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The wide-ranging European perspectives brought together in this volume aim to analyse, by means of an interdisciplinary approach, the numerous implications of a massive shift in the conception of ‘work’ and the category of ‘worker’. Changes in the production models, economic downturn and increasing digitalisation have triggered a breakdown in the terms and assumptions that previously defined and shaped the notion of employment. This has made it more difficult to discuss, and problematise, issues like vulnerability in employment in such terms as unfairness, inequality and inadequate protection. Taking the ‘deconstruction of employment’ as a central idea for theorising the phenomenon of work today, this volume explores the emergence of new semantic fields and territories for understanding and regulating employment. These new linguistic categories have implications beyond language alone: they reformulate the very concept of waged employment (including those aspects previously considered intrinsic to the meaning of work and of being ‘a worker’), along with other closely associated categories such as unemployment, self-employment, and inactivity.
It can be said that our times are characterized both by the omnipresence of organizations and by the destabilization of organized social life, caused by the erosion of its structural and moral foundations such as long-term employment, social trust or an actual observance of the proclaimed codes of ethics. At the same time there is a huge and growing potential for organized change due to the amount of students and graduates of different types of management studies and programmes all over the world. The role of the state may become atrophied and corporations seem all too eager to seize ever more power while renouncing responsibility towards the environment and the employees, but a huge and unp...
Discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity concerns everybody, but it is foremost lesbian and gay persons who have to deal with it, especially when confronting the discovery of their homosexuality as a child or adolescent. In this book, education practitioners working with youth and researchers - from social, political, and educational sciences, as well as theology and philosophy - raise awareness of the wide spectrum of homophobia and offer solutions to the suffering it engenders in youths. The book will be helpful for parents, teachers, and others who are responsible for youth and education. It reviews concrete knowledge, combines it with scientific approaches, and identifies the need for further research. (Series: Gender-Diskussion - Vol. 13)
Inspired by ideas from economic theology, this provocative book uncovers deep-rooted religious concepts and shows how they continue to influence contemporary views of work and unemployment.
In the wake of the Greek and Irish crises, and at a moment when solidarity between states is hotly debated on a daily basis at EU level, it is important to understand how 'solidarity' can happen at all. The Road to Social Europe reviews the development of political cultural processes since the nineteenth century, showing how social protection and social justice have gradually become interwoven with systems of social protection, or welfare states. Grounded on extensive empirical research conducted in many EU countries and in the European Commission's administration over twenty years, the book provides a cultural analysis of welfare systems in Europe. It also presents an original enquiry into the importance of languages for politics in Europe, for the politics of welfare, and for sociological research. It shows how sociological and ethnographic analysis can help in understanding the current and future challenges of European integration that rely unilaterally on functional economics. This in-depth sociological analysis of European diversity will appeal to a wide audience of students and scholars of sociology, political science, political economy and European studies.
Economy and Architecture addresses a timely, critical, and much-debated topic in both its historical and contemporary dimensions. From the Apple Store in New York City, to the street markets of the Pan American Highway; from commercial Dubai to the public schools of Australia, this book takes a critical look at contemporary architecture from across the globe, whilst extending its range back in history as far as the Homeric epics of ancient Greece. The book addresses the challenges of practicing architecture within the strictures of contemporary economies, grounded on the fundamental definition of ‘economy’ as the well managed household – derived from the Greek oikonomia – oikos (hous...
A new history of French social thought that connects postwar sociology to colonialism and empire In this provocative and original retelling of the history of French social thought, George Steinmetz places the history and development of modern French sociology in the context of the French empire after World War II. Connecting the rise of all the social sciences with efforts by France and other imperial powers to consolidate control over their crisis-ridden colonies, Steinmetz argues that colonial research represented a crucial core of the renascent academic discipline of sociology, especially between the late 1930s and the 1960s. Sociologists, who became favored partners of colonial governmen...
This book examines the everyday-life patterns of young adults under circumstances of vulnerability and precariousness. Its main focus is on the web of social relations that structure the everyday life of young people, for instance by providing resources and tools of solving problems, exerting pressures and voicing expectations, and shaping the person’s self-conception, identity, and well-being. Based on more than 120 in-depth interviews with young long-term unemployed in six European countries, this book puts social support and the young jobless’ webs of social relations at center stage. It expands knowledge by raising awareness of the multidimensionality and complexity of the social conditions of young jobless, drawing, on the one hand, a more differentiated picture of unemployment, vulnerability and social exclusion amongst young people and, on the other hand, taking a close look at the social reality of young adults’ unemployment in different European cities.
Professionalization has become a given in the worlds of work and education. For a wide variety of professions, public and private organizations and training and further education courses, professionalization is an inescapable reality. However, it takes on diverse, even contradictory meanings, according to what it represents: a managerial imperative imposed by public or managerial policies, or a set of goals defined by an ideal of service or quality of work. The purpose of Encyclopedia of Professionalization is to discuss the current challenges facing professionalization and, by exploring major research traditions, to clarify the meanings associated with this concept and the various phenomena it encompasses. Three major notions of professionalization are examined: the manufacturing of professions in pursuit of autonomy, the rise of professionalisms embodying notions of a job well done, and the construction of renewed professionalities at the very heart of work situations and training systems.