Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface and Note on Text Structure
- Acknowledgements
- Chapter One Introduction: The Distinction of Dignity
- Chapter Two Dignity, Freedom and Reason: From Ancient Greece to Early Modernity
- Chapter Three The Sense of Dignity in Moral Philosophy: From the Ethical Intuitionists to the Irrationalists
- Chapter Four Marx's Critique of Morality: Natural Law, the State and Citizenship
- Chapter Five Classical Sociology's Regard for Human Dignity
- Chapter Six The Human Face of Dignity Reflected in Phenomenology and Existentialism
- Chapter Seven A Fresh Term for Dignity: Attending the Frankfurt School (Both ‘Old’ and ‘Young’)
- Chapter Eight Notes Sampling Research and Practice: Making Dignity Work; Making Dignity Care
- Chapter Nine The Slighting of Dignity: The Critic's Charter
- Chapter Ten Conclusion: After the Recognition of Dignity
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
Chapter Eight - Notes Sampling Research and Practice: Making Dignity Work; Making Dignity Care
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 June 2018
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Preface and Note on Text Structure
- Acknowledgements
- Chapter One Introduction: The Distinction of Dignity
- Chapter Two Dignity, Freedom and Reason: From Ancient Greece to Early Modernity
- Chapter Three The Sense of Dignity in Moral Philosophy: From the Ethical Intuitionists to the Irrationalists
- Chapter Four Marx's Critique of Morality: Natural Law, the State and Citizenship
- Chapter Five Classical Sociology's Regard for Human Dignity
- Chapter Six The Human Face of Dignity Reflected in Phenomenology and Existentialism
- Chapter Seven A Fresh Term for Dignity: Attending the Frankfurt School (Both ‘Old’ and ‘Young’)
- Chapter Eight Notes Sampling Research and Practice: Making Dignity Work; Making Dignity Care
- Chapter Nine The Slighting of Dignity: The Critic's Charter
- Chapter Ten Conclusion: After the Recognition of Dignity
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
It will already be apparent that dignity is an elusive quality depending not only on how an individual behaves but on how others treat her. It can therefore be a fragile thing because we are deeply social beings – vulnerable and dependent on others – physically, psychologically and economically – throughout our lives. (Sayer in Bolton (ed.) 2007, 19)
Initiating Recognition of the Dignity of Labour
This chapter sets out first of all to provide an overview of the origins of the relationship between the world of work and the idea and ideal of human dignity. A fundamental question to be explored at the outset is the way in which the nature of being human and human individuality came to be cast in a qualitative relation with the creation of material life. Beginning by considering developments in the last decades of the eighteenth century, we see how the experience of work comes to be regarded as having a direct impact on what it means to be human – the paradox being that human dignity could be confirmed by work or confounded by it. In the following generation, the founders of sociology explored the underlying reasons for the precarious state of human dignity in industrial capitalism. However, it was with the development of the sociology of work and employment that the role of dignity slowly surfaced as being of substantive importance both theoretically and empirically. It is only within the last two decades that dignity has featured in high profile in its own right in the study of work and employment. Richard Sennett has identified two predominant senses in which dignity has been used: one that focuses on the sanctity and integrity of the body and a second typified by the dignity of labour. Both are universal values, though the latter had to wait on the coming of modern capitalism to achieve this standing: ‘While society may respect the equal dignity of all human bodies, the dignity of labour leads in quite a different direction: a universal value with highly unequal consequences. Invoking dignity as a “universal value”, moreover, provides in itself no clue about how to practice an inclusive mutual respect’ (Sennett 2004, 58).
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- Information
- Social Thought and Rival Claims to the Moral Ideal of Dignity , pp. 117 - 134Publisher: Anthem PressPrint publication year: 2018