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Stephen Sweet is Associate Professor and Chair of Sociology at Ithaca College and formerly the associate director of the Cornell Careers Institute, a Sloan Center for the Study of Working Families. He has written a number of articles on the challenges confronting working families, focusing on the issues of concern to dual career couples across the life course. His studies have appeared in a variety of publications, including the New Directions in Life Course Research, Journal of Vocational Behavior, Journal of Marriage and the Family, Innovative Higher Education, The International Journal of Mass Emergencies and Disasters, Journal of College Student Development, and Community, Work, and Family. Stephen's other book with SAGE is The Work-Family Interface. He has also published The Handbook of Work and Family with co-authors Marcie Pitt-Catsouphes and Ellen Ernst Kossek; Managing Careers in the New Risk Economy, with co-investigator Phyllis Moen; College and Society: An Introduction to the Sociological Imagination, and Data Analysis with SPSS: A First Course in Applied Statistics. Stephen has been the recipient of a Sloan Officers Grant to study the effects of corporate downsizing on dual earner couples.

Peter Meiksins is a Professor of Sociology at Cleveland State University. He is the author of many articles on the sociology of work, including studies of the work experiences of engineers and part-time work in professional technical occupations and essays on labor process theory, professional work in comparative perspective, and contemporary labor relations. His work has appeared in a variety of journals, including Work and Occupations, Theory and Society, Economic and Industrial Democracy, Work, Employment and Society, and Sociological Quarterly. He is the author of Putting Work in Its Place: A Quiet Revolution (with Peter Whalley) and of Engineering Labour: Technical Workers in Comparative Perspective (with Chris Smith). Peter's other books are Rethinking the Labor Process (with Mark Wardell and Tom Steiger) and Rising From the Ashes: Labor in the Age of Global Capitalism (with Ellen Wood and Michael Yates). He and co-investigator Peter Whalley received a major grant from the Sloan Foundation to study Flexible Work for Technical Professionals. Peter's current research concerns the sociology of design work (a study of the work of graphic designers, industrial designers and interior designers). This research has been supported by a Fund for the Advancement of the Discipline grant from the American Sociological Foundation.

Klappentext

A rich analysis of the American workplace in the larger context of an integrated global economy. The authors frame the development of jobs in an international comparative perspective, revealing the historical transformations of work and the profound effects these changes have had on lives, jobs, and life chances.

Inhalt

List of Exhibits
About the Authors
Preface to the Fourth Edition
Acknowledgments

1. Mapping the Contours of Work
   Scenes From the New Economy
   Culture and Work
   Structure and Work
   Class Structures
   Job Markets and Job Demands
   Demography and the New Labor Force
   Agency and Careers
   Conclusion
2. New Products, New Ways of Working, and the New Economy
   A Postindustrial Society?
   The End of Mass Production?
   New Skills?
   Interpersonal Skills in the Workplace
   High-Tech Work
   New Cultures of Control?
   Technological Change and a Jobless Future?
   Rigid Jobs or Flexible Jobs?
   The End of Organized Labor?
   A New Global Economy?
   Conclusion
3. Economic Inequality, Social Mobility, and the New Economy
   Are Economic Divides Narrowing or Widening in the United States?
   Are Career Pathways Opening or Closing?
   Missing Rungs in the Ladder
   Entry Points: Securing the Good Job in Young Adulthood
   Exclusion Owing to Criminal Conviction
   Is the Global Economy Becoming More Flat or Bumpy?
   Conclusion
4. Whose Jobs Are Secure?
   Risk and Work: Historical and Comparative Views
   How Insecure Are Workers in the New Economy?
   The Costs of Job Loss and Insecurity
   Old and New Careers
   Risk, Well-Being and Retirement
   The Dawn of the Gig Economy
   Conclusion
5. A Fair Day's Work? The Intensity and Scheduling of Jobs in the New Economy
   Time, Intensity, and Work
   How Much Should We Work? Comparative Frameworks
   Why Are Americans Working So Much?
   Nonstandard Schedules: Jobs in a 24/7 Economy
   How Americans Deal With Overwork
   Conclusion
6. Gender Chasms in the New Economy
   When Did Home Work Become Nonwork?
   Women's Participation in the Paid Labor Force in America
   Gender Inequalities in Compensation
   Socialization, Career Selection, and Career Paths
   Interpersonal Discrimination in the Workplace
   Structural Dimensions of Gender Discrimination
   The Devaluation of "Women's Work"
   How Job Designs Discriminate
   Strategies to Bridge the Care Gaps: International Comparisons
   Conclusion
7. Race, Ethnicity, and Work: Legacies of the Past, Problems in the Present
   Histories of Race, Ethnicity, and Work
   African American Exceptionality
   The Immigrant Experience
   Magnitude of Racial Inequality in the New Economy
   Intergenerational Transmission of Resources
   Race, Ethnicity, and Economic Capital
   Race, Ethnicity, and Human Capital
   Race, Ethnicity, and Social Capital
   Race, Ethnicity, and Cultural Capital
   Geographic Distribution of Race and Work Opportunity
   Racial Prejudice and Discrimination
   Racialized Jobs
   Race, Ethnicity, and Work: Social Policy
   Organizational Strategies
   Affirmative Action
   Immigration Policy
   Conclusion
8. Reshaping the Contours of the New Economy
   Opportunity Chasms
   Class Chasms
   Gender Chasms
   Racial and Ethnic Chasms
   International Chasms
   Agents of Change
   Individuals
   Activist, Advocacy, and Interest Groups
   Unions and Organized Labor
   Employers
   Government
   International Organizations and International Controls
   Conclusion
   Appendix: Legislative and Regulatory Time Line of Worker Rights and Protections in the United States
   References
   Index