Sarah Waters
Biographic Data
| ID | 5772464 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Sarah Waters |
| GIVEN NAMES | Sarah |
| FAMILY NAME | Waters |
| SIGNATURE | WATERS S |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Leeds |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-0949-126X |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 35 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 66 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 34 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1994 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2025 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Work-related suicide
The French care economy
Pandemic Necrolabour and Essential Workers in the UK and France
Drawing on recent studies on the necropolitics of Covid-19, this paper focuses on UK and French government policies towards essential workers, examining the conditions under which workers were systematically exposed to deadly harm within these two contrasting economic models. I argue that the pandemic revealed a category of necrolabour whose labour value supersedes their right to life and who could be legitimately sacrificed in the interests of t…
“A Critic Who Makes No Claim”
This article shows us how C. S. Lewis offers an alternative way of framing expertise as he speaks and writes about his period(s) and text(s). This essay establishes that Lewis’s humility is, to some degree, a deliberately cultivated and rhetorically shrewd one. The self-characterization of childlike inexperience and humility is a traditional medieval rhetorical move of which Lewis is a master. Moreover, the irony of this humility has washed over …
Reflections on the Significance of the France Télécom Trial in the United Kingdom
The France Télécom trial has had considerable impact across the international stage and especially in the United Kingdom where work-related suicides are still not recognized, counted or regulated. This article examines the legal and moral scope of the France Télécom trial as a potential model for progressive regulatory reform in UK workplaces. The article describes a campaign by researchers and trade unionists to urge the Health and Safety Execut…
Réfléchir à la portée du procès de France Télécom au Royaume-Uni
L’affaire France Télécom a eu un retentissement considérable sur la scène internationale et surtout au Royaume-Uni, où les suicides liés au travail ne sont encore ni reconnus, ni comptabilisés, ni régulés. Cet article étudie la portée légale et morale du procès de France Télécom comme modèle potentiel pour des réformes progressistes de régulation sur les lieux de travail au Royaume-Uni. L’article décrit une campagne menée par des chercheurs et de…
Work in crisis
Liberalisation, surveillance and suicide at La Poste
This article examines how the contradictory dynamics of freedom and control that characterise neoliberal capitalism are played out on lived experiences of work in the context of the newly liberalised and restructured French postal services (La Poste). At La Poste, liberalisation was framed as a great emancipatory project that would reinvigorate a moribund state-owned company, remove regulatory constraints, deepen economic freedoms and strip away …
Workplace Suicide and States of Denial
Workplace suicides are sharply on the rise and reflect a generalised deterioration in working conditions across the globalised economy. Despite their growing prevalence, workplace suicides are subject to specific modes of repression that tend to keep them hidden from public view. Suicides and their social recognition threaten the vested interests of corporate and political elites by giving material embodiment to relations of production in the for…
Suicide voices
Workplace suicide has become an urgent social concern internationally with rising numbers of employees choosing to kill themselves in the face of extreme pressures at work. Yet, research on this phenomenon is hampered by fragmentary statistical data and the sheer contentiousness of this issue. This paper presents the preliminary findings of a research project on workplace suicides in France, where there has been a 'suicide epidemic' across a wide…
Suicide as Protest in the French Workplace
France has experienced a sharp rise in work-related suicides in the 2000s with unprecedented numbers of workers choosing to kill themselves in the face of severe pressures at work. Drawing on testimonial material linked to recent suicide cases, this article examines the ‘social meanings’ of these suicides as defined by suicidal individuals themselves. Suicide and its causes have long been a central preoccupation of French theorists since Emile Du…
Disappearing bodies
This article examines recent documentary films that have sought to narrate, record and criticise the effects on the French workplace of a shift to a new model of finance capitalism driven by ‘pure’ money. The films give representation to subjective experiences in the workplace showing how abstract economics is played out at the most intimate, personal and material level. The films seem to challenge dominant representations of finance capitalism a…
A Capitalism That Kills
France Télécom has been at the center of intense public scrutiny since 2008, following a sharp rise in workplace suicides at the company. This macabre reputation now stood in sharp contrast with the company's image during the 1980s and 1990s as a showpiece for successful liberalization and as a former state-owned enterprise that was blazing a trail toward a new globalized economy. Drawing on Emile Durkheim's seminal work, Suicide (1897), the arti…
The 2008 Economic Crisis and the French Narrative of National Decline
With its roots in right-wing nationalism, declinology or déclinisme has been revived in the post-2008 context as a means of interpreting and reacting to the economic crisis. Recent texts interpret the crisis as a new chapter in an ongoing story of national decline that has progressively marginalised France, derailed its international status and destroyed its cultural integrity. Unlike the declinist writers of the 1990s who saw economic liberalisa…
Writing the Crisis
Between republic and market
The rise of neo-liberal globalisation has posed major challenges for all European countries, identifying itself as the key political tension of the coming era. Yet, it is in France that globalisation has produced the deepest tensions, and it is here that it has generated its greatest political resistance. The author pursues two separate lines of enquiry. First, she considers the influence of French political tradition and an enduring legacy of re…
French Intellectuals and Globalisation
French intellectuals have been at the forefront of a national and international movement of opposition to neo-liberal globalisation. Drawing on Samuel Huntington’s controversial work, The Clash of Civilisations, I will argue that French intellectuals shared a civilisational perspective of globalisation, seeing it not as a piecemeal market process or economic reform, but as an all-encompassing external threat. This civilisational perspective had c…
Memories of 1968
Contents: Sarah Waters: Introduction: 1968 in Memory and Place - Martin Klimke: Revisiting the Revolution: 1968 in Transnational Cultural Memory - Daniel A. Gordon: Memories of 1968 in France: Reflections on the 40th Anniversary - Wolfgang Kraushaar: Hitler's Children? The German 1968 Movement in the Shadow of the Nazi Past - John Foot: Looking back on Italy's 'Long 68'. Public, Private and Divided Memories - Timothy S. Brown: United States of Am…
Globalization, the ConfÃ(c)dÃ(c)ration Paysanne, and Symbolic Power
Situating Movements Historically
Recent literature on social movements has called for a renewal of theory so that it engages more directly with the social and historical dynamics in which movements emerge and crystallize. Too often, some critics argue, movements are treated as static or reified phenomena that are disconnected from their links to space and time. I examine new social movement theory from an historical perspective that emphasizes its connections with concrete socia…
A l'attac. Globalisation and Ideological Renewal on the French Left
The question of globalisation has become a focus of intense debate on the French Left with growing attempts to redefine the nature and forms of leftist opposition. More than any other grouping Attac, created in 1998, has been at the centre of a movement of opposition that contests the terms of neo-liberal globalisation and posits an alternative vision of social and political change. This article focuses on Attac's role in constructing a new disco…
Mobilising against Globalisation
Contemporary France has witnessed the rise of an anti-globalisation movement that has mobilised with considerable intensity and force on a national and international stage. This article examines the role of Attac, the leading French organisation against neo-liberal globalisation, focusing on its impact within mainstream political life. Attac has been characterised by unparalleled success within formal politics, gaining access to key institutions …
Social Movements in France
Contemporary France has witnessed a rise of new forms of social movement, mobilising around new causes and articulating changing demands. Sarah Waters examines the new generation of movements in the l
Social Movements in France
The past decade of French politics was marked by a rise of social movements that articulated new struggles and expressed changing demands. The new movements gave voice and representation to groups that had been marginalised by political institutions and excluded from mainstream society. Sarah Waters explores a 'new generation of movements' within French political life and seeks to examine their meaning and significance. The outstanding feature of…
Medicine, religion, and magic in early Stuart England
Medicine, religion, and magic in early Stuart England: Richard Napier’s medical practice." The Seventeenth Century, 34(5), pp. 686–688
New social movement politics in France
The term 'new social movement' (NSM) tends to be broadly used by scholars to denote all recently formed non‐traditional types of social movement. Yet, the forms of social movement which have emerged in France over the past decade (anti‐racist movement, solidarity movement, Aids advocacy groups) differ from earlier NSMs in important ways. The most salient feature of these movements is their strong civic dimension. Their principal role is to defend…
Tangentopoli’ and the emergence of a new political order in Italy
The investigations of the Italian judiciary into the illegal financing of political parties, the Tangentopoli1 case, has precipitated a profound crisis within the Italian political system. While crises are a regular feature of postwar Italian politics, the current scandal is unfolding in a radically altered political context. The dissolution of the Communist Party and consequent decline of the DC‐PCI balance has removed internal blockages and cre…
Mobilising against Globalisation
Contemporary France has witnessed the rise of an anti-globalisation movement that has mobilised with considerable intensity and force on a national and international stage. This article examines the role of Attac, the leading French organisation against neo-liberal globalisation, focusing on its impact within mainstream political life. Attac has been characterised by unparalleled success within formal politics, gaining access to key institutions …
Suicide as Protest in the French Workplace
France has experienced a sharp rise in work-related suicides in the 2000s with unprecedented numbers of workers choosing to kill themselves in the face of severe pressures at work. Drawing on testimonial material linked to recent suicide cases, this article examines the ‘social meanings’ of these suicides as defined by suicidal individuals themselves. Suicide and its causes have long been a central preoccupation of French theorists since Emile Du…
A l'attac. Globalisation and Ideological Renewal on the French Left
The question of globalisation has become a focus of intense debate on the French Left with growing attempts to redefine the nature and forms of leftist opposition. More than any other grouping Attac, created in 1998, has been at the centre of a movement of opposition that contests the terms of neo-liberal globalisation and posits an alternative vision of social and political change. This article focuses on Attac's role in constructing a new disco…
A Capitalism That Kills
France Télécom has been at the center of intense public scrutiny since 2008, following a sharp rise in workplace suicides at the company. This macabre reputation now stood in sharp contrast with the company's image during the 1980s and 1990s as a showpiece for successful liberalization and as a former state-owned enterprise that was blazing a trail toward a new globalized economy. Drawing on Emile Durkheim's seminal work, Suicide (1897), the arti…
Suicide voices
Workplace suicide has become an urgent social concern internationally with rising numbers of employees choosing to kill themselves in the face of extreme pressures at work. Yet, research on this phenomenon is hampered by fragmentary statistical data and the sheer contentiousness of this issue. This paper presents the preliminary findings of a research project on workplace suicides in France, where there has been a 'suicide epidemic' across a wide…
Situating Movements Historically
Recent literature on social movements has called for a renewal of theory so that it engages more directly with the social and historical dynamics in which movements emerge and crystallize. Too often, some critics argue, movements are treated as static or reified phenomena that are disconnected from their links to space and time. I examine new social movement theory from an historical perspective that emphasizes its connections with concrete socia…
New social movements in France
This article looks at new types of social movement in France. Over the past decade, France has witnessed a spectacular rise of new forms of mobilisation, ranging from anti‐racism and the 'solidarity' movement to the movement of the unemployed or the homeless. The rise of such movements goes against the idea that France has become increasingly indifferent to politics. Far from signalling political indifference, these movements demonstrate a new co…
Wolfskins and Togas
Liberalisation, surveillance and suicide at La Poste
This article examines how the contradictory dynamics of freedom and control that characterise neoliberal capitalism are played out on lived experiences of work in the context of the newly liberalised and restructured French postal services (La Poste). At La Poste, liberalisation was framed as a great emancipatory project that would reinvigorate a moribund state-owned company, remove regulatory constraints, deepen economic freedoms and strip away …
The 2008 Economic Crisis and the French Narrative of National Decline
With its roots in right-wing nationalism, declinology or déclinisme has been revived in the post-2008 context as a means of interpreting and reacting to the economic crisis. Recent texts interpret the crisis as a new chapter in an ongoing story of national decline that has progressively marginalised France, derailed its international status and destroyed its cultural integrity. Unlike the declinist writers of the 1990s who saw economic liberalisa…
Work in crisis
Disappearing bodies
This article examines recent documentary films that have sought to narrate, record and criticise the effects on the French workplace of a shift to a new model of finance capitalism driven by ‘pure’ money. The films give representation to subjective experiences in the workplace showing how abstract economics is played out at the most intimate, personal and material level. The films seem to challenge dominant representations of finance capitalism a…
Globalization, the ConfÃ(c)dÃ(c)ration Paysanne, and Symbolic Power
'A Girton Girl on a Throne'
‘A Girton Girl on a Throne’
Tangentopoli’ and the emergence of a new political order in Italy
The investigations of the Italian judiciary into the illegal financing of political parties, the Tangentopoli1 case, has precipitated a profound crisis within the Italian political system. While crises are a regular feature of postwar Italian politics, the current scandal is unfolding in a radically altered political context. The dissolution of the Communist Party and consequent decline of the DC‐PCI balance has removed internal blockages and cre…
Wolfskins and Togas
Ghosting the interface
La reina Cristina
Una chica de Girton en un trono
New social movements in France
This article looks at new types of social movement in France. Over the past decade, France has witnessed a spectacular rise of new forms of mobilisation, ranging from anti‐racism and the 'solidarity' movement to the movement of the unemployed or the homeless. The rise of such movements goes against the idea that France has become increasingly indifferent to politics. Far from signalling political indifference, these movements demonstrate a new co…
New social movement politics in France
The term 'new social movement' (NSM) tends to be broadly used by scholars to denote all recently formed non‐traditional types of social movement. Yet, the forms of social movement which have emerged in France over the past decade (anti‐racist movement, solidarity movement, Aids advocacy groups) differ from earlier NSMs in important ways. The most salient feature of these movements is their strong civic dimension. Their principal role is to defend…
The limits of local economic intervention
Chambers of commerce in France and Italy are powerful organisations with a unique potential for local economic growth. As public‐law organisations, they are vested with extensive formal powers and resources, far surpassing those of their British counterparts. Yet despite this potential, chambers in these states do not tend to play a dynamic role within the local economy. In recent years, they have undergone progressive decline and become confined…
Chambers of Commerce in Italy
This article looks at the role of the Italian chambers of commerce, examining the ways in which they contribute to local development. Recent studies have emphasized the importance of cooperation among interests as a key feature of endogenous growth. Organizations and interests which cooperate for purposes of economic intervention are seen to be particularly effective in managing growth. Italian chambers appear on the surface to have a strong pote…
Social Movements in France
Contemporary France has witnessed a rise of new forms of social movement, mobilising around new causes and articulating changing demands. Sarah Waters examines the new generation of movements in the l
Social Movements in France
The past decade of French politics was marked by a rise of social movements that articulated new struggles and expressed changing demands. The new movements gave voice and representation to groups that had been marginalised by political institutions and excluded from mainstream society. Sarah Waters explores a 'new generation of movements' within French political life and seeks to examine their meaning and significance. The outstanding feature of…
Mobilising against Globalisation
Contemporary France has witnessed the rise of an anti-globalisation movement that has mobilised with considerable intensity and force on a national and international stage. This article examines the role of Attac, the leading French organisation against neo-liberal globalisation, focusing on its impact within mainstream political life. Attac has been characterised by unparalleled success within formal politics, gaining access to key institutions …
A l'attac. Globalisation and Ideological Renewal on the French Left
The question of globalisation has become a focus of intense debate on the French Left with growing attempts to redefine the nature and forms of leftist opposition. More than any other grouping Attac, created in 1998, has been at the centre of a movement of opposition that contests the terms of neo-liberal globalisation and posits an alternative vision of social and political change. This article focuses on Attac's role in constructing a new disco…
Situating Movements Historically
Recent literature on social movements has called for a renewal of theory so that it engages more directly with the social and historical dynamics in which movements emerge and crystallize. Too often, some critics argue, movements are treated as static or reified phenomena that are disconnected from their links to space and time. I examine new social movement theory from an historical perspective that emphasizes its connections with concrete socia…
Memories of 1968
Contents: Sarah Waters: Introduction: 1968 in Memory and Place - Martin Klimke: Revisiting the Revolution: 1968 in Transnational Cultural Memory - Daniel A. Gordon: Memories of 1968 in France: Reflections on the 40th Anniversary - Wolfgang Kraushaar: Hitler's Children? The German 1968 Movement in the Shadow of the Nazi Past - John Foot: Looking back on Italy's 'Long 68'. Public, Private and Divided Memories - Timothy S. Brown: United States of Am…
Globalization, the ConfÃ(c)dÃ(c)ration Paysanne, and Symbolic Power
French Intellectuals and Globalisation
French intellectuals have been at the forefront of a national and international movement of opposition to neo-liberal globalisation. Drawing on Samuel Huntington’s controversial work, The Clash of Civilisations, I will argue that French intellectuals shared a civilisational perspective of globalisation, seeing it not as a piecemeal market process or economic reform, but as an all-encompassing external threat. This civilisational perspective had c…
Writing the Crisis
Between republic and market
The rise of neo-liberal globalisation has posed major challenges for all European countries, identifying itself as the key political tension of the coming era. Yet, it is in France that globalisation has produced the deepest tensions, and it is here that it has generated its greatest political resistance. The author pursues two separate lines of enquiry. First, she considers the influence of French political tradition and an enduring legacy of re…
The 2008 Economic Crisis and the French Narrative of National Decline
With its roots in right-wing nationalism, declinology or déclinisme has been revived in the post-2008 context as a means of interpreting and reacting to the economic crisis. Recent texts interpret the crisis as a new chapter in an ongoing story of national decline that has progressively marginalised France, derailed its international status and destroyed its cultural integrity. Unlike the declinist writers of the 1990s who saw economic liberalisa…
A Capitalism That Kills
France Télécom has been at the center of intense public scrutiny since 2008, following a sharp rise in workplace suicides at the company. This macabre reputation now stood in sharp contrast with the company's image during the 1980s and 1990s as a showpiece for successful liberalization and as a former state-owned enterprise that was blazing a trail toward a new globalized economy. Drawing on Emile Durkheim's seminal work, Suicide (1897), the arti…
Suicide as Protest in the French Workplace
France has experienced a sharp rise in work-related suicides in the 2000s with unprecedented numbers of workers choosing to kill themselves in the face of severe pressures at work. Drawing on testimonial material linked to recent suicide cases, this article examines the ‘social meanings’ of these suicides as defined by suicidal individuals themselves. Suicide and its causes have long been a central preoccupation of French theorists since Emile Du…
Disappearing bodies
This article examines recent documentary films that have sought to narrate, record and criticise the effects on the French workplace of a shift to a new model of finance capitalism driven by ‘pure’ money. The films give representation to subjective experiences in the workplace showing how abstract economics is played out at the most intimate, personal and material level. The films seem to challenge dominant representations of finance capitalism a…
Suicide voices
Workplace suicide has become an urgent social concern internationally with rising numbers of employees choosing to kill themselves in the face of extreme pressures at work. Yet, research on this phenomenon is hampered by fragmentary statistical data and the sheer contentiousness of this issue. This paper presents the preliminary findings of a research project on workplace suicides in France, where there has been a 'suicide epidemic' across a wide…
Political science (24 works) · Sociology (23 works) · Politics (15 works) · Law (14 works) · Art (12 works) · Employment and Welfare Studies (8 works) · History (8 works) · Law (8 works) · Political economy (8 works) · Economics (7 works)