E-Book Overview
People at Work is noted sociologist Marjorie L. DeVault's groundbreaking collection of original essays on the complexities of the modern-day workplace. By focusing on the lived experiences of the worker, not as an automaton on an assembly line, but as an embodied human of flesh and bone, these essays offer important insight on the realities of the workplace, and their effects on life at home and in communities. With contributions from some of today’s top scholars, each essay is a detailed case study of a different aspect of the working world.Compelling, lively, and sometimes chilling, the contributors address issues from disability rights to immigrant labor, welfare reforms to budget cuts, competition to personal motivations. Each one valuable on its own, the essays in People at Work combine to illuminate the hurdles that workers of all backgrounds struggle with and, more broadly, the impact of change on workers’ lives in the new, increasingly global, economy.
E-Book Content
People at Work People at Work Life, Power, and Social Inclusion in the New Economy Edited by Marjorie L. DeVault a New York University Press New York and London Disclaimer: Some images in the printed version of this book are not available for inclusion in the eBook. NEW YORK UNIVERSIT Y PRESS New York and London www.nyupress.org © 2008 by New York University All rights reserved Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data People at work : life, power, and social inclusion in the new economy / edited by Marjorie L. DeVault. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978–0–8147–2003–5 (cloth : alk. paper) ISBN 978–0–8147–2004–2 (pbk. : alk. paper) 1. Work—Social aspects. 2. Industrial sociology. I. DeVault, Marjorie L., 1950– HD6955.P464 2008 306.3'6—dc22 2007038650 New York University Press books are printed on acid-free paper, and their binding materials are chosen for strength and durability. Manufactured in the United States of America c 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 p 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Contents Acknowledgments Introduction vii 1 Marjorie L. DeVault part i Ideologies of the Neoliberal Economy 1 “ Hell on My Face”: The Production of Workplace Il-literacy 25 Nancy Jackson and Bonnie Slade 2 Institutional Technologies: Coordinating Families and Schools, Bodies and Texts 40 Alison I. Griffith and Lois André-Bechely 3 The Promises and Realities of U.S. Microenterprise Development 57 Nancy C. Jurik 4 Work, Disability, and Social Inclusion: The Promise and Problematics of EU Disability Policy 74 Rannveig Traustadóttir part ii Mobile Bodies: Incorporation Without Inclusion 5 Flexible Hiring, Immigration, and Indian IT Workers’ Experiences of Contract Work in the United States 97 Payal Banerjee 6 Economic Restructuring and the Social Regulation of Citizenship in the Heartland 112 Nancy A. Naples v vi Contents part iii The Fictional Worlds of “Unencumbered Workers” 7 Training for Low-Wage Work: TANF Recipients Preparing for Health-Care Work 141 Brenda Solomon 8 Women’s Lives, Welfare’s Time Limits 157 Ellen K. Scott and Andrew S. London 9 Personal Responsibility in Professional Work: The Academic “Star” as Ideological Code 180 Catherine Richards Solomon 10 “ Use What You Have, Be Thankful You Have It”: Work and the Promise of Social Inclusion for Students with Disabilities 203 Katrina Arndt part iv Fiscal Disc