Germany, empirical commitment and theoretical ambivalence

Abstract

After a start of institutionalisation under the Weimar Republic, the German sociology of work established itself during the 1960s, making of industrial relations, technology and industrial skilled labor its core issues. The affirmation of a subjectivation paradigm in the 1980s broadened the spectrum of analysis to include the agency and embodied dimension of work. Although these different research orientations remain relatively compartementalised, they have hitherto shared a unifying framework in terms of the Marxist reference and the ambition to offer a critical diagnosis of society. But this ambition is currently in search of a new theory of society, while the dominant mode of contractual research funding leaves small latitude for broad theoretical investigations.

Keywords

• Germany
• digitalization
• industrial labor
• industrial relations
• Marxism
• qualitative methodology