Labor Disorders in Neoliberal Italy
Noelle J. Molé
Psychological harassment at work, or "mobbing," has become a significant public policy issue in Italy and elsewhere in Europe. Mobbing has given rise to specialized counseling clinics, a new field of professional expertise, and new labor laws. For Noelle J. Molé, mobbing is a manifestation of Italy's rapid transition from a highly protectionist to a market-oriented labor regime and a neoliberal state. She analyzes the classification of mobbing as a work-related illness, the deployment of preventive public health programs, the relation of mobbing to gendered work practices, and workers' use of the concept of mobbing to make legal and medical claims, with implications for state policy, labor contracts, and political movements. For many Italian workers, mobbing embodies the social and psychological effects of an economy and a state in transition.
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About Noelle J. Molé
Reviews for Labor Disorders in Neoliberal Italy
American Journal of Sociology
This detailed and critical ethnography of neoliberalizing processes . . . will be of deep interest to scholars of labor and gender, the state, neoliberalism, and medical anthropology.
Anthropology of Work
Recommended. Labor studies collections at graduate and research levels.
Choice
Molé's book is an ethnographically sound and theoretically sophisticated contribution to the understanding of how neoliberal policies are experienced and embodied in Southern Europe, and also of how such policies are conceptualized in medical and legal terms. As such, it is recommended for those interested in the anthropology of Italy, for medical and legal anthropologists, and for students of labor relations.
American Ethnologist
What does neoliberalism feel like? . . . Anyone interested in the social life of the precariat . . . should read Noelle Molé's Labor Disorders. This superb ethnography astonishes on many fronts and is a unique contribution to our understanding of what it means to live and breathe under a hyper-flexibilized labor regime.
Council for European Studies
Labor Disorders is essential research for anyone interested in what happens to worker subjectivities under the neoliberal hegemony.
Work, Employment, and Society
[A] rich case study of the articulation between the state, global capitalism, and the medicalized body. . . .The study is topically relevant, theoretically sophisticated, and methodologically sound.Sept. 2014
MEDICAL ANTHROPOLOGICAL Quarterly
In an admirably rigorous and thoughtful ethnography, Noelle J. Molé unpacks the crisis and contradictions of workplace mobbing in Italy. . . . Molé has not only impressively detailed a phenomenon of the Italian workplace, she has also elucidated many fascinating aspects of Italian society without resorting to stereotypes or misrepresentations, which has been noted as a problem in Mediterranean studies of the past.
Contemporary Sociology