From Manual Workers to Wage Laborers

In this monumental book sociologist Robert Castel reconstructs the history of what he calls "the social question," or the ways in which both labor and social welfare have been organized from the Middle-Ages onward to contemporary industrial society. Throughout the myriad of changes and developments, [...]
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In this monumental book sociologist Robert Castel reconstructs the history of what he calls "the social question," or the ways in which both labor and social welfare have been organized from the Middle-Ages onward to contemporary industrial society. Throughout the myriad of changes and developments, the author identifies two constants bearing directly on the question of who is entitled to relief and who can be excluded: the degree of embeddedness in any given community and the ability to work. Along this dual axis the author locates virtually the entire history of social welfare in early-modern and contemporary Europe.