Overview

In several European countries, the United States, and the Soviet Union, remarkable industrial novels based on empirical observations were written between 1900 and 1970. With two successive world wars and the rise of communism and fascism, this was an exceptionally turbulent time in the history of industrial capitalism as Taylorism and Fordism sought to increase production and consumption. This social landscape shaped modernist industrial novels. Key themes in these novels were class conflict, bad working conditions, worker alienation, changing workmen and employee cultures, urbanization, and worker migration. The primary goal was to document and publicize the real developments of working conditions in factories and offices, often aiming to influence both company welfare work and state social policies. This book focuses on the modernist industrial novel as written in five large industrial nations: the United States before WWII, the Stalinist Soviet Union, Weimar Germany, post-WWII Italy, and France.

Full Product Details

Author:   Erik de Gier
Publisher:   Amsterdam University Press
Imprint:   Amsterdam University Press
ISBN:  

9789463721943

ISBN 10:   9463721940
Pages:   188
Publication Date:   17 October 2023
Audience:   Professional and scholarly ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   In Print  
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Table of Contents

Acknowledgements Preface Note on sources 1. Bringing together the fields of sociology and literature: Towards an integration of modernist industrial novels into industrial sociology 2. The rise of welfare work capitalism and the Americanization of production processes in the United States, Western Europe, and the Soviet Union 3. Between ‘utopia’ and ‘dystopia’. American 20th-century industrial novels 4. Socialist realist industrial novels in the Leninist and Stalinist Soviet Union in the 1920s and 1930s 5. New Objectivity industrial novels in Weimar Germany 6. Neo-realist industrial novels in post-war Italy: The Olivetti case 7. Simone Weil and modernist industrial novels in France 8. Transnational comparison and concluding reflection Bibliography Index

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Author Information

Prof. dr. Erik de Gier MA (1948) is professor emeritus, Nijmegen School of Management, Radboud University. He is an industrial sociologist and expert in American studies. De Gier is also the author of Capitalist Workingman’s Paradises Revisited. Corporate Welfare Work in Great Britain, the USA, Germany and France in the Golden Age of Capitalism, 1880–1930, published by Amsterdam University Press in 2016. In the past he published extensively about industrial relations, working conditions, the labour market, and social security.

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