Documentary Industrial Novels and the Sociology of Work in the Twentieth Century : : The United States, the Soviet Union and Western Europe / / Erik Gier.

• VerfasserIn: Gier, Erik,
• Place / Publishing House: Amsterdam : : Amsterdam University Press, , [2023]; ©2023
• Year of Publication: 2023
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (188 p.)

In several European countries, the United States, and the Soviet Union, remarkable industrial novels based on empirical observations were written between 1900 and 1970. With two successive world wars and the rise of communism and fascism, this was an exceptionally turbulent time in the history of industrial capitalism as Taylorism and Fordism sought to increase production and consumption. This social landscape shaped modernist industrial novels. Key themes in these novels were class conflict, bad working conditions, worker alienation, changing workmen and employee cultures, urbanization, and worker migration. The primary goal was to document and publicize the real developments of working conditions in factories and offices, often aiming to influence both company welfare work and state social policies. This book focuses on the modernist industrial novel as written in five large industrial nations: the United States before WWII, the Stalinist Soviet Union, Weimar Germany, post-WWII Italy, and France.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Table of Contents -- Acknowledgements -- Preface -- Note on sources -- 1 Bringing together the fields of sociology and literature : Towards an integration of Modernist industrial novels into industrial sociology -- 2 The rise of welfare work capitalism and the Americanization of production processes in the United States, Western Europe, and the Soviet Union -- 3 Between ‘utopia’ and ‘dystopia’: American 20th-century industrial novels -- 4 Socialist-realist industrial novels in the Leninist and Stalinist Soviet Union in the 1920s and 1930s -- 5 New Objectivity industrial novels in Weimar Germany -- 6 Neo-realist industrial novels in postwar Italy: The Olivetti case -- 7 Simone Weil and Modernist industrial novels in France -- 8 Transnational comparison and concluding reflection -- Bibliography -- Index