Author details

"I have been interested in the sociology of work all my academic career. At the beginning I taught undergraduate courses at the University of Salford on the Sociology of Industrial Capitalism and researched the work-family nexus with reference to professional workers and their wives (Middle-Class Couples: A Study of Segregation, Domination and Inequality in Marriage, 1980). Although my research career moved in the direction of political sociology (A Measure of Thatcherism: A Sociology of Britain, 1991), social class (Class, 1993), consumption (Consumption Matters: The Production and Experience of Consumption, 1996), and the social theories of Thorstein Veblen (Veblen in Perspective: His Life and Thought, 2001), throughout this period I maintained an interest in the Sociology of Work via teaching. This varied research career encompassed qualitative methods (case studies), quantitative methods (panel study), and historical methods (archival research). The tendency for sociology of work textbooks to focus on standard paid work to the relative exclusion of non-standard work and unpaid work prompted me to suggest to Chris Rojek at SAGE that I write a sociology of work textbook that covers 'work' more comprehensively. With his encouragement the first edition of this book was published in 2006. I welcomed the opportunity to revise and update completely the first edition since it enabled me to address some sins of omission and commission that I was aware of, many of which were noted in the constructive criticisms by reviewers enlisted by SAGE."

-Stephen Edgell