality towards the future. These times present, in face of work, different ways of social manifestation: The spacialized time manifests itself as discipline and regulation of the work acts; and the time-to-come manifests itself as mobilization of the past experience and anticipation of the future. Finally, it is shown that, while the times are necessarily linked to work, both being effective social products, there is a clear unbalance in the manifestation of both times.

The article presents a partial assessment of the relationship between identity, gender and work in Latin America according to the sociology of Latin-American work, in particular, studies on gender and work. In spite of the recent development of studies on masculinity, the problem of female identity and the tension between family life and professional life, have occupied the place of choice amongst researchers. The article addresses the themes of masculinity and femininity in the professional space, changes between the generations in the construction of the identity of workers, the first results of studies on masculinity and finally, the new studies on unemployment, poverty and exclusion.

What is the role of criticism in the sociology of work? NRT, which wants to host expressions of a sociological criticism of work, has decided to use its fourth Controversies issue to review the role played by sociological criticism. Towards this end, it has sought the opinions of sociologists whose studies/perspectives/outlooks have created some of the paths that modern criticism could follow to achieve a more differentiated and atomised conception of the unity of the social world.

Concluding this edition of Controversy, Lionel Jacquot revisits four of the contributions and debates the critical perspectives of work upon which they rely. He starts by linking the programmes to one another to construct an ideal-type in which the sociology of work can serve as a critical science. He then shows how perspectives and problems relating to this ideal-type can be used to revive such critique. Lastly, he highlights the plurivalence of critical acts.

Filmer le travail is both a thematic film festival, a place for reflection on the use of images and movies, for social sciences and cultural mediation assembly allowing public debates on the evolution of contemporary work. To analyze this unusual experience being a (very) participating observer, I will examine a group of texts on the history since 1950 of the use of images by the sociology of work in France. Three periods can be identified: the 1960s during which the use of images for research purposes is of significant but marginal concern in the institutionalization of the sociology of work in France; 1980-1990, defined by careful experimentation and a constricted reflection; the 2000s, which saw the development of practices (which remain minority) involving the Valorisation of the image (especially audiovisual) in the research process and a stronger link to creative documentary.

In a conversation with the Nouvelle Revue du Travail, Pascal Ughetto and Philippe Zarifian address the controversy about service-related analytical grids, by focusing on the preconditions underlying each grid’s particular orientation. The debate follows their contributions to the Controverses special section found in a special issue called “Analysing service relationships and service-based social relationships”

Dominique Marchais’ documentary, Le Temps des grâces, deals with different farmer generations’ vision of their work. It also provides an agronomic and economic analysis of French farming, showing some of the many different ways in which agricultural activity shapes landscape and ecosystems, while stressing the responsibility of public policy in such processes. The general observation highlights the growing industrialisation of agriculture, leading more to the uniformisation of products and destruction of soil fertility than to ecologically viable alternatives. When compared with major sociological studies in this area, the documentary highlights certain deviations while referring to theoretical and methodological thinking in this domain.

Cashiers and their clients are part of two different time frames, with conflicting conceptions of time. Clients are focused on their individual situation, in a sequential temporal regime and in the here-and-now, while the cashiers worry about ensuring a satisfactory service for all the recipients of their work, simultaneously, in a longer time frame. These conflicting representations depend on a relationship of service where one character is working and the other isn’t. According to the balance of power between the service provider and the recipient, both the time conflict and the service relationship can be very different. In order to bring this discrepancy to light, this paper focuses on the case of cashiers at automatic self-service checkout, in an asymetric relationship that favours the clients. The setup of these checkouts increases the participation of clients, puts the cashiers’s work in a simultaneous time frame, and reinforces the discrepancy. Eventhough it might not seem so, the automation of checkouts leads to an intensification of the cashiers’ workload. But as the clients can’t see it, they keep expecting a total availability from the cashiers. This misunderstanding leads to a tense situation between the characters, that brings to light and reinforces the structural antagonism of time between the cashiers and their clients.

The article recalls a number of preconditions for knowledge of work. These include the ability to take stock of the socio-economic contexts that influence work itself, unlike subjectivities, which depend on available resources and adhere to objectives and/or seek to resist them - thereby substantiating the present narrative. The sociology of work covers a variety of work and employment-related sub-objects while integrating a multitude of theoretical influences. Far from sparking the crisis to which protagonists refer so often, this proliferation and abundance constitutes a strength that enables them to cope with the demands made by social and political actors. Between the identifiable shortcomings of the sociology of work (gender, ethnicity, technologies, internationalisation, etc.) and the scientific requirements of this discipline, there is space for a project that La Nouvelle Revue du Travail can convey - again, on condition that we witness a return to the kinds of scientific debates that have been absent on far too many occasions over the past 30 years.

Mass retail is a sector where economic performance tends to be measured by the volume of goods distributed – an indicator built upon human resource management policies that are largely rooted in the productivity of labour. Commercial companies are constantly seeking to move large numbers of staff members to the right place at the right time, a complicated exercise given customers’ irregular presence at points of sale. The way that companies use the working time that they have purchased therefore constitutes a key variable in controlling production costs. The solutions they choose will affect the temporal conditions determining employees’ in-store execution of tasks. Such activities tend to fluctuate between intensity and overflow. In turn, this strongly affects how staff members apprehend tasks; relations with customers; and their sense of serenity at work.

The article starts with the observation that constraints such as bad work and “impeded quality” are the main causes of fatigue and discomfort in modern organisations. Yet instead of trying to “heal workers” as the hygienist tradition suggests, what actually needs to be healed is work itself, by turning it into a vehicle for improving people’s quality of life. Indeed, it has been demonstrated in a number of situations that deteriorations in the quality of work has a direct effect on people’s well-being outside of work. Getting back to “wholesome labour” has several conditions: the encouragement of compromise and operational flexibility, including at the most strategic levels; the promotion of “conscious” professionalism; and the reorientation of the conflictuality inherent to any wage-labour nexus towards new objects such as the quality of work. The only way to achieve this is by abandoning any financialised conception of the firm.

This essay aims to weave together salient moments in the development of the Mexican labor movement, the reorganization of the economy and production starting in the 1980s, the development of Sociology of Work in Mexico, and snapshots from my own autobiography. The biographical perspective helps to illustrate a few parallel lives that formed part of a collective intellectual and political movement in the period under analysis. Our perspective is that the macro shifts are not reducible to the individual events of which they are composed; they may affect individuals’ actions, but they do not determine them. Peoples' actions are located within structures, but they require subjectivity to acquire meaning and orient said actions. At least that is how we have believed ourselves to be living all these years. The period of our study begins in the 1970s with the end of the import-substitution period in the Third World, the emergence of a powerful workers' movement in Mexico that questioned corporatist unions and political structures and lasted until the early 1980s when the reorganization of the economy and model of production in large companies happened. This moment also marked the beginnings of today’s Sociology of Work in Mexico, which broke with previous conceptions focused on the study of workers’ movements and with Dependency theories predominant in Latin American social theory. We found ourselves immersed in these processes, suffering the changes while at the same time, as a new generation of scholars emerged, attempting to exercise influence on union conceptions of labor. This history is the subject of the current essay.