Description
Book SynopsisAs the percentage of people working in the service economy continues to rise, there is a need to examine workplace harm within low-paid, insecure, flexible and short-term forms of ‘affective labour’. This is the first book to discuss harm through an ultra-realist lens and examines the connection between individuals, their working conditions and management culture. Using data from a long-term ethnographic study of the service economy, it investigates the reorganisation of labour markets and the shift from security to flexibility, a central function of consumer capitalism. It highlights working conditions and organisational practices which employees experience as normal and routine but within which multiple harms occur. Challenging current thinking within sociology and policy analysis, it reconnects ideology and political economy with workplace studies and uses examples of legal and illegal activity to demonstrate the multiple harms within the service economy.
Trade Review“…an exciting progression for social harm studies that offers tangible insight into how harm occurs in all facets of the workplace. I would recommend it to those influencing policy as providing concrete analytical tools for the design of labour market policies that can reduce harm... [and] academics who are already involved in the study of social harm as well as those wishing to gain a good overall insight into the field.” People, Place and Policy
Table of ContentsIntroduction; Chapter 1 – Reinterpreting social harm; Chapter 2 – Restructuring labour markets; Chapter 3 – Organisational culture and management practice; Chapter 4 – The absence of stability; Chapter 5 – The absence of protection; Chapter 6 – The positive motivation to harm; Chapter 7 – The violence of ideology; Conclusion.
