Labor Disorders in Neoliberal Italy Mobbing, Well-Being, and the Workplace [Paperback]

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. Mol?, mobbing is a manifestation of Italys 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.

Mol?s exploration of mobbing in Italy is both informative and insightful. She offers readers in the United States insight into an entirely different way of interpreting many of the detrimental workplace changes that they, too, have experienced.Mol?'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.Mol?'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.May 2013

Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction

1. Towl­