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Books > Social sciences > Sociology, social studies > Social institutions > Work & labour
The places and spaces of managerial and professional work are changing rapidly. Long-established routines and disciplines of the personal office are being superseded in a multiplicity of new locations, such as 'hot desks', 'touchdown areas', 'home offices', motorway service stations, airport lounges, cars, trains and planes. Drawing on original research, this book analyses the impact of these developments on the experience of time and space, privacy and surveillance, freedom and constraint in everyday working life.
This edited collection explores different strands of social constructionist theory and methods to provide a critique of the prevailing discourse of work stress, and introduces a radical new approach to conceptualizing suffering at work. Over the last three decades, stress and other forms of suffering at work (including burn-out, bullying, and issues relating to work-life balance) have emerged as important social and medical problems in Western countries. However, stress is a contested category, not (as many argue) a well-defined clinical, biological and psychological state that affects people in the same way in different cultures and at different times. Thus, a social constructionist perspective helps to shed light on new approaches to prevention and interventions of work stress. This book will be of great interest for students and scholars of sociology, anthropology, social history, history of science, psychology, communication and management, as well as to practitioners (doctors and psychologists), policy makers and employers.
'Pop-up' is a fully-fledged, new urbanism. Celebrated as a flexible and exciting new form of place making, pop-up culture includes temporary or nomadic sites such as cinemas, container malls, supper clubs, even pop-up housing and is now ubiquitous in cities across the world. But what are the stakes of the 'pop-up' city? Traversing a wealth of fascinating case studies, Rebranding Precarity shows how pop-up works to rebrand insecurity and encourages us to embrace precarity as the new normal. Revealing how urban crisis has particular temporal and spatial characteristics, defined by uncertainty, instability, fractures and gaps, it illuminates how those markers of crisis have been optimistically reimagined over the last few years, through an examination of seven logics that rebrand insecurity including within housing, labour economies and gentrifying areas. In doing so, it paints a frightening picture of how crisis conditions have become not just accepted, but are in fact desired, in today's metropolis.
Work Across the Lifespan coalesces theoretical and empirical perspectives on aging and work. This volume examines a collection of human development theories that explain trajectories of change, including patterns of growth, maintenance, and decline across the adult lifespan. At its core, the lifespan perspective assumes a focus on aging as a continuous process of intraindividual change and goal-based self-regulation. In this text, the lifespan perspective serves as a lens for examining the complex relationship between aging and work. Integrating research from the fields of developmental psychology as well as industrial, work, and organizational psychology, this authoritative reference brings together the collective thinking of researchers who study work, careers, organizations, and aging.
"In society at large, lives have been drastically altered over this century—as a consequence of increased longevity, advances in science and education, the gender revolution, improvements in public health, and other historical trends and events—but numerous inflexible social structures, roles, and norms have lagged behind. There is a mismatch or imbalance between the transformation of the aging process from birth to death and the role opportunities or places in the social structure that could foster and reward people at the various stages of their lives. While the twentieth century has experienced a revolution in human development and aging, there has been no comparable revolution in the role structures of society to keep pace with the changes in the ways people grow up and grow old. The lag involves not only institutional and organizational arrangements, but also the many aspects of culture that, in addition to being internalized by people, are built into role expectations and societal mores and laws. For the future, then, structural changes will be needed if people are to find opportunities to spread leisure and work, as well as education, more evenly over the life course, and to make room for family affairs." —from Age and Structural Lag
Industry 4.0 explores the emergence of disruptive digital technologies such as robotics, blockchain, nanotechnology and 3D printing and their impact on human lives and jobs in globalized 21st century societies. Incorporating a cutting edge area studies perspective, it considers the challenges and long term implications of the rise of 'Tech Giants' such as Alibaba, Google and Baidu through the lens of past industrial revolutions, looking back at the transformative technologies and industrial developments - the steam engine, electrification, telegraph, mass production, and the rise of digital technology - upon which the modern world was built. It investigates the mirror profiles of the world's largest tech companies in the US and China (Baidu and Google, Alibaba and Amazon, Wechat and Facebook) and provides a unique comparison of Tech Giants with 19th century colonial empires and monopolistic trading companies in terms of political-economic dominance. A key tool for instructors and students focused on courses on Technological History, Digital Technology and Cultures, New Media, Digital Ethics and China studies, this book provides practical guidance on how readers can equip themselves to face key workplace and societal challenges in a virtually interconnected world shaped by Tech Giant monopoly.
There have been few efforts to conceive of race as a characteristic that organizations possess or at the very least a characteristic that exists at the institutional level with which organizations must contend. In the United States especially, this belies our history of marking organizations and organizational practices as "Black" or "White", essentially "racing" organizations. Despite the undoing of legally sanctioned racial segregation, we continue to use such demarcations to classify organizations as Black colleges or Black media companies. Sociology is ill equipped to explain this history and its modern day consequences in part because we lack bridges between those studying the problems of race and those studying the problems of organizing. Consequently, we cannot adequately speak to how race affects organizations, markets, or institutions. This book brings together scholarship that interrogates the relationship between race and the organizing process for the founding of organizations, the organizational pursuit of human, financial, or political resources, organizational choices regarding strategic orientation and structural configurations, and the role of institutional logics that saturate organizations, industries, and markets with racialized ideologies.
The idea of a moral economy has been explored and assessed in numerous disciplines. The anthropological studies in this volume provide a new perspective to this idea by showing how the relations of workers, employees and employers, and of firms, families and households are interwoven with local notions of moralities. From concepts of individual autonomy, kinship obligations, to ways of expressing mutuality or creativity, moral values exert an unrealized influence, and these often produce more consent than resistance or outrage.
This book interrogates the existing theories of convergence culture and audience engagement within the media and communication disciplines by providing grounded examples of social media use as a social mobilization tool within the media industries. As digital influencers garner large audiences across platforms such as YouTube and Instagram, they sway opinions and tastes towards often-commercial interests. However, this everyday social media practice also presents an opportunity for socially and morally motivated intermediaries to impact on public issues. Cultural Intermediaries: Audience Participation in Media Organisations is intended to provide an explicit overview of how one notable media organization, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), incorporates participation into its production methodology, while maintaining its role as a public service media organisation. The book provides several cases studies of successful audience participation across socially motivated projects. Finally, the book provides an updated framework to understand how cultural intermediation can facilitate authentic audience participation in media organisations.
In the coming decade, we may see the advent of multinational federalism on an international scale. As great powers and international organizations become increasingly uncomfortable with the creation of new states, multinational federalism is now an important avenue to explore, and in recent decades, the experiences of Canada and Quebec have had a key influence on the approaches taken to manage national and community diversity around the world. Drawing on comparative scholarship and several key case studies (including Scotland and the United Kingdom, Catalonia and Spain, and the Quebec-Canada dynamic, along with relations between Indigenous peoples and various levels of government), The Legitimacy Clash takes a fresh look at the relationship between majorities and minorities while exploring theoretical advances in both federal studies and contemporary nationalisms. Alain-G. Gagnon critically examines the prospects and potential for a multinational federal state, specifically for nations seeking affirmation in a hostile context. The Legitimacy Clash reflects on the importance of legitimacy over legality in assessing the conflicts of claims.
This book showcases issues of work and employment in contemporary India through a critical lens, serving as a systematic, scholarly and rigorous resource which provides an alternate view to the glowing metanarrative of the subcontinent's ongoing economic growth in today's globalized world. Critical approaches ensure that divergent and marginalized voices are highlighted, promoting a more measured perspective of entrenched standpoints. In casting social reality differently, a quest for solutions that reshape current dynamics is triggered. The volume spans five thematic areas, subsuming a range of economic sectors. India is a pre-eminent destination for offshoring, underscoring the relevance of global production networks (Theme 1). Yet, the creation of jobs has not transformed employment patterns in the country but rather accentuated informalization and casualization (Theme 2). Indeed, even India's ICT-related sectors, perceived as mascots of modernity and vehicles for upward mobility, raise questions about the extent of social upgrading (Theme 3). Nonetheless, these various developments have not been accompanied by collective action - instead, there is growing evidence of diminished pluralistic employment relations strategies (Theme 4). Emergent concerns about work and employment such as gestational surrogacy and expatriate experiences attest to the evolving complexities associated with offshoring (Theme 5).
This book draws upon original research into women's workplace protest to deliver a new account of working-class women's political identity and participation in post-war England. Focusing on the voices and experiences of women who fought for equal pay, skill recognition and the right to work between 1968 and 1985, it explores why working-class women engaged in such action when they did, and it analyses the impact of workplace protest on women's political identity. A combination of oral history and written sources are used to illuminate how everyday experiences of gender and class antagonism shaped working-class women's political identity and participation. The book contributes a fresh understanding of the relationship between feminism, workplace activism and trade unionism during the years 1968-1985. This book is relevant to United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 5, Gender equality. -- .
The book presents a critical framework for assessing whether organisational practice and function reinforces unseen potential differences amongst individuals in the workplace. It offers a comprehensive understanding and awareness of managerial and organisational practices that perpetuate social exclusion and discrimination towards individuals in the workplace. The book draws together themes of non-declared medical or physical conditions, voluntary and involuntary disclosure of difference, dietary requirements, lifestyle, organisational engagement and cognitive bias. As a result, the book provides a unique blend of scholarly and professional research, and brings those who have been affected by social stigmas and discrimination in the workplace to the fore. Hidden Inequalities in the Workplace also offers practical and strategic insights for practitioners, students and policy-makers, and delves the strategic nature of policy intervention and thought-provoking dialogue
Leading scholars in the field examine the highly topical issue of the future the welfare state in Europe. They argue that welfare states need to adjust, and examine which kind of welfare architecture will further Europe's stated goal of maximum social inclusion and justice. The volume concentrates on four principal social policy domains; the aged and transition to retirement; the welfare issues related to profound changes in working life; the new risks and needs that arise in households and, especially, in child families; and the challenges of creating gender equality.
The first comprehensive and authoritative history of work and labour in Africa; a key text for all working on African Studies and Labour History worldwide. Co-published with the International Labour Organization on the centenary of its founding in 1919, the General Labour History of Africa is a landmark in the study of labour history. It brings, for the first time, an African perspective within a global context to the study of labour and labour relations. The volume analyses key developments in the 20th century, such as the emergence of free wage labour; the transformation in labour relations; the role of capital and employers; labour agency and movements; the growing diversity of formal and informal or precarious labour; the meaning of work; and the impact of gender and age on the workplace. The contributors - eminent historians, anthropologists and social scientists from Africa, Europe and the United States - examine African labour in the context of labour and social issues worldwide: mobility and colonial and postcolonial migration, forced labour, security, the growth of entrepreneurial labour, the informal sector and self-employment, and the impact of trade unionism, welfare and state relations. The book discusses key sectors such as mining, agriculture, industry, transport, domestic work, and sport, tourism and entertainment, as well as the international dimension and the history and impact of the International Labour Organization itself. This authoritative and comprehensive work will be an invaluableresource for historians of labour, social relations and African history. In association with the ILO Regional Office for Africa Stefano Bellucci is senior researcher at the International Institute of SocialHistory, Amsterdam, and lecturer in African History and Economy at Leiden University, the Netherlands; Andreas Eckert is Director of the International Research Centre for Work and the Human Life Cycle in Global History and professor of African history at Humboldt University, Berlin, Germany.
Whether for weavers at the handloom, labourers at the plough, or factory workers on the assembly line, music has often been a key texture in people's working lives. This book is the first to explore the rich history of music at work in Britain and charts the journey from the singing cultures of pre-industrial occupations, to the impact and uses of the factory radio, via the silencing effect of industrialisation. The first part of the book discusses how widespread cultures of singing at work were in pre-industrial manual occupations. The second and third parts of the book show how musical silence reigned with industrialisation, until the carefully controlled introduction of Music While You Work in the 1940s. Continuing the analysis to the present day, Rhythms of Labour explains how workers have clung to and reclaimed popular music on the radio in desperate and creative ways.
This book introduces the work of Yoshihiko Uchida (1913-1989), one of the most prominent Japanese thinkers on the topic of civil society in the post-World War II era. The distinctive features of Uchida's approach to civil society are his view of the metabolic relationship between human beings and nature and his call for a social science rooted in the experiences and inquiries of ordinary citizens. This original approach did not develop in a straight line from Uchida's early work to his mature period, and this book follows the twists and turns in its formation through his reflections on the relationships between "the civil" and "the capitalistic," "the modern" and "the pre-modern," "the historical" and "the trans-historical," and "science by specialists" and "inquiry by laypeople." As a historian of economic thought, Uchida pursued these topical themes by examining figures such as Adam Smith, Karl Marx, and Hajime Kawakami, a prominent thinker in Japan. By casting a light on these inquiries, this book offers the first depiction of Uchida's body of work as a whole and in doing so illuminates the emergence of original democratic thought in post-war Japan.
This book provides the first 'history from below' of the inter-war Belfast labour movement. It is a social history of the politics of Belfast labour and applies methodology from history, sociology and political science. Christopher J. V. Loughlin questions previous narratives that asserted the centrality of religion and sectarian conflict in the establishment of Northern Ireland. Labour and the Politics of Disloyalty in Belfast, 1921-39 suggests that political division and violence were key to the foundation and maintenance of the democratic ancien regime in Northern Ireland. It examines the relationship between Belfast Labour, sectarianism, electoral politics, security and industrial relations policy, and women's politics in the city.
In Surrealist sabotage and the war on work, art historian Abigail Susik uncovers the expansive parameters of the international surrealist movement's ongoing engagement with an aesthetics of sabotage between the 1920s and the 1970s, demonstrating how surrealists unceasingly sought to transform the work of art into a form of unmanageable anti-work. In four case studies devoted to surrealism's transatlantic war on work, Susik analyses how artworks and texts by Man Ray, Andre Breton, Simone Breton, Andre Thirion, Oscar Dominguez, Konrad Klapheck, and the Chicago surrealists, among others, were pivotally impacted by the intransigent surrealist concepts of principled work refusal, permanent strike, and autonomous pleasure. Underscoring surrealism's profound relevance for readers engaged in ongoing debates about gendered labour and the wage gap, endemic over-work and exploitation, and the vicissitudes of knowledge work and the gig economy, Surrealist sabotage and the war on work reveals that surrealism's creative work refusal retains immense relevance in our wired world. -- .
This book addresses the complicated question of how markets and consumption create the possibilities for cross-cultural exchanges and the multicultural pleasures of omnivorous consumption, whilst at the same time building new boundaries and distinctions, paving the way for new exploitative relationships, and initiating novel modes of status and capital accumulation. The contributors identify that the divide between the economic and ethical dimensions of globalisation has never seemed in sharper relief. With the workings of global markets at odds with fostering cosmopolitan social change, this collection addresses the question of whether we should assume that market logics and consumptive practices conflict with cosmopolitan agendas. It also explores whether the imperatives of economic globalisation and individual consumption practices are opposed to cosmopolitan prospects for global solidarities. Cosmopolitanism, Markets and Consumption will be of interest to students and scholars across a range of disciplines including in the social sciences, businesses and marketing studies.
This engaging new text uses a feminist lens to crack open the often hidden worlds of gender and work, addressing enduring questions about how structural inequalities are produced and why they persist. Making visible the social relationships that drive the global economy, the book explores how economic transformations not only change the way we work, but how we live our lives. The full extent of changing patterns of employment and the current financial crisis cannot be fully understood in the confines of narrow conceptions of work and economy. Feminists address this shortcoming by developing both a theory and a political movement aimed at unveiling the power relations inherent in old and new forms of work. By providing an analysis of gender, work, and the economy, Heidi Gottfried brings to light the many faces of power from the bedroom to the boardroom. A discussion of globalization is threaded throughout the book to uncover the impact of increasing global interconnections, and vivid case studies are included, from industrialized countries such as the US and the global cities of New York, London, and Tokyo, as well as from developing countries and the emerging global cities of Beijing, Shanghai, and Dubai. This comprehensive analysis of gender and work in a global economy, incorporating sociology, geography, and political economy perspectives, will be a valued companion to students in gender studies and across the social sciences more generally.
After the local newspaper where she worked as a reporter closed, Emily Guendelsberger took a pre-Christmas job at an Amazon fulfillment center outside Louisville, Kentucky. There, the vending machines were stocked with painkillers, and the staff turnover was dizzying. In the new year, she travelled to North Carolina to work at a call center, a place where even bathroom breaks were timed to the second. And finally, Guendelsberger was hired at a San Francisco McDonald's, narrowly escaping revenge-seeking customers who pelted her with condiments.Across three jobs, and in three different parts of the country, Guendelsberger directly took part in the revolution changing the U.S. workplace. ON THE CLOCK takes us behind the scenes of the fastest-growing segment of the American workforce to understand the future of work in America - and its present. Until robots pack boxes, resolve billing issues, and make fast food, human beings supervised by AI will continue to get the job done. Guendelsberger shows us how workers went from being the most expensive element of production to the cheapest - and how low wage jobs have been remade to serve the ideals of efficiency, at the cost of humanity.ON THE CLOCK explores the lengths that half of Americans will go to in order to make a living, offering not only a better understanding of the modern workplace, but also surprising solutions to make work more humane for millions of Americans.
This book presents racial stratification as the underlying system that accounts for the differential in outcomes in the labour market. It employs critical race theory to discuss the operation, research, maintenance and impact of racial stratification. Making innovative use of a stratification framework to expose the pervasiveness of racial inequality, this book teaches readers how to use critical race theory to investigate the racial hierarchy and develop a race consciousness. Using Ireland as a case study, Ebun Joseph examines how migrants navigate the labour market and respond to their marginality. While based on a study of Ireland, Joseph's theoretical approach and insight into migrant perspectives will appeal to readers interested in social justice, diversity and inclusion, race and ethnicity, and critical whiteness and migration. -- .
This text provides an overview and concise introduction to labor relations in Europe. The author seeks to transcend nationalism in labor relations by focusing his discussion and analysis on the continent as a whole and on groups of countries. The national focus is to some extent given up, not for a concentration on differences within nations, but in favor of a discussion of common European developments. European labor relations have a number of basic features in common, not only in collective bargaining and conflict, but also in worker participation and in the role of national governments. And, in a number of ways, these features are strikingly different from the labor relations model seen in the United States. The text, therefore, offers an illuminating analysis of commonalities and differences within European labor relations, as well as between the United States and Europe.
Despite the vast difference between first and third world societies, the subordination of women to men seems to be a universal fact. Originally published in 1984, the chapters in this book look specifically at the marital bond/contract, and locate the subordination of women in terms of that contract. Others examine the development and expansion of market relations and show how that affects marital relations, husbands' control over wives, men's over women. |
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