The social image of the worker

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The Worker's Image of Society is the title of a publication that is one of the sociological classics of the post-war period . It contains research results from an industrial sociological study from the early 1950s that was carried out in the metallurgical industry in the Ruhr area by Heinrich Popitz , Hans Paul Bahrdt , Ernst August Jüres and Hanno Kesting .

Attachment of the investigation

The investigation was intended to provide information about the social location of workers and their image of society. In oral interviews , 600 workers in a steel mill were questioned by trained employees for two hours or more. There were no tapes. The interviewers took notes during the survey, which they worked out into detailed memory logs after the conversation was over.

Results of the investigation

The complexes of the survey included problems with the execution of work, technical innovations and technical progress, statements on economic-political problems and the employees as well as attitudes towards co-determination. The researchers determined that almost all of the respondents had a pronounced "performance awareness" and a "collective awareness". The main research result was a dichotomous image of society by the respondents, i.e. a division of society into 'above' and 'below'. The social researchers divided the typology of the image of society inductively developed in the interview material into six sub-types: image of society as 1. accepted order, 2. gradually changing order, 3. collective fate, 4. individual conflict, 5. changeable through reforms or 6. through class struggle order to be overcome.

Basic text

  • Heinrich Popitz, Hans Paul Bahrdt, Ernst August Jüres and Hanno Kesting: The worker's image of society. Sociological studies in the metallurgical industry . Mohr (Paul Siebeck), Tübingen 1957.

literature

  • Hans Paul Bahrdt: The social image of the worker. A lecture on the development of this study . In: Journal for Sociology , 14th vol. (1985), pp. 152–155.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Cf. Sven Papcke / Georg W. Oesterdiekhoff (ed.): Key works of sociology . Westdeutscher Verlag, Wiesbaden 2001, p. 397ff.