GÖT_F_03 Transformations of Work and Employment and Social Cohesion: Findings of Research on Work in the Light of a Basic Category of the Social

Objectives/ Research Questions

Central findings of the sociology of work and of industrial sociology on the current transformations of work and employment – fragmentation, polarization, and delimitation (Entgrenzung) – refer to centrifugal, not to binding forces. They point to the erosion of social or organizational cohesion, or at least to a restructuring of the world of work, which counteracts and hampers microsocial practices of social cohesion. These findings must be systematized under the analytical focus of social cohesion.

The project aims to contribute to a better understanding of the implications of current changes of work and employment for social cohesion. For this aim, an analytical concept for the study of social cohesion in the world of work will be developed by examining concepts of work sociology – such as solidarity and competition, cooperation and conflict, and bonding and delimitation – and by drawing on social-theoretical conceptual work carried out in Cluster 1: Theories, Politics, and Cultures of Cohesion.

The development of such an analytical concept “social cohesion in work and employment” is carried out by means of an examination of existing concepts related to the sociology of work – i.e. by evaluating secondary literature – and in close exchange with theoretical-conceptual projects on social cohesion at RISC. The working concept is used for the meta-evaluation of empirical findings and at the same time is further developed in discussing them. In the sense of a meta-study, the empirical findings on the current change of work, which were and are generated in different research projects at the Soziologische Forschungsinstitut Goettingen (SOFI), will be evaluated, reinterpreted, and brought together with the help of the developed working concept under the analytical focus of social cohesion. For this purpose, not only relevant publications (monographs and articles), interim, and final reports but also internal SOFI papers will be used. Rather, guideline-based discussions and moderated theme-centred roundtable discussions with the primary researchers are also carried out with the aim of encouraging the primary researchers themselves to reflect on and possibly reinterpret their findings with a focus on social cohesion or in the light of the categories of the working concept. As a result of the discussions, it might be possible to have recourse to the primary material in individual cases.

Thematic Reference to Social Cohesion

The achievement of the project is to relate SOFI’s diverse research on the transformation of work to questions of social cohesion and to rethink sociological findings on work in a new and systematic way under this analytical reference point. Socioeconomic factors (e.g. changes in economic-material status and social status associated with the transformation of work), social relations and practices at the micro-level (e.g. cooperative and competitive relationships embedded in work), collectively shared feelings of belonging and exclusion (e.g. solidarity arising from work experience), and finally questions of the functioning of work and employment institutions (such as the labour market, occupation, and industrial relations) will play a role.