In Search of Labour in Labour Studies

Abstract

Contrary to a number of new trends in sociology, which we discuss below, we think that work is central to people’s lives. Not only for the simple reason that we spend most of our lives at the workplace, but also because our own experience tells us how central work is to the way we lead our lives, to the way we think and feel about ourselves and the people and the world around us. Making such a statement begs the question of what we mean when we talk about work. We will discuss this in more detail below. For the time being it may suffice to say that we understand work in a very general way and in reference to Marx’s definition as any activity, which creates something new, that fulfils human needs (without judging whether these needs are ‘real’ or ‘imagined’, ‘right’, or ‘wrong’). This includes services and care, paid and unpaid, formal and informal work as well as voluntary work. Our research focuses on paid work in industry and thus on one segment of work in people’s lives that occupies the better part of their days during the major part of their lives (if we assume that they are in paid employment between the ages of 20 and 60).