ABSTRACT
The present chapter is offered as a tribute to Touraine as a researcher in the sociology of work. (Curiously, perhaps, Touraine personally always preferred the term ‘industrial sociology’.) It will not attempt to adopt, apply or examine in any systematic way any given Tourainian problematic. It seems evident that, while others remain important, some of the problematics first raised in Touraine’s work as an industrial sociologist have become less topical, thanks to the very kind of social change Touraine predicted. One noteworthy example is that of the social and political values of blue-collar workers. It was widely accepted in the 1970s that Touraine’s contribution to the study of a hypothetical New Working Class was complementary to that of Serge Mallet (1965, 1975). In fact, this question was never of such central concern to Touraine as to Mallet, certainly not in the form posed by Mallet; the substance and the tone of Touraine’s analysis of the changing situation of such employee groups were quite unlike those of Mallet. Touraine neither predicted a virtually painless transition to a system of employee self-management (autogestion), nor suggested it must necessarily result from growing self-confidence among employees in technically advanced industries.
