Abstract
This article is a contribution to the attempt at redefining the relationship between work and social theory. It connects insights from Marxism and recognition theory to culture sociology. Work is always embedded within working cultures and a moral economy, so it must be grasped in the life context, on which people are confronted with constraints, norms and social expectations, but also develop, through that work of identification, their work orientations. The article proposes a stronger interconnectedness between sociology of work and the sociology of social inequality, which makes necessary to reflect upon the conception of “class”. The article sketches a double-ended concept of class, in that it detaches it from the usual view of class as contradiction between labour and capital as separated from its understanding as a socio-cultural category. With the idea of “social value of the labour force” it is proposed a mediating conception designed to connect the categories of recognition to intersectional perceptions of the relationship between capital and labour.
Keywords
sociology of work; social inequality; social value of the labour force; class