Books & ideas

The Rising Invisible Majority

Alessandro Arrigoni & Emanuele Ferragina — 2021-03-01T08:00:00Z

A period of political and economic turmoil calls for a new analytical framework to be developed. Drawing upon the tools of social science and fiction, the “Rising Invisible Majority” project examines how the shifts of a long-term political economy rendered a large share of its population ‘invisible'.

Rethinking Class

Nicolas Duvoux — 2020-10-05T07:00:00Z

The employment structure has changed since the 1970's. For Daniel Oesch, this means we need new models to describe today's labour markets and new class schemes to move beyond industrial-based categories. We also need to understand the political consequences of the collapse of the industrial working class in Europe.

“Brains” and their “Servants”: the New Class Domination

Bruno Palier — 2020-06-25T07:00:00Z

Advanced capitalist democracies have undergone deep changes over the past thirty years, described by Torben Iversen as a transition to a knowledge-based economy. However, his account misses an aspect of class development: the emergence of a new proletariat, highly exploited in the knowledge economy.

Fortunetellers and Teahouse Workers

Di Wang — 2020-04-09T07:00:00Z

Is there a better way than drinking tea and chatting in a local teahouse to get a sense of everyday life in Sichuan's capital city? A historian of Chengdu and tea culture explains the role of teahouses in public life and the business opportunities they offer to migrant workers.

Logistical Meanderings

Carlotta Benvegnù & David Gaborieau — 2019-01-07T07:00:00Z

The term ‘logistics' refers to work connected to warehouses: storage, order packing, handling etc. These activities, which are often too arduous to be carried out over the long term, now structure the condition of the working classes and their career paths.

The Working Classes in Contemporary France

Pierre Gilbert — 2017-10-19T07:00:00Z

A coauthored volume offers a panoramic overview of working classes in contemporary France. These sociologists offer a theoretical clarification of the concept and show its relevance for describing this social group and its historical transformations.

In the Hell of Street-Level Bureaucracy

Nicolas Duvoux — 2016-12-01T08:00:00Z

Ken Loach's latest film, which won the Palme d'Or prize at the Cannes Film Festival, charts the struggles of a carpenter trying to get state welfare after suffering a heart attack. I, Daniel Blake offers an accurate depiction of the dehumanisation suffered by the most destitute in a United Kingdom undermined by de-industrialisation and inequality.

E. P. Thompson: A Life of Struggle

François Jarrige — 2016-03-14T08:00:00Z

A great historian of the English working class, a major intellectual figure in debates surrounding Marxism in the years 1960-1970, and an anti-nuclear activist who initiated an environmentalist critique of capitalism—such were the many faces of Edward Palmer Thompson, whose work deeply permeates the different social sciences to this day.