The “Great Resignation” or “The Big Quit” represents a significant shift in people’s importance of employment. In September 2021, U.S. Department of Labor data revealed that 4.4 million Americans quit their jobs, an increase of over 1.13 million from September 2020. This study aims to explore the socio-psychological reasons behind the Great Resignation and potential future shifts in how people view work in their lives. A data collection of 955 highly rated posts from the r/antiwork subreddit was analyzed using the BERTopic method to semantically examine the posts into identifiable topics from February 2020 to February 2022. Subsequently, the moral economy framework was used to investigate these topics, classifying the reasons into three dimensions: ‘Work and Employment,’ which reflects organizational factors, ‘Social Justice and Activism,’ which includes community-level considerations, and ‘Health, Well-being, and Lifestyle,’ which relates to individual circumstances. The study reveals a ‘vocabulary of motives,’ including flexibility, meaningful work, social responsibility, and self-care, showcasing the interconnectedness across individual, community, and organizational dimensions. This evidence suggests an ongoing significant transformation in societal importance and understanding of work. These findings shed light on the profound shift in work values, contributing to a more comprehensive understanding of the Great Resignation phenomenon, and have far-reaching implications for organizations and policymakers.

Este artículo presenta los principales rasgos y objetivos de la así llamada «explicación basada en mecanismos sociales» o «sociología analítica». Esta perspectiva ha ganado considerable atención en los debates contemporáneos, tanto por su novedad teórica como por sus resultados empíricos. En la primera parte del artículo se pasa revista a los conceptos centrales, los principales estudiosos y los pilares institucionales de este enfoque. En la segunda parte, se clarifican las relaciones entre la perspectiva de la sociología analítica y las principales corrientes de la sociología contemporánea, tanto teóricas como empíricas. En la tercera parte, se esquematizan tres principios básicos del enfoque: la idea de procesos causales, la relevancia de la teoría multi-nivel, y la preeminencia de las teorías y modelos formales.

In this article, the authors use the concept of negative social capital to address the contextual impact of micro mechanisms explaining political legitimacy. They first illustrate the effect of social capital with regard to its negative consequences. Then they select four countries, each one a case study of a different welfare regime, and measure the distribution of “time given helping others.” The helping behavior is interpreted as a credit slip in social capital vocabulary, and its effect on the confidence in democracy in different welfare regimes is measured. The research findings suggest that helping behavior in weaker welfare regimes has detrimental consequences for political legitimacy. The results are consistent both in a cross-country and in a within-country comparison.

The Fridays for Future (FFF) movement has emerged as a critical force in environmental activism in response to pressing climate challenges. Despite its global prominence, few studies have delved deeply into the internal lines of thought within FFF communities. Our research fills this gap by exploring the diverse perspectives within the Italian FFF community and how these viewpoints influence the movement’s civic and political dedication to environmental sustainability. We are specifically interested in the shades of green, namely the internal variations of attitudes and beliefs of the FFF participants. We conducted empirical research with over 300 climate activists from the FFF movement in Italy, collecting data from March to October 2022 using a Web-based respondent-driven sampling technique (webRDS). The questionnaire, comprising 27 questions, covers topics such as political values, institutional trust, technological attitudes, climate knowledge, and personal lifestyles. We chose Multiple Correspondence Analysis (MCA) for our analysis due to its valuable mathematical properties, capability for producing insightful visual representations, and efficient computational features. The analysis reveals four distinct groups within the Italian FFF community based on their attitudes and actions related to environmental sustainability. These groups include Activist Equalizer, Disillusioned Technophobes, Institution Trustee, and Laissez-faire Solitaries, challenging the prevailing notion that FFF activists solely fit the profile of Activist Equalizers often depicted in media and public discourse. Findings offer a novel picture of the FFF movement in Italy and contribute to a better understanding of how the internal diversity of FFF impacts the efficacy and future trajectory of environmental activism. This research offers new insight into the political role of FFF and its potential influence on climate-related political actions.