Welcome to Loot.co.za!
Sign in / Register |Wishlists & Gift Vouchers |Help | Advanced search
|
Your cart is empty |
|||
Books > Social sciences > Sociology, social studies > Social institutions > Work & labour
This book examines the nature and regulation of the informal economy by means of a collective case study in a highly regulated Western country. The book, situated at the intersection of criminology and sociology, investigates the relation between formal, informal and criminal work in three urban and rural labour markets (seasonal work, street trade and sex work) alongside the impact of state policies on informality. Boels uncovers the differential position authorities take regarding these labour markets, notwithstanding the presence of informality and often vulnerable position of workers in each one of them. With a distinctive focus on informal workers, and through in-depth interviews, this study explores the life and work of informal workers, including their experiences with regulators, their motivations for working informally and their perceptions of state policy. In short, this book gives a voice to often ignored but crucial participants of the informal economy. The detailed discussion of the results and the links to theoretical frameworks will ensure this book is of particular interest to scholars of urban economics and governance, criminology, and sociology.
This book investigates how social and cultural factors affect the education, training and career development of graduates of higher education in Japan and the Netherlands. The aim of this book is to explore how Dutch and Japanese graduates choose and develop their careers in reference to the above-mentioned challenges. It is based on a unique data set consisting of surveys held among graduates three and eight years after leaving higher education.
The author addresses the neglected issue of the relations between the functioning of powerful state industrial firms and the town under socialism. As they strived for labor force, the manufacturing and mining employers in Central and Eastern Europe became prominent gatekeepers controlling access to scarce goods and services, which reflected a specific labor market segmentation. The distribution of social benefits and burdens they generated enhanced life chances of certain groups by and large at the cost of the underprivileged--women and the elderly in particular. This socialist industry contributed to social injustice and deprivation as well as the reproduction of entrapping spatial settings such as factory colonies and areas reserved for potential expansion. The study reveals a great diversity of mechanisms of industrial control over and exploitation of socialist towns in Poland. Spatial organization of local activities and facilities exhibited the power of industrial gatekeepers, and in several cases became a mediating element facilitating achievement of the firM's objectives. The residents' sense of place was permeated by the company through its multiple involvement outside the factory gates, which could justify its dominant position and conceal sources of social inequalities and conflicts. The legacy of socialist factory paternalism bears heavily upon post-socialist society, which is evident in anti-egalitarian attitudes and social closure attempts demonstrated by the beneficiaries of the gatekeepers' allocation.
Feminist scholars have shown that women have a long history of productive work outside the home, and current research has focussed on the distinct nature of women's work and the role of women in the workforce. While much attention has been given to industrialized nations, this volume provides a comprehensive bibliographic record of books, articles, dissertations, and audiovisual sources on women and work in developing countries. The first chapter of the book provides entries for general works and for works of a theoretical nature, and is divided into sections on the global economy, theoretical considerations, and methodological concerns. Other chapters are devoted to particular geographic areas and include sections on introductory works; the social construction of gender; development policies; work and family issues; women's experience of wage-work; work in rural areas; and the efforts of women to promote change. Each entry is accompanied by a descriptive annotation. The last chapter is on audio-visual resources, and the volume concludes with an appendix of organizations and research institutions.
Viewed through a politico-economic lens, Nordic countries share what is often referred to as the 'Nordic model', characterised by a comprehensive welfare state; higher spending on childcare; more equitable income distribution; and lifelong-learning policies. This edited collection considers these contexts to explore the complex nature of tourism employment, thereby providing insights into the dynamic nature, characteristics, and meaning of work in tourism. Contributors combine explorations of the impact of policy on tourism employment with a more traditional human resources management approach focusing on employment issues from an organizational perspective, such as job satisfaction, training, and retention. The text points to opportunities as well as challenges relating to issues such as the notion of 'decent work', the role and contribution of migrant workers, and more broadly, the varying policy objectives embedded within the Nordic welfare model. Offering a detailed, multi-faceted analysis of tourism employment, this book is a valuable resource for students, researchers and practitioners interested in tourism employment in the region.
This is an academic inquiry into how labor power has been dehumanized and commodified around the world through the ages for capital accumulation and industrialization, and colonial and post-colonial economic transformation. The study explores all major episodes of slaveries beginning from the ancient civilizations to the end of Transatlantic Slave Trade in the eighteenth century; the worlds of serfdoms in the context of Western Europe, Eastern Europe, and Russia; the worlds of feudalisms in the context of Latin America, Japan, China, and India; the worlds of indentured servitudes in the context of the Europeans, the Indians, and the Chinese; the worlds of guestworkers in the contexts of the United States and Western Europe; the worlds of migrant labor programs in the context of the Gulf States; and the contemporary world of neoslavery focusing on human trafficking in both developing and developed countries, and forced labor in global value chains. The book is designed not only for students and academia in labor economics, labor history, and global socio-economic and political transformations, but also for the intelligent and inquiring policy makers, reformers, and general readers across the disciplinary pursuits of Economics, Political Science, History, Sociology, Anthropology, and Law.
Like many other cultural commodities, films and TV shows tend to
work in such a way as to obscure the conditions under which they
are produced, a process that has been reinforced by dominant trends
in the practice of Film and Television Studies.
Japanese Workplaces in Transition explores the changes in
workplaces from the perspective of employees. It provides new
insights by contrasting survey and theoretical sources with
excerpts from blogs published by Japanese people on the Internet.
In their blogsthey describe what happened to them or colleagues at
work, reflect about the development of their careers or voice
future ambitions and concerns. Bringing together three major
developments in Japanese companies -restructuring, changing
incentive systems and evaluation principles, and the increasing use
of contingent workers -it shows how these developments have
affected the mindsets of Japanese employees, eventually leading to
a new paradigm of work in Japan.
China and Globalization in the Amazon examines Chinese investment in the Global South, with particular attention to industrial activity in Latin America. Based on ethnographic work conducted in several Chinese factories in the Amazon region of Brazil, whether private, partially private, or state-owned, it explores the impact of these factories on the lives of workers, specifically on wages, laws, and labor benefits, as well as the relationship between management and workers. Drawing on interviews with Brazilian workers, expatriate Chinese workers, union leaders, and factory managers, the author identifies a Chinese production model and sheds light on the implementation of externally defined work regimes that showed little engagement with the workforce in the region, together with practices that resulted in a technical or bureaucratic relationship with the worker, and the emergence of lower wages than the local average, as well as few concessions on labor benefits. A study of Chinese globalization and industrial expansion in the developing world, and the reactions of workers to the Chinese model of management, this volume will be of interest to scholars of the sociology of work and organizations, globalization, development studies, and politics.
Drawing on primary qualitative research, this book explores the experiences and identities of a group of British-born women of Bangladeshi background attending university in London through a Bourdieusian theoretical framework. It demonstrates the inequities that these women experience in UK higher education and employment as well as how they challenge them. This book presents stories that illuminate the diversity of views and experiences marked by dynamics of class, race, ethnicity, religion and gender. These stories reveal family projects of social mobility and discourses of aspiration, the multiple resources and constraints that influence decisions, experiences and pathways, and the mutual construction of different dimensions of identification and tensions between them. Through participants' narratives, the book tackles wider questions around fair access to education and employment, social mobility and the (re)production and transformation of social inequities. The book will be of interest to scholars and students in the fields of Youth, Education, Race/Ethnicity and Migration Sociology, as well as community and education practitioners and anyone with an interest in multi-ethnic societies and young people's histories.
While organisations become more and more global, they also become more and more dispersed and virtual. This challenges the sense of a shared organisational identity and the ability of employees to communicate personally held knowledge. To address these challenges this book offers an innovative multidisciplinary approach to knowledge communication in global organisations. The book develops a multidisciplinary analytical lens through which to understand employee identity formations and knowledge communication practises. Using detailed analyses of interviews from a real organisation, the book builds an understanding of how 21st century employees make sense of a virtual organisational reality characterised by multiple simultaneous projects and virtual, dispersed teams. These analyses are conducted using a new discourse analysis method for analysing research interviews, Discursive Sensemaking Analysis. Using these methods and findings, researchers, project managers and HR professionals will be able to analyse their own organisations to discover how employees make sense of the complexity of 21st century global organisations.
This book explores how the kinds of world-wide restructurings of higher education and research work that are underway today have not only increased employment insecurity in academia but may actually be producing unemployment both for those within academia and for graduate job-seekers in other sectors. Recent and current re-organisations of higher education and research work, and re-orientations of academic life (as students, researchers, teachers) generally, which are taking place around the world, achieve exactly the opposite of what they claim: though ostensibly undertaken to facilitate employment, these moves actually produce unemployment both for those within academia and for graduate job-seekers in other sectors.
This book illustrates the impact that a focus on environmental and social issues has on both de-risking assets and fostering innovation. Including impact as a new cornerstone of the investment triangle requires investors and clients to align interests and values and understand needs. This alignment process functions as a catalyst for transforming organizational culture within an organization and therefore initiates the external impact of the organization, but also its internal transformation, which in turn escalates the creation of impact. Describing how culture is the social glue permeating all disciplines of an organization, the book demonstrates how organizational alignment can be achieved in order to allow strategic speed, innovation and learning, and provides examples of how impact can be achieved and staff mobilized It particularly focuses on impact investing, impact entrepreneurship, innovation, de-risking asset, green investment solutions and investor movements to counteract climate change and implementing the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, highlighting culture, communication, and strategy.
Since the legalisation of off-course cash betting in 1960, and the rise of varying forms of gambling, the British have come to be known as a nation of gamblers. Until this study was published in 1976, barely any evidence existed against which to assess the claim that gambling had become a major social problem. The authors present data drawn from area surveys carried out in Swansea, Sheffield, Wanstead and Woodford, and explore how well previous sociological theories of gambling agree with their findings, particular in connection with certain aspects of work and leisure. Examining different forms of gambling, including betting, bingo and gaming machines, the chapters consider how gambling choices vary between different social groups, and how much time and money is spent on them. With the internet making it easier than ever before to place bets, this title is especially relevant, and provides a systematic basis for an explanation of gambling in relation to social structure.
Over the past 50 years the global labour market is transforming from reliable employment to low-wage and unstable informal and precarious jobs. This ineluctable shift is a consequence of the concentrated application of neoliberalism since the 1980s, as capitalism is converting standardised labour markets in the developed Global North into contingent and informal labour. Platform Labour and Global Logistics: A Research Companion examines the most important developments and features of global logistics and the emergence of the platform economy through historical comparative chapters and case studies. Part I surveys the logistics revolution and its impact on labour in key sectors of the global economy and probes the viability of the platform as a generator of economic and financial growth and innovation. The chapters of Part 1 offer a fulsome analysis and critique of the economic and technical reconfiguration brought on by neoliberal capitalism and the diffusion of the platform and logistics as a feasible model into the future. Part II examines labour restructuring from standardized to informal work through the platform and information technology, and the political and environmental challenges to labour. Part III provides global case studies on the informal economy through case studies of crucial economies where the platform has become dominant, and Part IV examines how the platform has contributed to geographic mobility and labour migration, and the consequences on workers. Platform Labour and Global Logistics: A Research Companion presents a unique contribution to the political economy literature through highlighting the significance of the impact of the platform and logistics on the working class and potential challenges from labour across the world. This book is intended for academics, researchers and students studying technological innovation, global supply chains, labour restructuring, and worker resistance.
Women and men migrate across international boundaries at roughly the same rate. Yet most scholarship assumes that international migration results primarily from the labor migration of male workers. When international female migration is acknowledged, the focus is almost exclusively on women in the low-wage labor sector of the global economy. Gender and Immigration challenges this outlook by examining the diverse and complex ways in which women in a variety of occupational and social categories experience international relocation. Written by experts and policymakers in the field, the timely essays collected here explore whether international migration provides women with opportunities for liberation from the subordinate gender roles of their countries of origin. Or, do migrant women face both traditional and new forms of subordination and discrimination in their host societies? Exploring the experiences of a broad range of women, from "unskilled" workers on the U.S.-Mexican border and Filipino mail-order brides to Indian-American motel owners, Asian businesswomen, and Russian immigrants to Israel, Gender and Immigration offers a much-needed corrective to the long-standing invisibility of women in international migration research.
This book takes an in-depth look at the relationships exotic dancers have with their regular customers, and explores the limits of using feminist theory to discuss sex work. Incorporating interviews, personal accounts, and field notes, Egan sheds light on the feminist debates on sex work and women's power. She focuses in on the dynamics of desire and fantasy in exotic dance clubs to illustrate the complexity of gendered relations in everyday life. This is an accessible, revealing, and new look at a perennially intriguing and divisive subject--ideal teaching material for undergraduate courses in a variety of fields.
The book presents the latest studies on the work-life balance of millennial (also known as Generation Y) building professionals in Singapore and South Korea. Its main goal is to compare and contrast the workplace attitudes of millennials, and to provide guidelines that help supervisors in the construction industry manage their employees' expectations regarding work-life balance. Accordingly, it explains and links various principles regarding work-life conflicts, work-life enrichments and the work-life interface. Furthermore, the book introduces readers to coping strategies, a dimension that has not yet been explored substantially and has the potential to contribute significantly to the study and understanding of work-life balance. The book makes recommendations for the top management on assigning a capable leader to drive the changes in the organization, and on empowering the leader to implement effective strategies for promoting work-life balance, especially for the millennials who are now playing an increasing central role in the global construction sector.
Moving beyond polemical debates on globalization, this study considers complex intersections of gender, race, ethnicity, nationality and class within the field of globalized labor. As a significant contribution to the on-going debate on the role of neoliberal states in reproducing gender-race-class inequality in the global political economy, the volume examines the aggressive implementation of neoliberal policies of globalization in the Philippines, and how labor export has become a contradictory feature of the country's international political economy while being contested from below. Lindio-McGovern presents theoretical and ethnographic insights from observational and interview data gathered during fieldwork in various global cities-Hong Kong, Taipei, Rome, Vancouver, Chicago and Metro-Manila. The result is a compelling weave of theory and experience of exploitation and resistance, an important development in discourses and literature on globalization and social movements seeking to influence regimes that exploit migrant women as cheap labor to sustain gendered global capitalism. Globalization, Labor Export and Resistance: A Study of Filipino Migrant Domestic Workers in Global Cities, is an invaluable resource for scholars, researchers, policy makers, non-governmental organizations, community organizers, students of globalization, trade and labor politics. It will be useful in the fields of women/gender studies, labor studies, transnational social movements, political economy, development, international migration, international studies, international fieldwork and qualitative/feminist research.
Critical examination of the concept of 'embeddedness', the core concept of an Economic Sociology of Law. Combines insights from law, sociology, economics, and psychology. Ground-breaking study into the prioritization throughout society of interests and voices that align with doctrinal understandings of law and neoclassical understandings of economics. Will appeal to socio-legal scholars and others with interests in the intersection of law, economics and sociology.
This book contends that the Chinese economic reform inaugurated since 1978 has been a top-down passive revolution, in Gramsci's term, and that after three decades of reform the role of the Chinese state has been changing from steering the passive revolution through coercive tactics to establishing capitalist hegemony. It illustrates that the labour law system is a crucial vehicle through which the Chinese party-state seeks to secure the working class's consent to the capitalist class's ethno-political leadership. The labour law system has exercised a double hegemonic effect with regards to the capital-labour relations and state-labour relations through four major mechanisms. However, these effects have influenced the Chinese migrant workers in an uneven manner. The affirmative workers have granted active consent to the ruling class leadership; the indifferent, ambiguous and critical workers have only rendered passive consent while the radical workers has refused to give any consent at all.
This book examines the development of enterprise among key migrant groups in Europe and the United States. It argues that the development of 'ethnic economies' provides the material basis for alternative models of social integration, such as multiculturalism 'from below', which are critical of mainstream assimilationist thinking.
Since 1986, when America's current perception of a drug abuse crisis in the workplace began, many challenges and potential solutions have been identified. As we enter the 1990s, real progress in awareness and action has been made in many public and private American workplaces. However, the most important accomplishment--actual reduction in the number of persons using drugs in the workforce--is considerably more difficult to achieve. Research is being conducted in a number of employment settings to document how this can be done. While the results to date are encouraging, it is also clear that much remains to be done. Evidence from the national research reported in this book shows that many organizations regard their achievements on this front as modest at best, even though they have installed systematic programs aimed at reducing the problems of worker drug abuse. The organizational change approach required to achieve drug-free workplaces is the main subject of this book. Based upon findings from a three-year national research study, Thomas Backer and Kirk O'Hara examine what has been done to combat drug abuse in the workplace. They place the results of their inquiry within the larger context of organizational change theory. The critical secondary issues of responses to AIDS in the workplace and containing employer health care costs through managed care are also addressed. This book's focus on programmatic responses to workplace drug abuse at the day-to-day implementation level will be welcomed by substance abuse professionals, designers and directors of employee assistance programs, human resources and benefits professionals, and managers concerned about substance abuse in the workplace.
In this comprehensive Handbook, scholars from across the globe explore the relationships between workers and nature in the context of the environmental crises. They provide an invaluable overview of a fast-growing research field that bridges the social and natural sciences. Chapters provide detailed perspectives of environmental labour studies, environmental struggles of workers, indigenous peoples, farmers and commoners in the Global South and North. The relations within and between organisations that hinder or promote environmental strategies are analysed, including the relations between workers and environmental organisations, NGOs, feminist and community movements.
Media attention is often focused on the very richest, the 1%, and their capacity to influence politics and shape society. But they are not the only ones who drive politics, the public conversation and much of the private sector. The focus of this book is on the larger group between the 1% and the 10%. These are the managers and professionals of our media, business, the third sector, political parties and academia and are just as influential. However, many would not recognise themselves as high earners at all. In fact, earning around GBP60,000 a year in Britain places you in the top 10% of income earners. Maybe you're surprised you fall into this category, or are not as far off as you thought. But despite this group's relative advantage and comfort, these high earners don't feel politically empowered. They worry about their income and are anxious about the future. Most of them are more likely to move down the income ladder than up it. Drawing attention to this powerful section of society, this book explains why, even if you are relatively near the top, it is in your interest that inequality is reduced and you can help make that happen. |
You may like...
Trade Shows in the 21st Century - The…
Anne-sophie Beliard, Sidonie Naulin
Hardcover
R3,031
Discovery Miles 30 310
Contingent Workers' Voice in Southern…
Sofia Perez De Guzman, Marcela Iglesias-Onofrio, …
Hardcover
R2,914
Discovery Miles 29 140
|