Retail workers are a large labor force, yet their jobs are generally devalued and dominated by low wages, precarious conditions, and disrespect. Coulter draws on three years of comparative research on retail workers and political action, including fieldwork in Canada, the United States, and Sweden, to explore what is needed to improve workers' wellbeing and transform retail work. The only book of its kind, "Revolutionizing Retail" explains the strategies being used to improve retail jobs and retail workers' quality of life, including diverse forms of organizing, public policy, and good management. Coulter analyzes the degree to which current efforts are succeeding, and what lessons they offer about the present and future of work, forms of agency, and class, gender, and race relations. The power of culture, emotions, and workers' personal experiences of political action are at the heart of this engaging discussion of the challenges and possibilities of social change.

Consult this handy reference work when you need accurate, up to date information on subjects ranging from the effects of work on children's education to the use of child labor in Eastern Europe. From Dickensian exploitation of orphans to the after-school jobs of American students, child labor continues to generate controversy. Surveying working children from the Industrial Revolution to the present day, Child Labor takes the subject beyond the usual third world confines as it looks at traditional children's occupations, from chimney sweeps in Victorian Britain to child actors in TV commercials. A-Z entries are also arranged by category Numerous citations of contemporary books and studies

This book presents an accessible and fascinating account of theoretical debates around identity and work, recent empirical trends and methodological arguments concerning the role of oral testimony and its interpretation. Focusing on three occupational sectors in particular teachers, bank workers and the railway industry it also presents an argument that is both more general than this and theoretically and analytically wide-ranging. The book explores some important questions: how are workers, both in the past and the present juncture, socialised into work cultures? What are the cultural and structural differences with regard the world of work across class, gender, and generation? What are the historical conditions of which these differences play a part? How is the idea of work found in a range of representations, from artistic production to sociological discourse expressed and explored? The development of concepts such as 'structures of feeling' and affect, and the weaving in of historical and visual material, make the book important to a wide range of readers including ethnographers, cultural sociologists and narrative researchers. In turn, this book offers an authoritative and sophisticated summary and analysis of work and identity and is an important intervention into mainstream sociology concerns.

This volume examines the social history of oil workers and investigates how labor relations have shaped the global oil industry during the twentieth century and today. It brings together the work of scholars from a range of disciplines, approaching the social, political, economic and cultural dimensions of oil. The contributors analyze a number of key oil producing regions, including the Americas, the Middle East, Central Asia, the Caucasus, Europe and Africa.

This book portrays the experiences of self-described "outsider" or "other" teachers-teachers whose identities set them apart from their students based upon combinations of race, class, gender identity, sexual orientation, nationality, ability status, religion, or other identity characteristics. The teachers profiled bring experiences of social isolation and difference into the classroom and demonstrate perspectives and habits of mind that inform a nuanced approach to interaction with students.

Unemployment costs the United States at least $400 billion per year in lost output. This number does not begin to add up the total costs of unemployment that include many serious social problems like increased divorce and crime rates. If unemployment costs so much, why don't we simply pump up demand and push the unemployment rate down? The answer lies in the relationship between inflation and unemployment: we simply cannot push unemployment below the rate that is compatable with stable inflation.

Must we, then, just live with unemployment? No. But to understand how we can reduce unemployment, we must understand the nonaccelerating inflation rate of unemployment (NAIRU). What determines the level of the NAIRU? Has that level increased? Can we reduce the current NAIRU? These are important questions addressed in "Reducing Unemployment" Ottosen and Thompson argue that the NAIRU has increased significantly over the past 30 years. Many blame structural unemployment for that increase. Others have argued that increases in social welfare programs and payments are to blame. But hardly anyone has examined the effects of increasing government regulations on the NAIRU. "Reducing Unemployment" remedies this oversight, and also looks at the effects of unionization and productivity on the NAIRU. The authors conclude that the United States does not have to tolerate a high unemployment rate, for the NAIRU can be reduced through appropriate government deregulation.

This innovative book examines the nature of work and reward, and the place each has in today's society. The author examines why so many people feel trapped in the workplace today, and develops a framework that can be used to improve life both in and out of the workplace. The author states that the current definition of work today is sacrifice' and the reward is frequently money. He argues that employees also need access to such things as truth, good, beauty, and power. Concentration on the work ethic will give way to the development ethic which minimizes sacrifice and maximizes development through the use of technology and the restructuring of our value system. This illuminating book provides an interesting perspective on business for undergraduate business students, MBA students, and those directly involved in the business world.

"Work and RewardS" begins with an examination of the work world as it stands today. The author explores the possibilities for change in technology, the nature of work, reward systems, balance, and success. Finally, the book introduces a new framework for work and life.

This book highlights the parallel transformations of the concepts of citizenship and the welfare state, and their dependence on the dominant political ideology, from the post-war period to the present. Kourachanis presents the welfare state as an integral part of the capitalist state and consequently, suggests that any structural changes to the capitalist state will have major impacts on the texture and content of the restructuring of the welfare state. The research compares different formulations of citizenship and the welfare state, reflecting on social citizenship and the post-war (or Keynesian) welfare state, as well as welfare provision under neoliberalism. The research will be vital reading for academics, researchers and students of social and public policy, political and humanitarian studies, as well as policy makers and members of labour unions and activists.

The free movement of labour will be one of the key elements of the Single Market soon to be implemented, One would therefore expect that efforts would have been made to harmonize social policies, especially on the legal status of workers. But the existing EC Treaty contains no provision and the Community Charter of the Fundamental Social Rights of Workers of 1989 fails to fill the gap. The Charter delegates the socio-political responsibility in almost all points to the member states. Yet the constitutions of most refer to general human rights only. The author here stresses the importance of economic and social human rights which, like human rights in general, have their roots in the Enlightenment, especially in the works of Montesquieu, Adam Smith and Kant.

Art and the Challenge of Markets Volumes 1 & 2 examine the politics of art and culture in light of the profound changes that have taken place in the world order since the 1980s and 1990s. The contributors explore how in these two decades, the neoliberal or market-based model of capitalism started to spread from the economic realm to other areas of society. As a result, many aspects of contemporary Western societies increasingly function in the same way as the private enterprise sector under traditional market capitalism. This second volume analyses the relationships of art with contemporary capitalist economies and instrumentalist cultural policies, and examines several varieties of capitalist-critical and alternative art forms that exist in today's art worlds. It also addresses the vexed issues of art controversies and censorship. The chapters cover issues such as the culturalization of the economy, aesthetics and anti-aesthetics, the societal benefits of works of art, art's responsibility to society, "artivism", activist arts as protest and capitalism-critical works, and controversies over nudity in art, as well as considering the marketisation of emerging visual arts worlds in East Asia. The book ends with the a concluding chapter suggesting that even in today's marketized and commercialized environments, art will find a way. Both volumes provide students and scholars across a range of disciplines with an incisive, comparative overview of the politics of art and culture and national, international and transnational art worlds in contemporary capitalism.

Based on ethnographic data, this revealing study presents a humane and realistic account of Romanian economic migrants and their life in the UK, providing a more balanced picture of the way new immigrant groups are depicted and popularly perceived.

Global poverty is a central concern for world politics, yet we lack and adequate conception of the ways the "global poor" affect contemporary world order. This book examines the proposition, inspired by the work of Robert W. Cox and Jeffrey Harrod, that such a conception must be based on an analysis of how the "global poor" take part in power relations as" unprotected workers." It examines the ways in which production and power relations constitute world politics, and the chapters shed light on the politics of production in the Third World, migration, prostitution, the "clash of civilizations" and union internationalism.

This book is about how much people earn and why the distribution of earnings has been changing over time. The gap between the top and bottom in the United States has widened significantly since 1980. Why has this happened? Is it due to new technologies? What is the role of globalisation? Are there historical precedents?
The book begins with the "race" between technology and education, and shows that continuing technical progress does not necessarily imply a continuing rise in dispersion. It then examines the experience of 20 OECD countries over the twentieth century, material presented in the form of 20 country case studies. The book breaks new ground in assembling data on the distribution of individual earnings covering much of the twentieth century and drawing on a variety of under-exploited sources.
The findings overturn a number of widely-held beliefs. It is not the earnings of the low paid that have been most affected by the recent changes; widening is largely due to what is happening at the top. The recent rise in earnings dispersion is not unprecedented, but should be seen as part of a longer-run history of successive compression and expansion of earnings differences.

In this study, labor economist Henry Schechter concludes that there is a need for greater international prohibitions and for keeping open channels for collective bargaining for higher wages. He presents an analysis of recent changes in the United States and elsewhere, highlighting the spread of automated production technology to lesser developed, low-wage areas of the world, which leads to global demand-supply imbalances and downward pressure on wages. This circumstance, he charges, is aggravated as multinational corporations affiliate with one another, lessening competition and increasing monopolistic influences worldwide. This work will be of interest to the scholars and policymakers in academia, government, business, and the labor movement concerned with fiscal and labor economic policies.

From the middle of the nineteenth century until the 1888 abolition of slavery in Brazil, Rio de Janeiro was home to the largest urban population of enslaved workers anywhere in the Americas. It was also the site of an incipient working-class consciousness that expressed itself across seemingly distinct social categories. In this volume, Marcelo Badaro Mattos demonstrates that these two historical phenomena cannot be understood in isolation. Drawing on a wide range of historical sources, Badaro Mattos reveals the diverse labor arrangements and associative life of Rio's working class, from which emerged the many strategies that workers both free and unfree pursued in their struggles against oppression.

Toward a Future Beyond Employment proposes that as poor nations move to the emerging stage and as emerging economies become advanced, advanced economies are transitioning to a stage of their own, to a type of post-employment economy where society works less, consumes less, but instead has more time.

Theoretical and philosophical work on community has yielded multifold definitions and analytical frameworks. Kenneth C. Bessant reflects on the inherent complexity and diversity of this deeply intersubjective aspect of lived social experience. He explores the relational underpinnings of early and more contemporary approaches to the study of community, with a particular emphasis on their core assumptions, concepts, and tenets. Each of these perspectives offers a relatively distinct interpretation of community, while also revealing the intrinsically relational fabric of its perpetual emergence, dynamism, and transformation. The 'being-with' of relational social existence is the fundamental basis upon which all conceptions of community are built, and this is the epicenter around which the book revolves. Community is born of, exists within, and brings forth social relations. It is a living expression of relational willing, thinking, and acting.

This book proposes a theory of the legitimation crisis of neoliberalism. Through analyses of the legitimation crisis of regulated capitalism and the characteristics and theories of neoliberalism, the author contends that neoliberalism is affected by crises of system and social integration. The crisis of system integration refers to the inability of market mechanisms to address problems of capital accumulation and social stability. The crisis of social integration refers to the unmet promises of economic growth and social well-being. While attempts to address these crises are carried out through state intervention, crisis resolutions are inadequate due to the limits of the free market system and current state forms. Alessandro Bonanno contends that, as ideological and material forms of legitimation are inadequate, and processes of capital accumulation are sluggish and resistance weak, change is necessary. He outlines how this change will be controlled by corporate actors, minimally address the demands of subordinate groups, and marginally alter existing conditions.

This book explores the Jewish Left's innovative strategies in maintaining newspapers, radio stations, and educational activities during a moment of crisis in global democracy. In the wake of the First World War, as immigrant workers and radical organizations came under attack, leaders within largely Jewish unions and political parties determined to keep their tradition of social unionism alive. By adapting to an emerging media environment dependent on advertising, turn-of-the-century Yiddish socialism morphed into a new political identity compatible with American liberalism and an expanding consumer society. Through this process, the Jewish working class secured a place within the New Deal coalition they helped to produce. Using a wide array of archival sources, Brian Dolber demonstrates the importance of cultural activity in movement politics, and the need for thoughtful debate about how to structure alternative media in moments of political, economic, and technological change.

This collection analyzes shifting relationships between gender and labour in post-Fordist times. Contingency creates a sexual contract in which attachments to work, mothering, entrepreneurship and investor subjectivity are the new regulatory ideals for women over a range of working arrangements, and across classed and raced dimensions.

This book uncovers the mysterious social and political structures of China's "Third Front," the large state-sponsored development of inland China during the late Maoist period. This movement gave birth to a few important industrial bases such as Panzhihua and Liupanshui and had significant impact on megacities such as Lanzhou, Wuhan, and Chongqing. Yet, this is scarcely known to the West and even the younger generation of Chinese. Chen explores the ways that new industrial structures and hierarchies were created and operated, using political and sociological methodologies to understand what is distinctive in the history of the Chinese corporation. This book will be of immense interest to political scientists, sociologists, China scholars, and researchers of alternative economic structures.

Focusing on the ILO, this volume explores its role as creator of international social networks and facilitator of exchange between various national and international actors since its establishment in 1919. It emphasizes the role played by the ILO in the international circulation of ideas, expertise and practices that foster the emergence and shaping of international social models, and examines the impact of its methods and models on national and local societies. By analysing the case of the ILO, the authors rethink the influence of international organizations in the shaping of the contemporary world and the emergence of a global civil society.

This collection brings together a variety of new scholarship by a group of highly qualified and internationally renowned scholars and supplemented by a set of young researchers entering the field of global history and the history of international organizations.

This timely and innovative book delivers a comprehensive analysis of the non-recognition of the right to a family life of migrant live-in domestic and care workers in Argentina, Canada, Germany, Italy, Lebanon, Norway, the Philippines, Slovenia, South Korea, Spain, the United Arab Emirates, the United States of America, and Ukraine.

This book demonstrates how local contexts of urbanization and cultures of work are intimately meshed together. Each chapter explores a discrete dimension of the way people organize their working lives in post-industrial cities, taking close account of the social and environmental impact of this balancing act. The book features cross-national and inter-city comparative household level research, highlighting significant contradictions underpinning the nature of production, consumer expectation, work-life balance and urban environmental quality.

These proceedings from the 2012 symposium on "Chaos, complexity and leadership" reflect current research results from all branches of Chaos, Complex Systems and their applications in Management. Included are the diverse results in the fields of applied nonlinear methods, modeling of data and simulations, as well as theoretical achievements of Chaos and Complex Systems. Also highlighted are Leadership and Management applications of Chaos and Complexity Theory.