Industrialisation, hiérarchies au travail et hiérarchies sociales au 20e siècle

Industrialization, hierarchies at work and social hierarchies in the 20th century, Sylvie Schweitzer. Social history of the 20th century hasn't focused enough on the role of the company in the education and diversification of hierarchies and social statuses. The second industrialization has modified the traditional association between bosses and workers by introducing new functions and a more complex hierarchy within the company. Shifting the center of analysis from the possession of capital towards the occupation of management jobs in the firm, one discovers the ambiguity of the words boss, business community, industrialist, entrepreneur or director and the variety of individual itineraries they cover. The term engineer designates a social status made complex by the variety of initial educational routes and the diversification of careers. Foremen, whose power used to be based on technical skill and their position of authority over the workers, have lost their autonomy by specializing and being subjected to the authority of engineers. At the bottom of the ladder, the same diversification affects worker status whose classification no longer resides on the inheritance of the dominant former trades. The deep modification of hierarchies, the consequence of internal changes in the company, affected all collective representations after the second world war. It substituted both a more opaque and a less fixed image of social groups for the traditional boss/worker opposition marked by the growing place of the "middle-classes", themselves fragmented in multiple roles.Schweitzer Sylvie. Industrialisation, hiérarchies au travail et hiérarchies sociales au 20e siècle. In: Vingtième Siècle, revue d'histoire, n°54, avril-juin 1997. Dossier : Sur les camps de concentration du 20e siècle. pp. 103-115