Harper Douglas: The Cultural Study of Work

This anthology brings more than fifty years of scholarship of the culture and sociology of work into a vivid introductory and analytical textbook. Sociologists have long sought to understand the universal activity of work from the point of view of the worker. This book shows how common sociological themes such as socialization, social interaction, the social construction of time, and deviance are experienced in work settings as diverse as the factory, the night club, the restaurant, and to offices of high tech professionals. Featuring vivid ethnography, the book is organized around the concept of culture: the recognition that people doing things together organize social life in common and identifiable ways. As such, the book is a poignant core textbook or a perfect supplement to standard texts in the sociology of work that approach work from the demographic, structural, or macro perspectives.