ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts covered in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book suggests that responses to unemployment vary from depression, through stoic acceptance, to celebration. The primary aim and original contribution of the book is to provide a sociological explanation for these variations. It focuses on the experience of unemployment as a consequence of losing a job. The meaning that an individual gives to working is framed by cultural expectations about working. The value of qualitative research is underlined by Payne who provides a telling critique of a book summarising the findings from a very large longitudinal quantitative study of youth unemployment in Australia. The events in non-work roles involve complicating passages that are more influential on a person's self-evaluation than the events associated with the job loss passage. While sexist language is generally easily avoided, sometimes this can result in cumbersome and confusing sentence construction.
