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135 Int'l Lab. Rev. 615 (1996)
Work and Usefulness to the World

handle is hein.journals/intlr135 and id is 629 raw text is: International Labour Review, Vol. 135 (1996), No. 6 Work and usefulness to the world Robert CASTEL * F or reasons that will be explained below, analysis of the transformations of work from a historical perspective shows that reference to law is absolutely essential to form a clear picture of the place that work has occupied and occupies today in society. With the caution readers are entitled to expect of a non-specialist author, this article will attempt to justify the importance of law in the sense that nothing seems more urgent from the sociological point of view than the need to mobilize legal thinking to confront the current deterioration in conditions of employment. Work from a position of total dependence Work and usefulness to the world: this title was inspired by a historian's record of the indictment of a vagrant by the court of the French town of Le ChAtelet in the fifteenth century. The poor soul was pronounced useless to the world, and therefore fit to die by hanging like a common thief.' Vagrants were useless to the world because they did not work and lived off society's reserves, which they had not contributed to producing. To quote another historical source, they were the most terrible scourge ... of voracious insects that infect and desolate the countryside, devouring daily the subsistence of the farmers.2 Vagrants have indeed always paid dearly for this uselessness, enduring various but consistently cruel forms of repression for centuries. This leads to consideration of the relationship between work and a recognized position in society. To what extent is recognized membership of society - nowadays very loosely called social citizenship - based solely upon work? * Research director at the School of Advanced Studies in Social Sciences (Ecole des hautes 6tudes en sciences sociales), Paris. IBronislav Geremek: Les marginaux parisiens aux XIVe et XVe sicles, Paris, Flammarion, 1976, p. 310. 2 J. F. Le Trosne: Mgmoire sur les vagabonds et les mendiants, Soissons, 1764, p. 4. Copyright 0 International Labour Organization 1996

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