Since the 1930s, industrial sociologists have tried to answer the question, Why do workers not work harder? Michael Burawoy spent ten months as a machine operator in a Chicago factory trying to answer different but equally important questions: Why do workers work as hard as they do? Why do workers routinely consent to their own exploitation?

"Manufacturing Consent," the result of Burawoy's research, combines rich ethnographical description with an original Marxist theory of the capitalist labor process. "Manufacturing Consent" is unique among studies of this kind because Burawoy has been able to analyze his own experiences in relation to those of Donald Roy, who studied the same factory thirty years earlier. Burawoy traces the technical, political, and ideological changes in factory life to the transformations of the market relations of the plant (it is now part of a multinational corporation) and to broader movements, since World War II, in industrial relations.

迈克尔·布若威（Michael Burawoy），加州大学伯克利分校社会学系教授，2003～2004年度美国社会学协会会长。“社会学马克思主义”的旗帜性人物，始终坚持“阶级”分析的视角，主张将阶级带回社会学研究的核心。劳工社会学领域最重要学者之一，曾以参与观察的方法在赞比亚、美国、匈牙利和俄罗斯的多个工厂当过工人，在此基础上完成的《制造同意》、《生产的政治》和《辉煌的过去》构成了他的劳工研究三部曲，对马克思主义传统下的劳工研究产生了深远影响，其“学术工人”的经历也已成为某种传奇。在研究方法上，他发展了所谓的“拓展个案法”，并提出“全球民族志”的概念，对定性研究和民族志方法做出了重要贡献。当岁月使他再也不能重返工厂的生产现场时，他又将目光投向了社会学的学术生产本身。近年来，他大力提倡“公共社会学”，强调社会学的公共关怀和道德担当，在社会学界产生了非常之大的反响。