ABSTRACT
In this chapter the main concern will be to examine some aspects of the sociology of work in the formal economy. Such work, as you saw in the first chapter, is only a part of the work carried out in contemporary industrial societies, albeit an important part. It consists mostly of official paid employment and involves such considerations as the idea of wage labour (that is, the selling of labour power in exchange for wages) and the idea of an employee-employer contract. Until relatively recently virtually all of the sociology of work was concerned only with this kind of work. But increased attention to both work in the informal economy (such as casual employment and ‘moonlighting’) and to unpaid work (for instance housework) has meant that different kinds of work need to be more clearly distinguished.
