At a time when an emphasis on productivity in higher education threatens to undermine well-crafted research, these highly reflexive essays capture the sometimes profound intellectual effects that may accompany disrupted scholarship. They reveal that over long periods of time relationships with people studied invariably change, sometimes in dramatic ways. They illustrate how world events such as 9/11 and economic cycles impact individual biographies.

Some researchers describe how disruptions prompted them to expand the boundaries of their discipline and invent concepts that could more accurately describe phenomena that previously had no name and no scholarly history. Sometimes scholars themselves caused the disruption as they circled back to work they had considered "done" and allowed the possibility of rethinking earlier findings.

At a time when an emphasis on productivity in higher education threatens to undermine well-crafted research, these highly reflexive essays capture the sometimes profound intellectual effects that may accompany disrupted scholarship. They reveal that over long periods of time relationships with people studied invariably change, sometimes in dramatic ways. They illustrate how world events such as 9/11 and economic cycles impact individual biographies.

Some researchers describe how disruptions prompted them to expand the boundaries of their discipline and invent concepts that could more accurately describe phenomena that previously had no name and no scholarly history. Sometimes scholars themselves caused the disruption as they circled back to work they had considered "done" and allowed the possibility of rethinking earlier findings.

"Garey and Hansen have assembled a stunning collection of studies on the emotional and logistical dynamics of coordinating paid and unpaid work. A must read."-Stephanie Coontz, author of A Strange Stirring: The Feminine Mystique and American Women at the Dawn of the 1960s At the Heart of Work and Family presents original research on those topics by scholars who engage and build on the conceptual framework developed by the well-known sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild. These concepts, such as "the second shift," "the economy of gratitude," "emotion work," "feeling rules," "gender strategies," and "the time bind," are basic to sociology and have shaped both popular discussions and academic study. The common thread in these essays covering the gender division of housework, childcare networks, families in the global economy, and children of consumers is the incorporation of emotion, feelings, and meaning into the study of working families. These examinations, like Hochschild's own work, connect microlevel interaction to larger social and economic forces and illustrate the continued relevance of linking economic relations to emotional ones for understanding contemporary work-family life. Anita Ilta Garey is an associate professor of human development and family studies and of sociology at the University of Connecticut. Her book Weaving Work and Motherhood received the 2000 William J. Goode Book Award. Karen V. Hansen is a professor of sociology and women's and gender studies at Brandeis University. Her books include Not-So-Nuclear Families: Class, Gender, and Networks of Care (Rutgers University Press), which received the William J. Goode Book Award, Honorable Mention. A volume in the Families in Focus series, edited by Anita Ilta Garey, Naomi R. Gerstel, Karen V. Hansen, Rosanna Hertz, and Margaret K. Nelson