For decades, the idea that more education will lead to greater individual and national prosperity has been a cornerstone of developed economies. Indeed, it is almost universally believed that college diplomas give Americans and Europeans a competitive advantage in the global knowledge wars.
Challenging this conventional wisdom, The Global Auction forces us to reconsider our deeply held and mistaken views about how the global economy really works and how to thrive in it. Drawing on cutting-edge research based on a major international study, the authors show that the competition for good, middle-class jobs is now a worldwide competition--an auction for cut-priced brainpower--fueled by an explosion of higher education across the world. They highlight a fundamental power shift in favor of corporate bosses and emerging economies such as China and India, a change that is driving the new global high-skill, low-wage workforce. Fighting for a dwindling supply of good jobs will compel the middle classes to devote more time, money, and effort to set themselves apart in a bare-knuckle competition that will leave many disappointed. The authors urge a new conversation about the kind of society we want to live in and about the kind of global economy that can benefit workers, but without condemning millions in emerging economies to a life of poverty.
The Global Auction is a radical rethinking of the ideas that stand at the heart of the American Dream. It offers a timely expose of the realities of the global struggle for middle class jobs, a competition that threatens the livelihoods of millions of American and European workers and their families."

Clare Wightman explores the key issue of gender in explaining the experience of men and women at work. She uses women's employment in the engineering industries between 1900 and 1950 to confront many of the contentious debates in women's history. She shows that the two World Wars did not produce radical changes for women at work. Throughout the book the author questions the leading role given to gender ideology in constructing the attitudes of employers, and suggests that it was only one factor among many which shaped women's experiences in the workplace. This is a major study with wide and challenging implications for the subject.

Approaching "work" as at heart a practice of exchange, this volume explores sociality in work environments marked by the kind of structural changes that have come to define contemporary "flexible" capitalism. It introduces anthropological exchange theory to a wider readership, and shows how the perspective offers new ways to enquire about the flexible capitalism's social dimensions. The essays contribute to a trans-disciplinary scholarship on contemporary economic practice and change by documenting how, across diverse settings, "gift-like" socialities proliferate, and even sustain the intensified flexible commoditization that more commonly is touted as tearing social relations apart. By interrogating a keenly debated contemporary work regime through an approach to sociality rooted in a rich and distinct anthropological legacy, the volume also makes a novel contribution to the anthropological literature on work and on exchange.

Bringing together contributions from international scholars, this book explores the changing nature of young people's transitions and challenges assumptions about pathways from education into employment in contemporary society.

Contrary to the assumption that Western and Eastern European economies and cinemas were very different from each other, they actually had much in common. After the Second World War both the East and the West adopted a mixed system, containing elements of both socialism and capitalism, and from the 1980s on the whole of Europe, albeit at an uneven speed, followed the neoliberal agenda. This book examines how the economic systems of the East and West impacted labor by focusing on the representation of work in European cinema. Using a Marxist perspective, it compares the situation of workers in Western and Eastern Europe as represented in both auteurist and popular films, including those of Tony Richardson, Lindsay Anderson, Jean-Luc Godard, Andrzej Wajda, DusanMakavejev, Jerzy Skolimowski, the Dardenne Brothers, Ulrich Seidl and many others.

This book explores how we make sense of ourselves when work is precarious and intrinsically alienating. We know little about how this experience of work impacts the lives of men and women, and less about the way individuals understand themselves in the face of institutions and organizations from which they feel marginalized. Based on the narratives of men and women who underwent extraordinary work life changes, Crisis at Work examines how we negotiate greater meaning and fulfilment when our productive lives fail to sustain and satisfy. Reflecting a growing fracture between what we value, believe in, and are committed to and the degree to which work and career have become incapable of assuaging those desires, Potter examines how individuals attempt to assemble working-lives they find rich and rewarding and how that work is negotiated within the constraints and possibilities of the contemporary moment.

The global, 24/7 economy and the organizational changes it has generated have enormous implications for the organization, experience and use of time in (and out of) the workplace. In addition to eroding the boundary between home and work, creating time pressures both within and outside of the workplace, the need for businesses to compete in a 24/7 global economy has re-problematized time in the workplace. Drawing on sociology, labor economics, organizational behavior and social history, the papers in this volume examine either empirically or theoretically, a variety of aspects of time in the workplace. Contributors to this volume examine issues surrounding the distribution of and struggle over work hours and how these vary across a number of factors including race, class, occupation and other structural components of work. They examine temporal structures within organizations including inequities in flexible scheduling, entrainment and work teams, polychronicity, and how changing temporal structures affect professionalism and expertise. They also consider the way in which changing uses and organization of work time, in the context of economic instability and globalization, affect the difficulties of reconciling work and family. At the more micro-level, the papers consider individuals' perceptions and constructions and intersubjective constructions of time. To varying degrees, the authors speak to the policy implications or strategies for managing new times. Taken as a whole, these papers shed light on the way in which globalization and the emergence of a 24/7 economy have altered the ways, times, and meanings of time at work.
Research in the Sociology of Work is now available onlineat ScienceDirect ??? full-text online of volumes 10 onwards.

The persistence of a raced-based division of labor has been a compelling reality in all former slave societies in the Americas. One can trace this to nineteenth-century abolition movements across the Americas which did not lead to (and were not intended to result in) a transition from race-based slave labor to race-neutral wage labor for former slaves. Rather, the abolition of slavery led to the emergence of multi-racial societies wherein capital/labor relations were characterized by new forms of extra-market coercion that were explicitly linked to racial categories. Post-slavery Brazilian society is a classic example of this pattern. Working within the context of the origin of the wage labor category in classical political economy, Baronov begins by questioning the central role of wage-labor within capitalist production through an examination of key works by Smith, Ricardo, and Marx, as well as the historical conditions informing their analyses. The study then turns to the specific case of Brazil between 1850-1888, comparing the abolition of slavery in three Brazilian regions: the northeast sugar region, the Paraiba Valley, and Western Sao Paulo. Through this analysis, Baronov provides a critique of the dominant interpretation of abolition (as a transition from slave labor to wage labor) and suggests an alternative interpretation that places a greater emphasis on the role of non-wage labor forms and extra-market factors in the shaping of the post-slavery social order.

This study considers the impact of industrialisation, revolution and world war on women's working lives in Russia. Unlike existing studies this new text looks at women from all social classes. In the process the authors reveal how the stereotypical portrayal of Russian women's work as a struggle of endurance and sacrifice distorts and oversimplifies the reality of their experience between 1880 and 1930.

This book juxtaposes the experiences of regions that have lived or are living through industrial transition in coal-mining and manufacturing centres throughout Europe, opening the way to a deeper understanding of the intensity of change and of how work helps shape new identities.

Traces the shift in feminist interest in the household from an earlier focus on the uneven division of domestic labour to a more recent emphasis on women's caring activities within the household. The articles in this collection range from classics of the 1970s analyzing domestic labour and its effects on men's and women's employment patterns, through later studies of how women's increased labour force participation impacted on the domestic division of labour, to specifically commissioned articles that introduce some of the latest thinking on the nature of women's caring labour.

Globalization, the economic crisis and related policies of austerity have led to a growth in extreme exploitation at work, with migrants particularly vulnerable. This book explores the lives of the growing numbers of severely exploited labourers in the world today, questioning how we can respond to such globalized patterns of extreme inequality.

This text brings together eleven important pieces by Merry Wiesner, several of them previously unpublished, on three major areas in the study of women and gender in early modern Germany: religion, law and work. The final chapter, specially written for this volume addresses three fundamental questions: "Did women have a Reformation?"; "What effects did the development of capitalism have on women?"; and "Do the concepts 'Renaissance' and 'Early Modern' apply to women's experience?" The book concludes with an extensive bibliographical essay exploring both English and German scholarship.

This book analyzes in what way activation policies impact on given patterns of social citizenship that predominate in national contexts. It argues that the liberal paradigm of activation introduced into labour market policies in all Western European states challenges the specific patterns of social citizenship in each country.

Expectations about the contribution that volunteering can make are at a new high. This book aims to meet this interest by bringing together in one volume what is known about the phenomenon of volunteering; the principles and practice of involving volunteers; and the enduring challenges for volunteering in todays world.

The twenty-first century has witnessed a transformation of the organization, opportunities, and terms of work. Downsizing, restructuring, and outsourcing are the forces altering employment relationships throughout the work force. Those who tend to see the future in a positive light view the evolving role between employer and employee as empowering for the individual.

This book examines the consequences of economic instability due to job loss and the displacement of millions of workers. It draws upon case studies of worker displacement as well as national labor force surveys. Thomas S. Moore finds that consequences of economic instability are productivity slowdown, increased disparities in earnings and income, and higher average unemployment. He assesses the extent of job loss nationwide, its costs to the individuals directly affected, and the way in which the incidence of displacement and earnings loss has shifted over time. Although drawn from an earlier period, the data have an obvious relevance to today's labor markets.

Moore argues for an employment and training system that gives employers an incentive to invest in the skills of their employees. Federally funded training programs have not improved the earning ability of displaced and disadvantaged workers, and state-sponsored programs tend to exclude those most in need of assistance. Moore suggests direct employer investment in the general skills of employees. Initially published in a different economic downturn, this continues to be a must read book for all economists, sociologists, and policymakers.

A new book offering a broad overview of the debates about technologies and gender relations at work in a range of occupational areas. Innovative in its approach it deals with gender relations in terms of the ways in which they influence the design and development of technologies, and how gender relations are themselves shaped by technologies. The book will draw heavily on the theoretical perspective looking at the ways in which sexual divisions of labour and gender relations in the workplace profoundly affect the direction and pace of technological change, and tracks the development of certain technologies showing how, through their evolution, they embody these social relations.

There are many proposals for stimulating economic growth and lowering unemployment, and though they sometimes make full employment a goal, none of them except the plan highlighted in this well-researched book can make it a promise. John Pierson's Economic Performance Insurance (EPI) plan is the fruit of his lifelong campaign to tackle the New Deal's unsolved problem - involuntary unemployment. EPI avoids the pitfall of relying too heavily on government as the employer of last resort by guaranteeing a continuously adequate market for the products of private enterprise. The budget costs that may be incurred from insuring such a guarantee would be offset by the budget savings resulting from the drastic reduction in the burdensome social costs of welfare, drugs, and crime, which are directly linked to the problem of unemployment. Pierson cogently argues that EPI, or some similar plan, is not only desirable but necessary in the coming century. Eliminating unemployment is the key to tackling a host of other pressing issues, such as welfare reform, poverty, job discrimination, disarmament, and balancing our aid-and-trade relationship with Third World countries. EPI is not a utopian scheme but an eminently practical solution which, with political leadership and vision, could be enacted almost immediately.

This book investigates the extent of gender inequality in the division of labor in the modern household. Through comparisons of the time allocations of single couple families without children, couple families with children and lone parents, a comprehensive account of the evolution of gender inequality over a typical lifecourse is presented.

Uncovering how cash-in-hand economies are composed of not only the underground sector (work akin to formal employment conducted for profit-motivated purposes), but also a hidden economy of favors more akin to mutual aid, this book displays the need to transcend conventional market-oriented readings of cash-in-hand work and radically rethink whether seeking its eradication through tougher regulations is always appropriate. It argues for a variegated policy approach that recognizes these two distinct forms of cash-in-hand work and that tailors policy accordingly.

Through a rich ethnography of street and working children in Calcutta, India, this book offers the first sustained enquiry into postcolonial childhoods, arguing that the lingering effects of colonialism are central to comprehending why these children struggle to inhabit the transition from labour to schooling.

Culture Works addresses and critiques an important dimension of the "work of culture," an argument made by enthusiasts of creative economies that culture contributes to the GDP, employment, social cohesion, and other forms of neoliberal development. While culture does make important contributions to national and urban economies, the incentives and benefits of participating in this economy are not distributed equally, due to restructuring that neoliberal policies have wrought from the 1980s on, as well as long-standing social structures, such as racism and classism, that breed inequality. The cultural economy promises to make life better, particularly in cities, but not everyone can take advantage of it for decent jobs. Exposing and challenging the taken-for-granted assumptions around questions of space, value and mobility that are sustained by neoliberal treatments of culture, Culture Works explores some of the hierarchies of cultural workers that these engender, as they play out in a variety of settings, from shopping malls in Puerto Rico and art galleries in New York to tango tourism in Buenos Aires. Noted scholar Arlene Davila brilliantly reveals how similar dynamics of space, value and mobility come to bear in each location, inspiring particular cultural politics that have repercussions that are both geographically specific, but also ultimately global in scope.

This book investigates the transfer of parent country organizational practices by the retailers to their Chinese subsidiaries, providing insights into employment relations in multinational retail firms and changing labour-management systems in China, as well as their impact on consumer culture.

This book seeks to promote a new spiritual approach to organizational leadership that goes beyond visionary management to a new focus on the spiritual for both leader and led. Reflecting on the current crisis of meaning in America, this book takes up the search for significance in peoples' worklives--in the products they produce and in the services they offer. Recognizing that the new corporation has become the dominant community for many-- commanding most of our waking hours by providing a focus for life, a measure of personal success, and a network of personal relationships--Fairholm calls on business leaders to focus their attention on the processes of community among their stakeholders: wholeness, integrity, stewardship, and morality. Spiritual leadership is seen here as a dynamic, interactive process. Successful leadership in the new American workplace, therefore, is dependent on a recognition that leadership is a relationship, not a skill or a personal attribute. Leaders are leaders only as far as they develop relationships with their followers, relationships that help all concerned to achieve their spiritual, as well as economic and social, fulfillment.

As women are entering the workforce in record numbers, there is an urgent need to address the specific ethical problems that working women face. Providing a conceptual framework from which practical issues can be addressed, the authors focus on sexual harassment, comparable worth, leadership, advertising, and working-class women. Theoretical concepts, applied cases, personal narratives, statistical data and charts are all included in this wide ranging treatment of ethics and working women. This is not merely a summary of others' work; it is a book that will frame debates on gender, ethics, business, and economics and serve as an exemplar for the critical treatment of basic human concerns.