Abstract
This chapter considers some dominant ideas concerning the changing nature of work over the twentieth century, many of which assume that economic growth and technological and occupational changes over the last century have undermined the traditional tensions in the nature of work: between taking pride in work and alienation from it. It sketches some of the empirical historical evidence available for Britain and America with the intention not to give an in-depth analysis and comparison of labour market statistics but more a contextualisation of the debates on the nature of work against a background of evidence and argument on the changing demographics of American and British work.
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Notes
See chapter 2 of S. Jefferys (1986), Management and Managed: Fifty Years of Crisis at Chrysler, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
See C. Wright Mills, The New Men of Power: America’s Labor Leaders (c1948); and The Sociological Imagination (1959).
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© 2011 John Kirk, Christine Wall and Steve Jefferys
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Kirk, J., Wall, C. (2011). Charting Historical Change: Work in the US and UK during the Twentieth Century. In: Work and Identity. Identity Studies in the Social Sciences. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230305625_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230305625_2
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, London
Print ISBN: 978-1-349-36871-6
Online ISBN: 978-0-230-30562-5
eBook Packages: Palgrave Social Sciences CollectionSocial Sciences (R0)