Introduction: Fordism, Post-Fordism and Economic Flexibility

Abstract

Periodically the sociology of economic life is gripped by a set of concepts which function as organising principles for the whole area of inquiry. Crudely, work in the 1960s was largely concerned with debates about ‘orientations to work’ and ‘embourgeoisement’, whilst the bulk of work in the 1970s and early 1980s was little more than an extended response to Braverman (1974) and labour process theory. However, since the mid1980s economic sociology has increasingly concerned itself with processes of ‘economic restructuring’ for which, until recently, no paradigmatic set of concepts have been forthcoming.