Sociologie du Travail · 1994 · 21 citations · 0 references
Michel Freyssenet New Leads for Investigating the Conceptualization of Work On the basis of recent developments in the study of work, an overall picture is drawn, and issues for future research are pointed out. Work is defined as a contextualized, informed, normative, evaluated action performed under constraint. An activity becomes «work» not due to its nature but because of the characteristics of the social relations surrounding it. By examining responses to the incomplete, nonneutral nature of the wage-earning contract, an explanation is given about how this social relation has become dominant in the history of our societies so as to outweigh and subordinate other social relations.