Arlie Russell Hochschild's influential emotional labour thesis in The Managed Heart (1983) exposes and opposes the harm wrought by the commodification of human feelings as customer service, and complements contemporary anticapitalist writing with an enduring influence and political relevance that is underpinned by Hochschild's application of Marx's alienation theory. Critics have sought to blunt the politics of her thesis by rejecting as absolutist her condemnation of workers' alienation. But her application of alienation theory is not thorough, since her explicit usage of it is limited to only two of Marx's four dimensions, and thus it stops short of theorising alienation as generic to society. This undermines Hochschild's argument on emotional labourers' resistance, since she inadequately captures the way workers are shaped by alienation but not blinded to the reality of capitalism. The continuing political potency of her thesis requires that it should be defended and strengthened.

Despite a thriving tradition of critical scholarship in United Kingdom-based sociology of work, Burawoy's call for a partisan organic public sociology that is part of 'a social movement beyond the academy' and Bourdieu's plea for committed scholarship in the service of the social movement against neo-liberalism have received scant attention.This article seeks to stimulate debate by presenting a framework for a left-radical organic public sociology of work based on Gramsci's concept of the connected organic intellectual rather than Bourdieu's expert committed scholar. The latter, it is argued, is ultimately incompatible with activist partisan scholarship based on democratised relations between researchers and researched. Participatory ActionResearch is offered as a methodological orientation that underpins and enables organic scholars of work to engage actively with the marginalised and labour in the co-creation of knowledge that aids their struggles for change.

Platform work has grown significantly in the last decade. High-profile legal cases have highlighted the grey area which platform work inhabits in terms of the employment relationship and have raised concerns about the quality and conditions of work. Platform operators claim they are neutral intermediaries, yet often control over scheduling and tasks lies with them. This article presents a theoretical framework that integrates macro and micro-level analyses to account for the production of hegemony and playing out of consent, coercion and resistance within platform work. It does so by rearticulating Burawoy’s concept of hegemonic despotism by drawing upon Foucauldian notions of neoliberal governmentality and reasserting the centrality of Gramsci’s work in understanding power and hegemony, in particular the concept of contradictory consciousness and the dialogical contest between hegemonic ‘common sense’ and ‘good sense’, which constitutes our understanding and sense-making in the social world.

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This article introduces a special issue of Work, Employment and Society on solidarities in and through the experience of work in an age of austerity and political polarisation. It commences by discussing the renaissance of studies of solidarity in the workplace – and beyond. Debates on solidarity as a concept are reviewed in relation to moral economy, labour organising-mobilisation, emotional labour and public sociology. Each of the special issue articles assess the value of the solidarity concept under contemporary conditions. Between them they explore solidarity among gig economy delivery riders (Italy and UK), special needs teachers (England), volunteer lifeboat crews (UK and Ireland) and international ‘social factory’ activists. Two articles examine solidarity within organised labour: first, internationalism among dock workers and second, North American police unions’ construction of a divisive ‘blue solidarity’. The article concludes by calling for continued study of different forms of solidarity in and through work, especially among migrants and individualised workers.