Abstract

The Question of Workplace Resistance in the French Sociology of Work The modernisation of the process of production and labour which, until recently, had aroused responses of indulgent enchantment, is today the object of a sustained sociological critique. This aim of the article is to examine the theoretical orientations which focus their attention on domination in work and which consider the workplace as a steel cage. A different approach is put forward here, one built around the concepts of subsumption and workplace resistance. Analysis centred on the question of domination frequently tends to neglect the possibility of micro-practices, regarding them as a contribution to the fluidity and overall efficiency of work. The perspective adopted here is a different one. The article argues that spaces of autonomy still exist in the workplace. Though limited, these spaces are real. In addition, everyday workplace solidarities are a reality. It is thus important not to equate workplace solidarities with other types of informal behaviour. Such resistance is intimately bound up with the nature of wage-labour, understood as a coercive activity subject to the logical of value-creation