Suchergebnisse

Several approaches within the sociology of deviance stress the role of agents of control in the definition of behaviour as socially significant forms of rule-breaking. Yet studies of the operation of social control are rare. The paper takes up the attempt by Ditton, in Contrology, to develop a theory of crime in terms of the actions of controllers. It is suggested that Ditton's account gives insufficient attention to the constraints on controllers and in particular to the ability of subordinate groups to counter the exercise of control. Using case study material from several factories, relating to the control strategies of management and to one instance of an attempt to impose managerial definitions of discipline, a different account is developed. This stresses that the form taken by industrial discipline will depend on more general patterns of control over the labour process, with discipline being the product of distinct managerial interests and of workers' counter-strategies. It is suggested that this provides the basis for a realist, as distinct from an idealist or interactionist, interpretation of discipline and control.

This book brings together leading academics from important schools of social and economic theory to make a pressing, spirited, and highly engaging case for the relevance of these particular perspectives in contributing to the analysis of contemporary work. The schools covered are: Weberian, Marxian, Durkheimian, feminist, neo-classical economics, institutional economics, ethics, Foucauldian, postmodernist, organizational sociology and economic sociology. It is an essential text. for academics and advanced students concerned with the sociology of work and labour/industrial relations. - ;Work i.