This anthology brings more than fifty years of scholarship of the culture and sociology of work into a compelling introductory and analytical text. Sociologists have long sought to understand the universal activity of work from the point of view of the worker. This book shows how common sociological themes such as socialization, social interaction, the social construction of time, and deviance are experienced in work settings as diverse as the factory, the nightclub, the restaurant, and the offices of high-tech professionals. Featuring vivid ethnographies, the book is organized around the concept of culture: the recognition that people doing things together organize social life in common and identifiable ways. As such, this collection can be used as an innovative core reader or as an ideal supplement to standard texts that approach work from the demographic, structural, or macro perspectives. An online teaching guide is available to all adopters.

Contributions by: Patricia A. Adler, Howard S. Becker, Egon Bittner, Dean A. Dabney, Robert R. Faulkner, Gary Alan Fine, Blanche Geer, George Gmelch