Introduction: the WES 2004 Conference selected papers

摘要

The University of Manchester, England hosted the fourth Work, Employment and Society Conference, on 1-3 September 2004. Previous WES conferences were held in Nottingham in 2001, Cambridge in 1998, and Canterbury in 1994. Two even earlier stages in the process of institution-alization were the first British Sociological Association conference on the theme of Work in 1984, and the launch of the Work, Employment and Society journal itself in 1987. Although the conference is a separately organized event, it has become de facto the conference of the WES journal. The close relationships between the journal and the conference were maintained through WES 2004. Three members of the conference organizing team were current members of the WES editorial board, the board undertook to referee and publish this issue as one predominantly for selected conference papers. Paul Stewart, as the outgoing WES editor, delivered a plenary paper at the conference (Stewart, 2004), while the incoming editorial team (Helen Rainbird, Michael Rose, Irena Grugulis and Anne Munro) introduced themselves and their main objectives for their period of office.