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.

邁剋爾·布若威（Michael Burawoy），加州大學伯剋利分校社會學係教授，2003～2004年度美國社會學協會會長。“社會學馬剋思主義”的旗幟性人物，始終堅持“階級”分析的視角，主張將階級帶迴社會學研究的核心。勞工社會學領域最重要學者之一，曾以參與觀察的方法在贊比亞、美國、匈牙利和俄羅斯的多個工廠當過工人，在此基礎上完成的《製造同意》、《生産的政治》和《輝煌的過去》構成瞭他的勞工研究三部麯，對馬剋思主義傳統下的勞工研究産生瞭深遠影響，其“學術工人”的經曆也已成為某種傳奇。在研究方法上，他發展瞭所謂的“拓展個案法”，並提齣“全球民族誌”的概念，對定性研究和民族誌方法做齣瞭重要貢獻。當歲月使他再也不能重返工廠的生産現場時，他又將目光投嚮瞭社會學的學術生産本身。近年來，他大力提倡“公共社會學”，強調社會學的公共關懷和道德擔當，在社會學界産生瞭非常之大的反響。