Bastards at Work

Universal Lessons on Bullying from Contemporary French Storytelling

Martin Goodman

• Publisher: Peter Lang Group
• Year: 2021
• ISBN:
  9781800794757
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Sciences sociales
• Subtopic: Sociologie

Bullying is a social phenomenon that defines the contemporary workplace with much of the emphasis on psychosocial rather than physical suffering. In France, workplace bullying has emerged as a subject of intense interest and controversy among scholars, policy makers and cultural producers – notably novelists, playwrights and film directors. It has a high public profile as reflected in specific legislation, a wealth of critical literature on workplace suffering, and an extensive range of novels, plays and films. This study contextualises and analyses this wave of fictional storytelling that has emerged in France since the year 2000. It critically analyses more than a dozen such stories with a view to determining how they reflect the lived experiences of workers. Each story is considered from the perspectives of critical commentaries and research from France and elsewhere, focusing on the disciplines of philosophy, psychology, medicine, anthropology, sociology, literary analysis, economics, law and business management. This study also examines how fiction reflects changes in the nature of the French economy, organisations and work itself since the advent of neoliberalism in the 1980s.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Contents
• List of Figures
• List of Tables
• Acknowledgements
• List of stories analysed with title translations in English
• List of abbreviations
• Introduction
• Chapter 1 Mind games: The workplace as battleground for psychological warfare
• Chapter 2 Systemic violence: The organisation as bully
• Chapter 3 Homo oeconomicus and beyond
• Chapter 4 Brain over brawn: Psychological violence in the era of knowledge work
• Chapter 5 Body and mind: Bullying and medicalisation at work
• Chapter 6 Degrees of complicity: Co-workers as witnesses
• Chapter 7 Storytelling as authentic lived experience
• Appendix 1 Corporate: Emilie’s journey: A sequence analysis
• Appendix 2 Isabelle Sorente’s play, Hard copy (English trans.Martin Goodman)
• Bibliography
• Index