Work, Risk, and Inequality
Sociology 274, Spring 20008 Office hours: Jefferson 409, M/R 12:00-1:00, Professor: Debra Osnowitz T 2:00 -2:30 or by appointment Room G104 E-mail: [email protected], phone: x 7230
Work—both paid and unpaid—defines key elements of social life. A person’s occupation contributes to income, social standing, and life course options. The social organization of work, in turn, creates conflicts, risks, and opportunities, which change with new technologies, global markets, and shifts employment relations. As economic conditions affect paid employment, the organization of work produces new structural inequalities and contributes to social divisions based on race, gender, and class. Cultural norms and expectations further shape the experience of work and affect social relations among workers and employers.
This course explores the organization and meaning of work in modern industrial society and in the “new economy” of the twenty-first century. We will consider the implications of a large-scale shifting of risk from institutions to individuals. We will consider processes—deindustrialization, deskilling, globalization—that are restructuring workplaces and labor markets. We will chart changes in the employment relationship, together with the effects on workers’ organizations and collective representation. In choosing a topic to investigate in depth, students can choose from a range of related areas of inquiry.
Course Requirements
Students are expected to read each week’s reading before class, attend class, and engage in discussion. Each student will also take responsibility for summarizing main points and identifying key questions for one week’s readings. Lectures and discussion will form the basis for three take-home essays during the semester, each of which will cover a portion of the course readings and related class sessions. The course also requires a final paper, based on library research, further reading, and analysis of a chosen topic related to the course and approved by the instructor. This course therefore meets the capstone requirements for the sociology major.
Note: because this is a capstone seminar, students will, ideally, have taken at least one of the following sociology courses: Class, Status, and Power; Social Policy; or Sociology of Organizations. Anyone without this background should consult the instructor.
Grades will be based on the final paper (35 percent), each of three take-home essays (15 percent each, or 45 percent), and class attendance and participation (20 percent). Any extensions for late papers require documentation and clearance before the deadline.
1 Course Reading
The following books are required and available in the bookstore:
Ruth Milkman. Farewell to the Factory: Auto Workers in the Late Twentieth Century. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997
Jackie Krasas Rogers. Temps: The Many Faces of the Changing Workplace. New York: Cornell University Press, 2000
Rachel Sherman. Class Acts: Service and Inequality in Luxury Hotels. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007
Amy S. Wharton. Working in America: Continuity, Conflict, and Change. New York: McGraw Hill, 2006. [Note: be sure you have this edition. Earlier editions have different readings.]
Christine L. Williams. Inside Toyland: Working, Shopping, and Social Inequality. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2006
Additional readings posted on Blackboard
Handouts distributed throughout the semester.
This book is highly recommended (you’ll find it useful for your final paper):
Leslie F. Stebbins. Student Guide to Research in the Digital Age: How to Locate and Evaluate Information Sources. Westport, Connecticut: Libraries Unlimited, 2006
Course Outline
Week 1, January 15 Course Introduction
Week 2, January 22 Social Organization of Work: A Legacy of Inequality, A Shifting of Risk
Evelyn Nakano Glenn. Unequal Freedom: How Race and Gender Shaped American Citizenship and Labor. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2002. [Chapter 3, pp. 56-91] (Blackboard) Sanford M. Jacoby, “The Way It Was: Factory Labor Before 1915,” pp. 2-27 in Wharton Ann Crittenden, “How Mothers’ Work Was ‘Disappeared,’” pp. 18-31 in Wharton
2 Hacker, Jacob S. The Great Risk Shift: The Assault on American Jobs, Families Health Care, and Retirement and How You can Fight Back. New York: Oxford University Press, 2006. [Chapter 3, pp 61-85] (Blackboard) Karl Marx, “Alienated Labor,” pp. 44-51 in Wharton Max Weber, “Bureaucracy,” pp. 51-57 in Wharton (Note: You may have encountered Marx and Weber in a theory course, but review anyway for the concepts they explain.)
Week 3, January 29 Labor Process and Control: Industrial Work
Stephen Meyer III. “The Evolution of the New Industrial Technology,” pp. 31-43 in Wharton Frederick Winslow Taylor, “Fundamentals of Scientific Management,” pp. 57- 65 in Wharton Harry Braverman, “The Division of Labor,” pp. 65-69 in Wharton Michael Burawoy, “Thirty Years of Making Out,” pp. 318-324 in Wharton Tom Juravich, “Women on the Line,” pp. 324-329 in Wharton Dan Clawson. The Next Upsurge: Labor and the New Social Movements. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 2003. [Introduction, pp. 1- 12] (Blackboard)
Week 4, February 5 Unions and Collective Bargaining
Michael Yates, Why Unions Matter. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1998. [Chapters 1 and 2, pp. 8-38] (Blackboard) Dan Clawson. The Next Upsurge: Labor and the New Social Movements. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 2003. [Chapter 2, pp. 27-50] (Blackboard) Milkman, pp. 1-92
Week 5, February 12 Deindustrialization, and Its Consequences
Milkman, pp. 93-180 Vicki Smith, Crossing the Great Divide: Worker Risk and Opportunity in the New Economy. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 2001. [Chapter 3, pp. 53-90] (Blackboard) Steven P. Vallas and John P. Beck, “The Transformation of Work Revisited: The Limits of Flexibility in American Manufacturing,” pp. 129-147 in Wharton Robert Ross, “New Orleans as Rust Belt City” (Blackboard)
Week 6, February 19 Final assignment planning session
3 First Essay Due
Class session in the library, overview of final paper assignment
Week 7, February 26 Labor Process and Control: Service Work
Arlie Russell Hochschild, “The Managed Heart,” pp. 69-78 in Wharton Robin Leidner, “Over the Counter: McDonald’s,” pp. 302-322 in Wharton Jeffrey Sallaz, “The House Rules: Autonomy and Interests Among Service Workers in the Contemporary Casino Industry,” pp. 377-393 in Wharton Sherman, pp. 1-62, 110-153
Proposal for final paper due
Mid-term break
Week 8, March 11 Service Work as Interactive Labor
Sherman, pp. 184-270 Williams, pp. 1-47
Week 9, March 18 Service and Consumption
Williams, pp. 48-212
Week 10, March 25 Nonstandard, Contingent Work: Workforce Restructuring and Labor Market Mediation
Rogers, pp. 1-109, 151-174 Jean McAllister. Sisyphus at Work in the Warehouse: Temporary Employment in Greenville, South Carolina. Pages 221-242 in Kathleen Barker and Kathleen Christensen (Eds.). Contingent Work: American Employment Relations in Transition. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 1998. (Blackboard) Gonos, George. “Never a Fee!” The Miracle of the Postmodern Temporary Help and Staffing Agency. Working USA 4(3):9-36, 2001. (Blackboard) Osnowitz, Debra. Contingent Work. Encyclopedia of Social Problems. (Blackboard)
Week 11, April 1 Inequality and Social Difference
4 Second essay due
Kevin D. Henson and Jackie Krasas Rogers, “Why Marcia You’ve Changed”: Male Clerical Temporary Workers Doing Masculinity in a Feminized Occupation,” pp. 202-218 in Wharton Philip Moss and Chris Tilly. “Stories Employers Tell: Employer Perceptions of Race and Skill,” pp. 235-260 in Wharton Stephen Steinberg, “Immigration, African Americans, and Race Discourse,” pp. 175-192 in Manning Marable, Immanuel Ness, and Joseph Wilson (Eds.). Race and Labor Matters in the U. S. Economy. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman and Littlefield, 2006. (Blackboard) Newman, Katherine S. Chutes and Ladders: Navigating the Low-Wage Labor Market. New York and Cambridge, Massachusetts: Russell Sage and Harvard University Press, 2006. [Chapter 6, pp. 173-210] (Blackboard)
Film: “Secrets of Silicon Valley”
Week 12, April 8 Care Work, Domestic Work
Paula England and Nancy Folbre, “Capitalism and the Erosion of Care,” pp. 486- 496 in Wharton Barbara Ehrenreich, “The Politics of Other Women’s Work,” pp. 510-521 in Wharton Judith Rollins. Invisibility, Consciousness of the Other, and Resentiment among Black Domestic Workers. Pages 223-243 in Cameron Lynne Macdonald and Carmen Sirianni (Eds.). Working in the Service Society. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1996. (Blackboard) Pierrette Hondagnue-Sotelo. Blowups and Other Unhappy Endings. Pages 55-69 in Barbara Ehrenreich and Arlie Russell Hochschild (Eds.). Global Woman: Nannies, Maids, and Sex Workers in the New Economy. New York: Metropolitan Books, 2003. (Blackboard) Cameron L. Macdonald. Manufacturing Motherhood: The Shadow Work of Nannies and Au Pairs. Pages 21-50 in Douglas Harper and Helene M. Lawson. The Cultural Study of Work. New York: Rowman & Littlefield, 2003 (Blackboard)
Week 13, April 15 Unemployment, Informal Work, and Social Welfare
William Julius Wilson, “Jobless Poverty: A New From of Social Dislocation in the Inner-City Ghetto,” pp. 178-189 in Wharton Teresa Gowan, “American Untouchables: Homeless Scavengers in San Francisco’s Underground Economy,” pp. 447-459 in Wharton Sharon Hayes, “Flat Broke with Children: Enforcing the Work Ethic,” pp. 466-482 in Wharton
5 Robert P. Stoker and Laura A. Wilson. When Work in Not Enough: State and Federal Policies to Support Needy Workers. Washington, D. C.: Brookings Institution, 2006 [Chapter 1, pp. 1-63] (Blackboard) Dan Clawson. The Next Upsurge: Labor and the New Social Movements. Ithaca, New York: Cornell University Press, 2003. [Chapter 5, pp. 131- 163] (Blackboard)
Week 14, April 22 Global Restructuring and Technological Change
Glen Firebaugh, “The New Geography of Global Income inequality,” pp. 170- 178 in Wharton Simon Head, “On the Digital Assembly Line,” pp. 125-135 in Wharton Shoshana Zuboff, “In the Age of the Smart Machine,” pp. 113-125 in Wharton Eric Schlosser, “Fast-Food Nation: The Most Dangerous Job,” pp. 330-344 in Wharton
Film: “Is Wal-Mart Good for America?”
Third essay due April 28, last day of classes
Final paper due during exam week
Questions for In-Class Presentations
The purpose of in-class presentations is to identify key themes in a week’s readings and some related questions that the readings raise. The goal is not to summarize the reading. In your presentation, you should assume that class members have also read the week’s assignment. You task is rather to take additional responsibility, during one week, to consider themes for class discussion. Your presentation need not take more than five minutes or so. Consider the following:
1. What seems most significant about each of the readings for the week?
2. How do the readings contribute to an understanding of inequality in the workforce?
3. What questions do you have? (Consider, for example, what further research the readings suggest or what you might want to challenge or confirm.)
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