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As the distribution of wealth between rich and poor in the United States grew more and more unequal over the past twenty years, this economic gap assumed a life of its own in the popular culture. The news and entertainment media increasingly portrayed the lives of the poor with such stereotypes as the lazy welfare mother and the thuggish teen, offering Americans few ways to learn how the "other half" really lives. Laboring Below the Line works to bridge this gap by synthesizing a wide range of qualitative scholarship on the working poor. The result is a coherent, nuanced portrait of how life is lived below the poverty line, and a compelling analysis of the systemic forces in which poverty is embedded, and through which it is perpetuated. Laboring Below the Line explores the role of interpretive research in understanding the causes and effects of poverty. Drawing on perspectives of the working poor, welfare recipients, and marginally employed men and women, the contributors—an interdisciplinary roster of ethnographers, oral historians, qualitative sociologists, and narrative analysts—dissect the life circumstances that affect the personal outlook, ability to work, and expectations for the future of these people. For example, Carol Stack views the work aspirations of an Oakland teenager for whom a job is important, even though it strains her academic performance. And Ruth Buchanan looks at low-wage telemarketing workers who are attempting to move up the economic ladder while balancing family, education, and other important commitments. What emerges is a compelling picture of low-wage workers—one that illustrates the precarious circumstances of individuals struggling with the economic conditions and institutions that surround them Each chapter also explores the capacity for economic survival from a different angle, with ancillary commentary complementing the ethnographies with perspectives from other fields of study, such as economics. At this moment of governmental retrenchment, ethnography's complex, nonstereotypical portraits of individual people fighting against poverty are especially important. Laboring Below the Line reveals the ambiguities of real lives, the potential for individuals to change in unexpected ways, and the even greater intricacy of the collective life of a community.
Ted Schrecker and Clare Bambra argue that the obesity, insecurity, austerity and inequality that result from neoliberal (or 'market fundamentalist') policies are hazardous to our health, asserting that these neoliberal epidemics require a political cure.
Publishes in-depth articles on labor subjects, current labor statistics, information about current labor contracts, and book reviews.
At free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press’s new open access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more. Precarious Creativity examines the seismic changes confronting media workers in an age of globalization and corporate conglomeration. This pathbreaking anthology peeks behind the hype and supposed glamor of screen media industries to reveal the intensifying pressures and challenges confronting actors, editors, electricians, and others. The authors take on pressing conceptual and methodological issues while also providing insightful case studies of workplace dynamics regarding creativity, collaboration, exploitation, and cultural difference. Furthermore, it examines working conditions and organizing efforts on all six continents, offering broad-ranging and comprehensive analysis of contemporary screen media labor in such places as Lagos, Prague, Hollywood, and Hyderabad. The collection also examines labor conditions across a range of job categories that includes, for example, visual effects, production services, and adult entertainment. With contributions from such leading scholars as John Caldwell, Vicki Mayer, Herman Gray, and Tejaswini Ganti, Precarious Creativity offers timely critiques of media globalization while also intervening in broader debates about labor, creativity, and precarity.
"Neighborhoods have been central to American sociology since its inception, yet we have understood little about how the institutions in urban communities evolve, disappear, or persist over time. Instead, as of late, many scholars have treated neighborhoods as collections of individuals and families, ignoring the institutional ecology. Understanding the dynamic role of local institutions is critical not only to sociological scholarship but also to important public policy debates about urban poverty. Martín Sánchez-Jankowski offers the reader an important, comprehensive look at how local institutions ranging from barbershops to street gangs to public housing both reflect and shape the culture and daily rhythms of the residents who live with them. His ecological perspective offers an important missing link in debates about 'neighborhood effects' and should be read by anyone interested in understanding urban poverty."—Dalton Conley, author of Being Black, Living in the Red: Race, Wealth, and Social Policy in America "In his famous and moving preface to Les Miserables, Victor Hugo warns us that as long as there is poverty, such tales will be told. But stories are not often told about the resurgence of poor communities—their struggles to mobilize and change their condition. But this book does just that—filling in the rest of the picture; and not of individual Horatio Algers, but with textured and critical analysis of the barriers these communities face and the pathways they take to achieve social change."—Troy Duster, New York University
WINNER of The Gertrude J. Robinson Book Prize, awarded by the Canadian Communication Association, and the Canadian Association of Work and Labour Studies, Book of the Year Award. This book examines the striking rise of call centres over the past quarter century through the lens of the resistance and collective organizing generated by workers along the digital assembly lines. Drawing on field research in Atlantic Canada, Ireland, Italy, and New Zealand, Enda Brophy investigates the contested making of the transnational call centre workforce and its integration into the circuits of global capitalism. Moving beyond depictions of call centre labour as either entirely liberated or utterly subordinated, Language Put to Work inquires into the forms of work refusal and insubordination provoked by the spread of these communicative workplaces, including informal strategies of quitting, slacking and sabotage, conventional trade union activity, tactical innovations at the margins of the labour movement, and forms of self-organization forged by workers outside of the established trade union movement. Weaving rich empirical evidence together with political-economic analysis and theories of resistance, this book argues that the submission of language to the production of value in the call centre is a process of proletarianization rather than professionalization, and that the new working class has widely opposed this transformation.
Publishes in-depth articles on labor subjects, current labor statistics, information about current labor contracts, and book reviews.
Tales of demise and decline have come to characterize news on the state of religion and congregations in America. In The Postindustrial Promise, author Anthony Healy finds that the changes in religious life and among congregations are being misunderstood. Instead of seeing the changes as the result of the presumed aspects of postmodern life—individualism, the collapse of social groups, and the scrapping of tradition—Healy sees what has occurred as a postindustrial transformation, in which an economy based on manufacturing has been replaced by one based on corporate and consumer services. This transformation has changed what we value and how we live, as well as how we work. It has also changed congregations and religious life, but not necessarily in the way that many people think. Contrary to the stories of decline, Healy finds that in this time of postindustrial dislocation people are again putting down religious roots. Congregations are making it possible for people to reconnect with the stories and traditions of previous generations and have become the places in society where the reembodying of religious and cultural narratives is taking place. Different from the postmodern script, this postindustrial explanation leads us to fresh insights into the change that has occurred among religious bodies, their congregants, and their communities. This book provides pastors, lay leaders, teachers, scholars, and seminarians with a solid grounding in the basic aspects of the postindustrial transformation and offers direction to help religious leaders develop responsive and viable places of ministry, mission, and program in this time of change.
An informative mix of data and discussion, this book presents conclusions and recommendations for policies that can respond to the new conditions shaping America's working families. Among the family and work trends reviewed: Growing population of mothers with young children in the workforce. Increasing reliance of nonparental child care. Growing challenges of families on welfare. Increased understanding of child and adolescent development. Included in this comprehensive review of the research and data on family leave, child care, and income support issues are: the effects of early child care and school age child care on child development, the impacts of family work policies on child and adolescent well-being and family functioning, the impacts of family work policies on child and adolescent well-being and family functioning the changes to federal and state welfare policy, the emergence of a 24/7 economy, the utilization of paid family leave, and an examination of the ways parental employment affects children as they make their way through childhood and adolescence. The book also evaluates the support systems available to working families, including family and medical leave, child care options, and tax policies. The committee's conclusions and recommendations will be of interest to anyone concerned with issues affecting the working American family, especially policy makers, program administrators, social scientists, journalist, private and public sector leaders, and family advocates.
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