Sociology of Work & Labour

Il continuo aumento della produttività e la strategia di molte industrie di spostare gli stabilimenti di produzione in paesi dove la manodopera è a basso costo, sta portando nei paesi dell'OCSE ad un lento quanto inesorabile declino del lavoro tradizionale, mentre nuove forme di occupazione, legate alle nuove tecnologie o relegate alla capacità imprenditoriale del singolo, tardano ad affermarsi, scontrandosi le veloci dinamiche di mutamento socioeconomico con la faziosità delle parti sociali avverse ad ogni cambiamento dello status quo.

Traducción al español del texto de Saskia Sassen. Este texto examina el tema del futuro del trabajo y la tecnología a través de dos cuestiones. Una es cómo la digitalización puede mejorar la vida laboral de los trabajadores de bajos ingresos [low-income workers]1 abordando sus necesidades específicas en su área de trabajo y en sus barrios. Los trabajadores de bajos ingresos pueden beneficiarse del desarrollo de aplicaciones [Apps] y herramientas digitalizadas que satisfagan sus necesidades.

2019 saw the most important and far-reaching changes to Japanese labor law in 70 years. What is being reformed and why? Will the reforms improve worker protections? This conference presentation points out contradictions in the reforms and suggests a research program to evaluate whether their outcomes will be as advertised by the architects of the reforms.

The concept of the "end of work" as a result of automation has been around since at least the 1930s, when J. M. Keynes (1930) announced his prediction that the grandchildren of current workers would have a completely new perspective on the possibility of life without work. The digital economy has indeed opened up a whole new way of life for us, but it has not yet made it possible for us to afford a jobless existence. Keynes's thesis has been revisited many times in the last 30 years. Some researchers have looked for strong statistical ground for it (Frey and Osborne, 2013), others have relied on their own intuition and view (Rifkin, 1995).
The aim of this dissertation is to examine to what extent labour automation actually affects the labour market and how it does so. I consider it no less important to establish what factors influence automation itself. Ultimately, the dissertation aims to show the place of labour automation in a broad context of relations and conditions, primarily social, but also economic and political.
The main research question that motivates me to carry out this research is: does labour automation exist in Poland, and if so, what is the relationship between automation and the labour market? I formulate a hypothesis that I will try to confirm through research: automation of work in the long run does not lead to a reduction in the size of the labour market, but it does lead to a change in its structure in the form of elimination of occupations based on repetitive activities.
I start my research by verifying the existing data - available results in various countries, which also extends the research field to other factors surrounding work automation and the labour market. In the theoretical chapter, I discuss these in as much detail as the thesis allows.  Then, in the research section, I return to the source research question and present the results of qualitative research and quantitative analyses for the Polish labour market.
Thanks to the above structure, the work presents a broad spectrum of relations and conditions of automation and work in the widest possible context showing both micro, meso and macro social perspectives.

Contenido: El trabajo como contenido y como relación social. Incertidumbre del trabajo humano y culturas organizativas. Paradigmas organizativos y modelos productivos. Tecnología, trabajo y relaciones laborales. Crisis del trabajo, condiciones de vida y trabajo. Regímenes sociales de empleo, flexibilidad organizativa y precariedad vital. Salud laboral, condiciones de trabajo y riesgos laborales. Fiabilidad y diseño de los sistemas productivos. La participación organizativa del trabajo humano. Futuros del trabajo: digitalización y robotización. Intervención organizativa y práctica profesional.

Construction is the second major economic activity in India and the construction workers constitute a major section of the workforce. They suffered from a lack of employment due to COVID-19 lockdown enforced by the government. The study was done in Madurai in Tamil Nadu. It aimed to study the effect of COVID-19 infection, the lockdown from April to August 2020, and post lockdown from September to December 2020. A range of reports, census, and NSSO data, a sample survey of 100 construction workers using structured questionnaires, and open-ended discussions with union activists, workers, government officials, tool renters is used.
The study finds the workers are not affected by COVID-19 infection. However, they are affected by reduced wage incomes, hardships, and lack of alternative employment. It finds the deplorable conditions of workers remain the same as reported in the past. The statutory bodies expected to support workers are not of much use. The systems established to offer entitlements, social security and relief are cumbersome and unworkable. Women workers suffered disproportionately. The meagre relief and support announced by the Union and State governments did not reach them. It is time to implement the law, policy, and institutional mechanisms to safeguard workers’ interests.

PhD Thesis
 
"Work intensification and health: a multi-tool empirical survey of 400 workers"
 
The following research is aimed at investigating health conditions in relation to labor intensification processes based on a survey involving 400 workers from 6 companies: 1 in logistics and 5 in the food processing industry. Throughout the first chapter we investigate the intensification of labor in the transition to post-fordism, result of a continuous process of organizational model rationalization.  Its effects are analyzed in terms of health, in particular around musculoskeletal disorders (MSD) and work-related stress (WRS), as main pathologies of the new production model, whose risk factors are catalyzed in intensified conditions. The second chapter describes the methodology and addresses some criticalities of the risk assessment systems. The research follows a participatory and horizontal epistemological approach, the only possible to bring out not only simple technical data, but also an awareness of the process aimed at increasing workers actions and to understand the underlying processes of health management on the job. The methodological exposition was primarily based on analyzing the self-evaluating application of the main risk assessment methods for MSD and WRS. In addition to analyzing working conditions, the aim is to provide tools that can be used by the workers themselves to evaluate and control the company's business. The tools analyzed and used in the research are: Ocra checklist for biomechanical overload of the upper limb analysis; anamnestic diagnosis for MSD of the spine and upper and inferior limbs; Job Content Questionnaire for WRS. The last section of the chapter also presents the questions that will be used to investigate another object of the research: workers’ perception of 23 other aspects relating to work and its organization and understanding its close relation to health. The third chapter presents the data collected through two questionnaires distributed during several union meetings. The results describe an already compromised state of health in a large group of the workforce and a high risk level for the main suspected pathologies. The anamnestic diagnosis has found tremendously higher percentages of MSD than in the control groups. The analysis on WRS has detected a considerable percentage of workers exposed to risk and also has found significant statistical correlations with MSD. The Ocra checklist was carried out through a second questionnaire that, unfortunately, was not possible to submit to the workers in all companies as some have implemented a level of sabotage and threats, therefore this section of the research had to be partially interrupted. The fourth chapter presents the results of the questions investigating the perception of the work-health relationship. All of the dimensions that were used result in a majority of negative opinions, but the level of job satisfaction has been more positive among those workers who have declared the worst conditions. An interpretation of this apparent contradiction falls within those dual consensus and control/blackmail processes involving those companies. Conclusive considerations are therefore dedicated to the power dimensions that cross companies’ management of health in the unconditional increase in labor intensification. The work of employees and trade unions, that long stayed in the shadows regarding health issues, has left this field in the hands of the competitive dimension of capital with the result of a worsening in the health conditions. In addition, the complexity of risk assessment techniques has evolved enough to require multiple skills, which have currently escaped almost entirely from the workers’ hands.
(full-text in italian)

sintesi in italiano all'interno del testo

MSD and Work: A Critical Mapping (Disturbi muscolo-scheletrici e lavoro: una mappatura critica).

Trends in Italian and European health statistics show an exponential increase in work-related illnesses. Within the range of work-related illnesses there is a different incidence of “old and new illnesses”. Musculoskeletal diseases (from here on, MSD), along with work-related stress, are the main illnesses in the new mode of production. On the European level, 60% of work-related illnesses are due to MSD, with stress related illnesses being the second most common. And the growing trend in these illnesses seems to be unstoppable. In Italy, in recent years, there has been an exponential increase in MSD, almost certainly linked to the fact that INAIL has created a new list of insurable diseases. This has finally brought Italy in line with Europe. The research project “Musculoskeletal diseases and Work: A Critical Mapping” was the first attempt that we know of to bring together the study of the phenomenon of work-related MSD with that of insurance claims, with the aim of mapping MSD risk based on INAIL data.

The Italian scientific community is an international leader in studies regarding the medical causes of MSD, the instruments of risk valuation, and solutions of an ergonomic nature. But there has been little work done studying insurance claims to deepen the understanding of the macro dynamics of MSD. The most recent Eurogip report on work-related illnesses also points out that Italy lacks an in depth study of insurance claims. Apart from the annual reports of INAIL that simply describe the current state of things, there are few attempts to understand the phenomenon of MSD in an inter-disciplinary manner. For example, in France the study of this phenomenon has brought together heterogeneous disciplines: from medicine to sociology, from ethnography to jurisprudence, from ergonomy to economy. To analyse MSD workplace illnesses in Italy on a macro level, one has to begin from the INAIL insurance data, as it is the only source of such information in Italy, after the stalling of a project by the National Register of Work Place Illnesses (Registro Nazionale delle malattie professionali) to epidemiologically map MSD. It is important to affirm from the start that insurance claims relating to workplace-illnesses are a ‘social fact’ and not simply a medical fact. This affirmation is the thread that links – in the different studies of the two authors – the chapters that follow this introduction.

As Hatzfeld notes in his historiographical work on the subject in France, work-related MSD has been recognised since Ramazzini (18th Century father of work-related medicine), but it only became a social question once it was political accepted, legally recognised and quantified in insurance claims. The fact that this process is based on political and social choices is clear from the fact that Italy lags 36 years behind France in its professional recognition of MSD (happening in 2008 and 1972 respectively), and also from the fact that in Italy there exist important territorial and sectorial distortions both in trends in insurance claims and in the recognition of those claims. Obviously choosing to begin from all insurance claims made and not only from those illness positively recognized by the insuring institution, is a choice that allows us to investigate the diverse dynamics inherent in the processes of recognition, and to see that they are also subject to distortions.

INAIL’s statistics naturally constitute the base of the official reporting on work-place accidents and illnesses, as well as being used for the calculation of insurance premiums that – as a function of estimated risk – businesses have to pay to the Institute. They also constitute the principle source of information systems on the surveillance of work-related illnesses (such as the MalProf project and Flussi Informativi INAIL-Regioni). The objective of the project was therefore primarily to develop a method of analysis that attempted to partially reveal the dynamics that underlie insurance claims and their recognition allowing us to say something more about the trends of MSD in Italy. The key for the development of such methodologies has been identified in our analysis of different territories, in particular at the provincial level and in the productive sector. The objective of the investigation has been to discriminate as much as possible between these components: the behaviour of businesses and the related sectors; the behaviour of the claims of insured labourers; the decision making behaviour of INAIL in its role as insurance body; and the role of other institutional actors/factors. This approach has brought to light new issues, as well as deepening investigations already present in the literature. It reveals the phenomenon of MSD in all its complexity, a subject until now underestimated in Italy, in which territorial differences distort the figures beyond those logically expected in the different productive sectors.

This report is the fruit of the independent work of the two authors, who have partial differences in the interpretation of the subject matter and have concentrated on different chapters. Chapter 1 is dedicated to a general outline of the phenomenon of MSD, while Chapter 2 presents the theoretical framework of the phenomenon of insurance claims. Chapter 3 gives a complete illustration of the dataset used in the analysis, presents the descriptive evidence, and describes the problems we met in the application of the administrative data supplied by the 2013 edition of Flussi informativi Inail-Regioni. Chapter 4 is dedicated to the statistical analysis of the phenomenon of insurance claims and their recognition from an economic-organisational and sociological perspective. Chapter 5 reconstructs the framework of Italian institutions in which the analysis of MSD insurance claims are situated. Chapter 6 engages in statistical analysis of the phenomenon of insurance claims and their recognition from a economic-juridical perspective as well as a politological persepective, as outlined in Chapters 2 and 5.

The research was carried out as part of a study on health and safety at work by the Marco Biagi Foundation, and thanks to funding by the foundation of the Banca nazionale delle comunicazioni. The data with which the research was carried out – Flussi informativi Inail regioni, 2013 Edition – was provided by the Epidemiology Unit ASL TO3, in the region of Piedmont. The authors would like to thank: the institutions that allowed this work to happen; the coordinators of the research project, Ylenia Curzi and Iacopo Senatori, the researchers within the Marco Biagi Foundation; Angelo D’Errico and Osvaldo Pasqualini from Epidemiology Unit ASL TO3; and Giuseppe Fiorani from University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, for their advice and their help in filling the gaps in our knowledge.

(FULL TEXT IN ITALIAN: http://www.fmb.unimore.it/on-line/home/ricerca/pubblicazioni/quaderni-fondazione-marco-biagi/documento9387.html )

English: This book is the result of my master's dissertation in Sociology (2012), and brings a theoretical study about immaterial labour from Marxian categories present in the three volumes of O Capital and in the "Unpublished Sixth Chapter" of Capital. I maintain a controversy with several theorists of immaterial labor who questioned the validity of the social theory of value developed by Marx to understand the recent expansion of immaterial labor in capitalist production.

Português: Este livro é composto por uma versão ligeiramente alterada de minha dissertação de mestrado (IFCH / UNICAMP 2012) , e traz um estudo teórico sobre o trabalho imaterial a partir das categorias marxianas presentes nos três volumes de O Capital e no Capítulo VI Inédito de O Capital. Mantenho uma polêmica com diversos teóricos do trabalho imaterial  que questionaram a validade da teoria social do valor desenvolvida por Marx para compreensão da recente expansão do trabalho imaterial na produção capitalista.

The paper discusses the issues attitudes towards work of the young generation-students from Visegrad (V4) countries. The young generation of V4 countries is the first generation whose reality is based on the laws of capitalism, with all the opportunities and threats presented by this system, also in the employment domain. The paper first presents the concept of attitudes, specially attitudes towards work. An analysis was carried out on the basis of empirical research, with the use of auditorium survey, within the framework of the Visegrad Standard Grant 1. In our paper will be analized three components attitudes toward work: cognitive, affective and behavioural. During the analysis following questions will be answered: What is the students' knowledge about getting a job? What is the value of work in their lives? What is their work experience? The differences and similarities between young generation in certain countries will be pointed out.

The changes in technology in the public transport sector
have seen the introduction of new forms of transport service using
app technology and platforms. This is bringing to the fore new
services and ways of generating value. It is culminating in the
(re)constitution of the labour process and its constituent labour
relations, forging new spaces of control and resistance. Drawing
from the experience of app taxi work in Johannesburg, South Africa,
this paper unpacks emerging power relations — how they are being
(re)configured or (re)negotiated as a result of new ways of providing
public transport driven by digital technology. The paper highlights
the paradoxical nature of these emerging power relations. On the
one hand, the taxi platforms are enhancing employers’ control of the
labour process while obscuring the true nature of the employment
and power relations. Conversely, they are forging new virtual spaces
for organizing resistance and solidarity. The paper suggests that app
work does not disperse workers’ agency and collective organization
and voice but reconstructs it. New digital technology dislodges old
forms of resistance while opening new space(s) for innovation and
new repertoires of organizing and collective bargaining. However,
these repertoires are usually adaptations from previous experiences,
routines and conceptions of social justice. Changes only manifest on
the margins of established repertoires (Tilly 1986) and are difficult
to sustain.

SOCIOLOGY OF WORK is a growing sub discipline within Sociology. The International Sociological Association has a Research Committee (RC 30) dedicated to Sociology of Work. Sociology of Work is taught in many universities throughout the world. The purpose of this  presentation is to introduce students to Sociology of Work.  Here I have dwelt on Nature and Scope of Sociology of Work, Work and Leisure, Occupations and Recent trends in Work with special reference to India.

Title: The condition of Proletariety: Precariousness of Work in Global Capitalism
SUMMARY
Chapter 1
Work and Global Capitalism: A critical-historical analysis
Chapter 2
The Condition of Proletariat in New Modernity
Chapter 3
Social strangeness and fetishism: Theoretical-critical notes
Chapter 4
The Proletarian-peddler
Chapter 5
Work and Strangeness in Global Capitalism
Chapter 6
The dispute over the Intangible: Management strategies of capital in the era of globalization
Chapter 7
Structural crisis of capital, social barbarism and ecological catastrophe
Chapter 8
Capitalism as farce

Global Value Chain (GVC) analysis is part and parcel of mainstream
development discourse and policy. Supplier firms are encouraged, with
state support, to ‘link-up’ with trans-national lead firms. Such
arrangements, it is argued, will reduce poverty and contribute to
meaningful socio-economic development. This portrayal of global
political economic relations represents a ‘problem-solving’
interpretation of reality. This article proposes an alternative analytical
approach rooted in ‘critical theory’ which reformulates the GVC
approach to better investigate and explain the reproduction of global
poverty, inequality and divergent forms of national development. It
suggests re-labelling GVC as Global Poverty Chain (GPC) analysis. GPC’s
are examined in the textiles, food, and high-tech sectors. The article
details how workers in these chains are systematically paid less than
their subsistence costs, how trans-national corporations use their global
monopoly power to capture the lion’s share of value created within
these chains, and how these relations generate processes of
immiserating growth. The article concludes by considering how to
extend GPC analysis.

This article reviews conventional theories about various aspects of labor migration: Its origins, stability over time, and patterns of migrant settlement. For each of these aspects, we provide alternative explanatory hypotheses derived from the notions of increasing articulation of the international system and the social embeddedness of its various subprocesses, including labor flows. A typology of sources and outcomes of contemporary immigration is presented as an heuristic device to organize the diversity of such movements as described in the empirical literature.

Il presente lavoro, incentrato sulla storia del lavoro e dei lavoratori nel mondo romano, si propone di ricostruire, attraverso l'epigrafia monumentale, l'identità e il profilo socio-economico di alcuni individui vissuti a Mutina o nel suo ager in età tardorepubblicana e altoimperiale. Si tratta di alcuni uomini e una donna le cui iscrizioni, di natura prevalentemente funeraria, ricordano diverse figure professionali: un aurifex, un copo,  un medicus, un negotians lanarius, un praeceptor, un tonsor, diversi vestiarii, un vicesimarius, un possibile unctor e una vilica. Nel testo si formulano inoltre alcune ipotesi in merito alle funzioni esercitate in ambito domestico dai cosiddetti "delicia" o "pueri delicati"; vengono infine analizzati i tre gentilizi di derivazione professionale finora attestati nel Modenese: Aerarius, Aurarius e Purpurarius. Quest'ultimo nome, in particolare, fino a oggi sembrerebbe attestato esclusivamente nella colonia di Mutina e nel suo ager.

El riesgo conforma un elemento tácito en la biografía de los agentes en sociedades contemporáneas, pero en el campo del trabajo esta situación es significativamente más perceptible. Para el caso mexicano esta situación es imperantes porque más de la mitad de la actividad económica se ubica en la informalidad, el restante en empleos estables pero contenidos de precariedad y flexibilidad, más el desempleo abierto. Tal panorama influye en los estados subjetivos a través de preocupación por perder su fuente de ingreso en el
futuro inmediato. El objetivo es examinar el riesgo laboral del periodo 1995 - 2018, además de determinar qué  situación personal y laboral generan tal percepción. Lo anterior se analiza con la encuesta Latinobarómetro 2018 a partir de una variable que indaga el temor a ser despedido; esto con un procedimiento cuantitativo transversal y otro multifactorial ordinal. Los resultados indican predominancia de riesgo laboral en la mayor a de periodos analizados que repuntan en etapas de crisis o recesiones económicas y quienes perciben
mayor riesgo laboral son sectores en desventajas como jóvenes en edades productivas de clases bajas con menor formación escolar, con responsabilidades familiares y cuyas condiciones laborales son asalariadas o en informalidad.

Internet technological discoveries have shaped many aspects of human life, including economic transaction for goods and services. Online-based transportation service is one form of digital economies, which was born out of the current progresses of internet applications integrated to smartphones. Motor cycle ride-sharing have been existing in Indonesia from a long time ago, but it become much more popular after being offered through internet apps on smartphones. Based on a research on the workers of Go-Jek online-based transportation service, we found that this job has absorbed a very large number of workers, and the majority of them are young workers. The new things in this job is its job design is fully based on the usage of algorithm, namely in communicating, supervising, rewarding, and punishing the workers. This affects the job process which provides an ultimate authority to the company to make any decision over the workers. Lastly, we especially analysis the process of deskilling and skill trap in which the young workers do not have any opportunity to get rank promotion, career mobility, and income up-grading. Considering they are still young and have very long productive age, this issue is urgent to study further by policy makers in employment sector.

En el marco de los debates sobre “el futuro del trabajo” y/o “el trabajo del futuro”, nos proponemos abordar la cultura del trabajo en el marco de la sociedad informacional, entendida como el orden social emergente que deriva de las nuevas pautas de organización tecnosocial, con expresiones propias en cada cultura y en cada disciplina. Particularmente abordaremos las mutaciones de la percepción del tiempo y el espacio en los nuevos modelos productivos, y el modo en que este emergente epocal se discontinúa de la modernidad tardía para impactar en la cultura del trabajo y en las organizaciones inerciales del movimiento obrero organizado. Para esto adoptaremos la perspectiva interseccional, ya que —según entendemos— es un recurso teórico-metodológico que presenta algunas ventajas comparativas para abordar, desarrollar, debatir y visibilizar esta problemática.

For decades, we have related to climate change mainly as consumers and voters. We have been responsibilised as meat eaters and airplane travellers, we have been urged to vote for the party with the most green agenda, but we have never been addressed as workers. This fits well with the general idea that consumers and voters have power and responsibility, while workers… well, they just have to get on with their work. However, this pattern is starting to change. First future workers started striking at their schools, now they are calling adults to join a worldwide strike for the climate. The Green New Deal has risen to prominence with its promises of a world of sustainable jobs, and a new report argues that a carbon-neutral economy requires a massive shortening of the work week. Yet there is little discussion about the work that destroys the planet, in a variety of different locations from tar sands and coal mines, over agro-industrial landscapes to downtown skyscrapers and airports, on cargo and cruise ships. Sometimes we hear of coal miners protesting pit closures, or unions demanding subsidies for steel and auto industries, but we rarely hear of the guys pushing oil stocks at Wall St., the engineers designing the next pipeline, advertising agencies pimping mass consumption, or the professors teaching the next generation of petroleum geologists. Some workers could leave their jobs easily, while others are deeply dependent on the next paycheck. These workers have an interest in habitable environments, but are caught in a maddening contradiction, asked by their employers to destroy the conditions of life to make a living. Such work is habitually thought of as necessary, even rational, but as we rapidly approach climatic tipping points, this appears increasingly irresponsible.

SUMARIO
Clásicos contemporáneos
Juan José Castillo, Richard K. Brown (1933-2007) ......................................... 3
Richard K. Brown, ¿Sucesión o acumulación? Sobre los cambios en los enfoques
teóricos y en las preocupaciones sustantivas de la sociología del trabajo y del
empleo .......................................................................................................... 5
Juan Iglesias Martínez, “A las carreras”. Una nueva precariedad laboral
étnica en la región madrileña: el caso de los trabajadores ecuatorianos ..... 21
Josefi na Piñón, Empleo y trabajo voluntario en organizaciones de
intervención social y de cooperación al desarrollo .................................. 49
Francisco Torres Pérez y María Elena Gadea Montesinos, Inserción
laboral de los inmigrantes, estructura etno-fragmentada y crisis
económica. El caso del Campo de Cartagena (Murcia) ........................... 73
María del Mar Maira Vidal, La Responsabilidad Social de las Empresas
transnacionales con sede central en España: ¿Neopaternalismo industrial
o globalización de derechos? .................................................................. 95
Santiago Castillo, La formación profesional de trabajadores en el
extranjero, 1903-1936. (I) De ensayo a servicio organizado, 1903-1910 ... 119
Noticias
VI Congreso Latinoamericano de Sociología del Trabajo .................................... 163
Notas de lectura
Miguel Martínez Lucio, Ana Marta Guillén Rodríguez, Rodolfo
Gutiérrez Palacios y Sergio González Begega (eds.), Calidad del
trabajo en la Unión Europea: Concepto, tensiones y dimensiones, Pamplona,
Aranzadi, 294 pp. .................................................................................. 167
Rafael Merino, Oriol Homs, La formación profesional en España.
Hacia la sociedad del conocimiento, Barcelona, Fundació la Caixa,
Colección Estudios Sociales núm. 25, 2008 ............................................ 169

This paper explores the potential that visual methods, approaches, and resources offer to the sociologist of work. It looks at the way work is represented in a range of publications and asks questions about what the visual can add to our understanding of the workplace, workers, and work processes. It argues that we need to develop and expand a sociological language of the visual in order to better understand cultural and other aspects of work and employment.

¿Qué dicen los cuerpos de su entorno social? Esta es la pregunta que guía la integración de este libro. La exploración gira entorno a la salud de las y los profesoras/es de universidades estatales quienes forman parte del Sistema Nacional de Investigadores (SNI). A lo largo de las últimas tres décadas, la reconfiguración neoliberal de la educación superior pública ha empeorado sus condiciones laborales, ha subvertido su autonomía académica y hecho añico su participación democrática en la toma de decisiones. Una larga tradición autoritaria y un culto a la personalidad han convertido a los liderazgos universitarios en regentes absolutos que reclaman obediencia incondicional. Ante la omnipresencia del miedo, el descontento individual y colectivo  del cuerpo docente al igual que el coraje y la rabia no encuentran salidas racionales a través de la crítica constructiva, la queja razonada o propuestas políticas colectivas de cómo transformar las instituciones de educación superior. Los afectos tienen que ser reprimidos. En estas condiciones, algunas/os profesoras/es desarrollan los más diversos malestares psicofísicos. En este libro nos centramos en la relación entre culturas organizacionales, violencia en el trabajo y dos tipos de alteraciones de salud: trastornos cardiovasculares y cefaleas primarias. Cada trastorno es abordado a través de métodos cuantitativos para ubicar los factores organizacionales e interactivos que participan en su etiología; y a través de estudios de caso que profundizan en la comprensión de la relación entre entorno laboral y alteraciones de la salud.

There are many assumptions regarding the effects of tourism on the gendered lives of people. Oftentimes it is assumed that women are particularly affected by tourism without the necessary research to back such assertions, such as Botswana’s National Ecotourism Strategy (NES) which states that tourism may be positive for women but negative for men. Inspired by this binary construction, and with a theoretical framework which forges a staunch gender lens, this thesis explores how one ecotourism camp, located in rural Central District Botswana, subverts the broader gender order within which it exists. The research is based upon the use of participant observation, interviews and an analysis of family trees. The key conclusion is that the extent to which the ecotourism camp alters existing gender orders is limited. Not only is the camp structured through discourses similar to those of the broader gender order but there are few competing interests and limited cross-cultural interaction which would facilitate any subversion (whether positive or negative). This leads to the questioning of whether ecotourism, as a developmental concept, has been stretched too far.

Much current work on labour conditions is founded on the notion of precarity. This article contends that there is a lack of historical depth in the use of this concept. By looking at the case of British steamship workers, it argues that the Standard Employment Relationship (SER) which precarity theory has attributed to "advanced" economies in the twentieth century was not always the norm. The employment of British steamship workers was never characterised by a SER. They lacked labour freedom and were regularly imprisoned for work-related offences. They were never fully participant in the democratising processes that played out in liberal democratic societies. Seafarers were to an extraordinary extent subject to long-term debt relationships which generated structural poverty. They had life trajectories of a "catastrophic" character, involving difficulty in forming stable families, serious injury and early death. While British steamship workers were relatively privileged in relation to colonised workers, their case nevertheless places a question mark over the standard precarity theory narrative of the rise and fall of the SER.

Online platforms have disrupted parts of the capitalist economy, with allegedly severe consequences in the world of work. It is difficult to assess the potential magnitude of this effect, however, because little is known about the conditions under which platforms take over any given market, industry or occupation. This study examines live music in Germany and the UK, where online platforms do not dominate, despite considerable digitalization of market intermediaries. We argue that the live music market frustrates online platforms because (1) assessments of value are qualitative; (2) the task is complex and contingent; and (3) the organizational field is fragmented. Digitalization has varying effects on the organization of work and exchange relationships between musicians, intermediaries and clients. We find that, as the degree of digitalization increases, matching services tend to work less as a workers' representative-which is traditionally the case for live music agents– and more as a force of marketization that disciplines workers by orchestrating price-based competition.

Les discours politiques européens ont conclu dans les années 2000 à l’avènement d’un nouveau paradigme de la gestion sociale : l’État social actif. Le législateur leur a emboîté le pas. Dans cette foulée est né le métier de conseiller-référent, en charge de gérer l’accompagnement actif des demandeurs d’emploi, selon le nouveau référentiel politique. Cependant, rien n’indique que sur le terrain de la mise en œuvre de ces prescriptions, la transmission se soit faite de manière directe. Nous nous intéresserons dans ce travail à la question de savoir quelles ont été les implications pour les agents de la mise en œuvre de l’activation de l’État social, dans le cas délimité des agents d’accompagnement des chômeurs. Quelles sont les conséquences concrètes du nouveau paradigme de l’activation et quelle influence y jouent les agents chargés de sa mise en œuvre.

This article reimagines poverty governance as a labor process. Extending theories of bureaucratic fields and street-level bureaucracies, the proposed model suggests that the state manages the poor through fragmented activities embedded in horizontal and vertical relations of production. I use an ethnography of 911 ambulance operations in a single California county to advance this perspective. From plugging gunshot wounds to moving sidewalk slumberers, ambulance crews interact with a mostly impoverished clientele base by transforming spaces in bodies and bodies in spaces. This two-sided governance puts the ambulance in recurrent contact with the hospital emergency department and the police squad car. Across these institutions, ambulance crews struggle with their nurse and police counterparts over the horizontal shuffling of burdensome work, shaping the life chances of their subjects in the process. At the same time, bureaucratic and capitalistic forces from above activate a lean ambulance fleet that is minimally wasteful and highly flexible. This verticality structures clientele processing through the ambulance and fuels tensions across the frontlines of governance. In an effort to advance theory and fill an empirical gap, this article proposes a new model for understanding the management of marginality and highlights an overlooked case of poverty regulation.

L'epigramma III, 59 di Marziale offre lo spunto per riflettere sul ruolo delle categorie sociali subalterne nelle città romane, con particolare riferimento a Bononia e a Mutina, dove un ciabattino e un lavandaio, dice il poeta, offrirono spettacoli di gladiatori alle rispettive comunità. Marziale potrebbe avere citato due categorie professionali particolarmente umili (il sutor e il fullo) per evidenziare lo scandalo, tuttavia, è anche possibile che queste due citazioni nascondano precisi riferimenti all'economia e alla storia sociale delle due città emiliane.

This study is an attempt to analyze the logic of technological progress critically within the context of the concept Industry 4.0 (thereafter I4.0). In this study, I4.0 and its subcomponents are considered as new discursive tools of technology driven strategies imposed by corporations and the public institutions. This study underlines that technological advancements should not be considered as neutral developments targeting the well-being of all. Since the companies and profit-driven public institutions try to find the ways of the possible benefits of the I4.0 debate, this study draws attention to the necessity of alternative strategies to prevent capitalist hegemony on technological advancements. This article also underlines that technological advancements manipulated by the ruling class segments of the world should be taken into account as one of the causes creating cross-country inequalities and intra-working class conflicts. On the other hand, a potential road map for
pro-labor organizations—those which can take responsibilities for the working class struggle—in developing strategies to take the advantage of technological novelties for the benefit of all is discussed in the article. To sum up, it departs to analyze the concept I4.0 and the related issues with a critical perspective.