From manual workers to wage laborers: transformation of the social question

Abstract

In this monumental book, sociologist Robert Castel reconstructs history of what he calls the social question, or ways in which both labor and social welfare have been organized from Middle Ages onward to contemporary industrial society. Throughout, author identifies two constants bearing directly on of who is entitled to relief and who can be excluded: degree of embeddedness in any given community and ability to work. Along this dual axis author locates virtually entire history of social welfare in early-modern and contemporary Europe. This work is a systematic defense of meaningfulness of category of the social, written in tradition of Foucault, Durkheim, and Marx. Castel imaginatively builds on Durkheim's insight into essentially social basis of work and welfare. Castel populates his sociological framework with vivid characterizations of transient lives of disaffiliated: those colorful itinerants whose very existence proved such a threat to social fabric of early-modern Europe. Not surprisingly, he discovers that cruel and punitive measures often directed against these marginal figures are deeply implicated in techniques and institutions of power and social control. The author also treats flipside of problem of social assistance: namely, matters of work and wage-labor. Castel brilliantly reveals how seemingly objective line of demarcation between able-bodied beggars-those who are capable of work but who chose not to do so-and those who are truly disabled becomes stretched in modernity to make room for category of working poor. It is novel crisis posed by those masses of population who are unable to maintain themselves by their labor alone that most deeply challenges modern societies and forges recognizably modern policies of social assistance. The author's gloss on social also offers us valuable perspectives on contemporary debates over who should receive social assistance and whether this entitlement should be linked to obligation to work. Castel's rich insights and brilliant generalizations are invaluable for anyone concerned with what he describes as new social question of work and social welfare in contemporary society.