The Sociology of Work

Definitive, critical and engaging, this is a superb introduction to the sociology of work. Edgell and Granter's expert narrative takes us from the cotton mills to the gig economy, and from unpaid domestic chores to visions of a post-work future. Indispensable.

A welcome new edition of Sociology of Work that delivers on the promise to chronicle and to assess continuity and changes in paid and unpaid work over the longue durée.  Key themes and theories drive chapters on alienation, the labor process, skill, organizational culture, Fordism, destandarization, and domestic work, culminating in the perfect bookend on work transformations across multiple historical globalizations spanning the global North and South.

The Sociology of Work is an introductory text that is more engaging and coherent than a traditional textbook. It provides an accessible entry point into the field, covering a vast literature and counterposing competing theories and perspectives, but within a systematic analytical framework and narrative. It appreciates the variable social construction of work and employment across history, understands capitalism as a distinct social system, and compellingly uses the framework of Fordism and Post-Fordism to highlight and understand changes in work and employment over the 20th and 21st centuries.

Stephen Edgell is a Research Professor of Sociology at the University of Salford, England. He has undertaken qualitative research Middle Class Couples: A Study of Segregation, Domination and Inequality in Marriage (Allen & Unwin, 1980), quantitative research A Measure of Thatcherism: A Sociology of Britain (Unwin Hyman, 1991, co-author Vic Duke), and archival research Veblen in Perspective: His Life and Thought (Taylor & Francis, 2001), and has published numerous articles in a wide-range of British, American and European social science journals. A career-long interest in the sociology of work culminated in the publication of a textbook entitled The Sociology of Work: Continuity and Change in Paid and Unpaid Work in 2006 and a revised 2nd edition in 2012. He is the co-editor of The SAGE Handbook of the Sociology of Work and Employment (2016), along with Heidi Gottfried and Edward Granter. 


Edward Granter is a Senior Lecturer in Organizational Behaviour in the Department of Management at the University of Birmingham Business School.

The Historical Transformation of Work Work and Alienation Work, Skill and the Labour Process Managing Culture at Work Industrial Work: Fordism, Neo-Fordism and Post-Fordism Service Work: Fordism, Neo-Fordism and Post-Fordism Non-Standard Work Out of Work: Unemployment Domestic Work Globalization: Paid and Unpaid Work Glossary References