Documentary industrial novels and the sociology of work in the twentieth Century : the United States, the Soviet Union and Western Europe / Erik de Gier.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Gier, H. G. de, author.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

American fiction--20th century--History and criticism.

American fiction.

Russian fiction--20th century--History and criticism.

Russian fiction.

European fiction--20th century--History and criticism.

European fiction.

Industries in literature.

Working class in literature.

Literature and society--United States--History--20th century.

Literature and society.

Literature and society--Soviet Union--History--20th century.

Literature and society--Europe--History--20th century.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (188 pages) : digital, PDF file(s).

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

Amsterdam : Amsterdam University Press B.V., 2023.

Summary:

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.

Contents:

Cover

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

Introduction

Methodological considerations

2 The rise of welfare work capitalism and the Americanization of production processes in the United States, Western Europe, and the Soviet Union

Welfare work capitalism in historical perspective

The Americanization of production processes

Consensual American hegemony and the politics of productivity after World War II

3 Between 'utopia' and 'dystopia': American 20th-century industrial novels

Between utopia and dystopia

Contextualizing American early-20th-century industrial novels

Upton Sinclair's industrial novels

'U.S.A. is the speech of the People': John Dos Passos's experimental trilogy

Conclusion

4 Socialist-realist industrial novels in the Leninist and Stalinist Soviet Union in the 1920s and 1930s

Amerikansky Temp: Taylorism and Fordism in the Soviet Union

The Soviet application of Taylorism: Shock brigades and Stakhanovism

Socialist realism and the role of the industrial novel (Gorky and writers' brigades)

Yevgeny Zamyatin's anti-Taylorism: We (1921)

Fyodor Vasilievich Gladkov's Cement (1925)

Ilja Ehrenburg's The Life of the Automobile (1929)

The Magnitogorsk steel works: Valentin Kataev's Time, Forward! (1932) and John Scott's memoir Behind the Urals (1942)

5 New Objectivity industrial novels in Weimar Germany

Weimar and Americanism

Neue Sachlichkeit in literature

Egon Erwin Kisch's Der rasende Reporter (1924)

Franz Jung's Gequältes Volk (1927)

Siegfried Kracauer's Die Angestellten (1930)

Willi Bredel's Maschinenfabrik N. &amp

K. (1930).

Erik Reger's Union der festen Hand (1931)

6 Neo-realist industrial novels in post-war Italy: The Olivetti case

The Italian context of welfare work capitalism in the 1950s

Welfare work at Olivetti

Adriano Olivetti's communitarian utopia: Humana Civilitas

Ottieri's and Volponi's neo-realist (Olivettian) industrial novels

7 Simone Weil and Modernist industrial novels in France

Taylorism in France

Simone Weil and Georges Navel

Other notable French neo-realist post-war industrial novels

8 Transnational comparison and concluding reflection

Cross-country comparison

Surplus value of Modernist documentary industrial novels for the sociology of work

Bibliography

Index.

Notes:

Title from publisher's bibliographic system (viewed on 20 Feb 2024).

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

1-003-69417-9

1-04-079497-1

90-485-5239-7

9781003694175

OCLC:

1403514392