Work

For most of us, work is a daily occurrence. It has been estimated that workers in Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries spend 1765 hours labouring in paid employment per year and one-tenth to one-fifth of their time carrying out unpaid domestic work (OECD, 2013a). Work is therefore a common lived experience that plays a role in the production of social life, identities and experiences of belonging. The sociological significance of work has been recognised to varying degrees by social theorists of the past and present and early sociology in particular was very concerned with the meaning of work for identities and social cohesion. This chapter very broadly, and by no means exhaustively, charts the development of social theories of work as well as the major shifts in the nature of the organisation of paid labour in the global north. The three descriptors most often used to identify these major historical shifts are ‘industrialisation’, ‘feminisation’ and ‘globalisation’ (although note that the wholesale use of these terms is controversial, none of these factors occurred and are occurring seamlessly, at one time, and across all nation states). Beginning with industrialisation, and paying particular attention to the relationship between gender identities and labour (gendered jobs and organisations are perhaps the sites at which identity and belonging are most obviously connected to work), this chapter examines how these historical shifts have affected workers’ identities, workplace identities and experiences of belonging. The final section of the chapter will also consider the ‘end of work’ thesis, put forward by individualisation theorists. In recent years some scholars have claimed that work is no longer relevant for identity and belonging; leisure and consumption (discussed in Chapter 12 and 13) have been marked as more meaningful for post-industrial and late modern experiences of selfhood. This chapter will argue that while processes of globalisation may have impacted the ways in which rich nations think about and do work, this does not mean that work is irrelevant for contemporary experience.