Re-Thinking Unemployment

A Challenge to the Legacy of Jahoda et al

Dados Bibliográficos

ID2321737
AutoresMatthew Cole (0000-0001-6951-2926, Cardiff University), Matt Cole (0000-0002-0639-9767, Cardiff University, autor correspondente)
Ano2007
Volume41
Fascículo6
Páginas1133-1149
Data de publicação2007-12-01
Peer ReviewedSim
Open AccessSim
TipoARTICLE
PeriódicoSociology (JOURNAL)
Identificadores do periódicoISSN: 0038-0385 • E-ISSN: 1469-8684
EditoraSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/0038038507082319
OpenAlexW2035664522
IdiomaEN
Citações recebidas38
Referências citadas21

The research of Jahoda et al. in the Austrian town of Marienthal in the 1930s had a formative influence over the future of unemployment research in the social sciences. This article contends that that research was predicated on a tacit set of beliefs about a gendered relationship between 'human nature' and 'work'. One consequence of this was that a moral discourse of human nature as fundamentally a working or labouring nature firmly anchored the trajectory of subsequent research into unemployment. This article presents a detailed critique of the moral discourse of human nature that underpins the Marienthal study and its theoretical elaboration into staged theories of psychological response to unemployment, and in so doing argues the necessity for freeing the sociological imagination from the types of belief reproduced by Jahoda et al. as to what human beings, and therefore human societies, are for

Economics · Epistemology · Formative assessment · Set (abstract data type) · Sociology · Unemployment · Philosophy · Social and Cultural Dynamics · Youth Education and Societal Dynamics