From examinations of the archetypal alienated factory hand to interrogations of the meanings of unpaid labour, ‘work’ has always been a central sociological concept. But in a period of global economic decline, its importance is especially apparent, and research in and around the sociology of work flourishes now as it has never done before. The sociology of work embraces a range of methodological and theoretical approaches, while drawing on—and contributing to—other fields, such as economics, geography, psychology, and business and management. Answering the need for an authoritative reference work to make sense of the subdiscipline’s enormous literature, and the continuing explosion in research output, this new title from Routledge, edited by Tim Strangleman, a prominent scholar in the field, is a four-volume collection of classic and contemporary contributions.

The collection is divided into five principal parts. Drawing on the classical canon, as well as later attempts to conceptualize work and employment, Part 1 (‘Theories of Work’) gathers a wide variety of accounts of work from sociologists and other key thinkers. Part 2 (‘Methods’), meanwhile, assembles key scholarship to explore the methodological issues of writing and researching about work.

Part 3 (‘Experience of Work’) collects the most important accounts of the experience of work, including participant and non-participant observations, while Part 4 (‘Conceptualizing Work’) focuses on the rich variety of ways in which the study of work has been approached. The materials in this part cover, for example, issues such as: gender and work; the visual and work; literature and work; music and work; ‘embeddedness’; the body and work; emotional labour; and work and leisure.

The final part (‘Work Futures’) brings together essential contributions on topics such as ‘the end of work’; work and the ‘new poor’; work utopias and distopias. There is also an extended section on deindustrialization and unemployment.

The Sociology of Work is supplemented with a full index, and includes a comprehensive introduction, newly written by the editor, which places the collected material in its historical and intellectual context. It is destined to be valued by scholars, students, and researchers as a vital research resource.