The Harms of Work: An Ultra-Realist Account of the Service Economy

by Anthony Lloyd

Overview

As the percentage of people working in the service economy continues to rise, there is a need to examine workplace harm within low-paid, insecure, flexible and short-term forms of ‘affective labour’. This is the first book to discuss harm through an ultra-realist lens and examines the connection between individuals, their working conditions and management culture.

Using data from a long-term ethnographic study of the service economy, it investigates the reorganisation of labour markets and the shift from security to flexibility, a central function of consumer capitalism. It highlights working conditions and organisational practices which employees experience as normal and routine but within which multiple harms occur.

Challenging current thinking within sociology and policy analysis, it reconnects ideology and political economy with workplace studies and uses examples of legal and illegal activity to demonstrate the multiple harms within the service economy.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781529204032
Publisher:	Bristol University Press
Publication date:	11/09/2019
Series:	Studies in Social Harm
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	200
Product dimensions:	6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x (d)

About the Author

Dr Anthony Lloyd is Co-Director at the Teesside Centre for Realist Criminology and Senior Lecturer in Criminology & Sociology at the School of Social Sciences, Humanities & Law, Teesside University. His research interests include work and employment, labour markets and the leisure and service economy, consumer culture, social harm, critical criminology, youth identity and transitions, political economy, debt, social theory, class cultures, and social change.

He researches broadly on the topics of work and leisure, most recently investigating the lives of young men and women engaged in low-paid service sector jobs in the North East. He has published work in this area, including his first book, Labour Markets and Identity on the Post-Industrial Assembly Line (Ashgate, 2013).

Table of Contents

About the author vi

Acknowledgements vii

Foreword Christina Pantazis Simon Pemberton Steve Tombs viii

Introduction 1

1 Reinterpreting social harm 13

2 Restructuring labour markets 33

3 Profitability, efficiency and targets 55

4 Absence of stability 77

5 Positive motivation to harm 97

6 Absence of protection 117

7 The violence of ideology 137

Conclusion 157

References 167

Index 185

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

"Drawing on original and insightful ethnographic research, this book is indispensable for academics, practicioners and policy makers interested in the harms associated with contemporary service work. A compelling and thought-provoking read." Sam Scott, University of Gloucestershire

Editorial Reviews

…an exciting progression for social harm studies that offers tangible insight into how harm occurs in all facets of the workplace. I would recommend it to those influencing policy as providing concrete analytical tools for the design of labour market policies that can reduce harm... [and] academics who are already involved in the study of social harm as well as those wishing to gain a good overall insight into the field.” People, Place and Policy

From the Publisher