Peer2Politics

Workplace regimes are the complexes of formal and informal relations and institutions that structure the organisation of work in modern societies. A comparative understanding of their structure and significance is indispensable to socio-economics, for the organisation of work shapes not only the experience of life on the job but the material conditions and competitive prospects of workers and firms, the interests underpinning macro-level political bargains, and the prospects for social solidarity more generally. It is impossible to understand the varieties of capitalism, or their non-capitalist rivals and predecessors, without a firm understanding of the politics and practices of workplace regimes. But sociologists of work and comparative political economists tend to talk past each other, leaving potentially profitable opportunities for mutual dialogue unexploited. 

At Slate, Will Oremus raises the question “What if technological innovation is a job-killer after all?” (“The New Luddites,” August 6). Rather than being “the cure for economic doldrums,” he writes, automation “may destroy more jobs than it creates”: