“They’ll Go with the Lighter”: Tri-racial Aesthetic Labor in Clothing Retail

2017 ◽  
Vol 4 (1) ◽  
pp. 128-141 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kyla Walters
Keyword(s):  
Black Women ◽  
Racial Difference ◽  
Labor Process ◽  
Retail Industry ◽  
Aesthetic Labor ◽  
Racial Dynamics ◽  
Retail Managers ◽  
White Workers ◽  
Racially Ambiguous ◽  
Retail Workers

The clothing retail industry demands the performance of aesthetic labor, whereby visible employees embody a store’s desired “look.” Scholars currently understand this labor process as focused on extracting gender, sexual, and class dimensions of worker appearances to promote the company brand. Drawing on 55 interviews with U.S. clothing retail workers, the author argues that racial dynamics of this job create a tri-racial aesthetic labor process that promotes White-dominant beauty standards and exoticizes certain phenotypical forms of racial difference. Clothing retail managers often select and reward White workers, while using lighter-skinned and sometimes racially ambiguous looking Asian, Black, Hispanic, and multiracial workers to carefully diversify brand representations. Darker-skinned Black women appear to experience exclusion, devaluation, and alienation in their performance of aesthetic labor.

scholarly journals First party fraud management: framework for the retail industry

2018 ◽  
Vol 46 (4) ◽  
pp. 350-363 ◽  
Author(s):  
Chioma Vivian Amasiatu ◽  
Mahmood Hussain Shah
Keyword(s):  
Literature Review ◽  
Systematic Literature Review ◽  
Design Methodology ◽  
Identity Theft ◽  
Retail Industry ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Management Framework ◽  
Retail Managers ◽  
Opening Up ◽  
Practical Implications

Purpose First party fraud in which consumers commit fraud against retailers is a growing problem. Research in this area is very limited which means that there is almost no guidance available to mitigate this problem. Existing fraud management frameworks focus on the management of other fraud, such as identity theft or employee instigated fraud. Due to the different nature of these frauds, these frameworks do not adequately address first party fraud. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to propose an adapted version of the fraud management lifecycle framework which is specific to first party fraud management. Design/methodology/approach The authors conducted a systematic literature review and compared/contrasted a number of existing fraud management frameworks in related domains to see which one would be most suitable for first party fraud management. Findings The authors found Wilhelm’s fraud management framework the most promising for adaptation and application to the first party fraud context. By modifying an existing framework according to the contextual requirements, the authors make the framework much more relevant to first party fraud management. Practical implications The framework could help retail managers better understand and manage this growing business problem and open new streams for further research. Originality/value This research also makes an important contribution by proposing a framework and by helping bridge a glaring and problematic gap in existing literature and opening up new streams of research.

“Looking Good and Sounding Right”

2010 ◽  
Vol 37 (3) ◽  
pp. 349-377 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christine L. Williams ◽  
Catherine Connell
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Gender Discrimination ◽  
Retail Stores ◽  
Race And Gender ◽  
Labor Practices ◽  
Job Segregation ◽  
Aesthetic Labor ◽  
Consumer Interests ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Retail Workers

Upscale retail stores prefer to hire class-privileged workers because they embody particular styles and mannerisms that match their specialized brands. Yet retail jobs pay low wages and offer few benefits. How do these employers attract middle-class workers to these bad jobs? Drawing on interviews with retail workers and Bourdieu’s theory of habitus, the authors find that employers succeed by appealing to their consumer interests. The labor practices we identify contribute to the re-entrenchment of job segregation, race and gender discrimination, and fetishism of consumption. The conclusion argues against rewarding aesthetic labor and suggests other rationales for upgrading low-wage retail employment.

Hagar in Nineteenth-Century Southern Women’s Novels

2020 ◽  
pp. 387-405
Author(s):  
Vanessa L. Lovelace
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Black Women ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
White Women ◽  
African Ancestry ◽  
Domestic Sphere ◽  
Wild Female ◽  
Domestic Novels ◽  
Women's Novels ◽  
Racially Ambiguous

The appropriation by U.S.-American blacks of the Egyptian enslaved woman, Hagar, as she appears in the book of Genesis, is epitomized in black art, literature, and cinema. Yet less familiar is the appropriation of Hagar by nineteenth-century, middle-class, white women novelists, who mostly lived during the antebellum Southern era. Their novels feature a dark, wild, female protagonist named Hagar who appears as a racially ambiguous woman. She is usually orphaned or abandoned, and she overcomes many obstacles and adversaries to fulfill her life’s purpose in the domestic sphere. Sometimes she is openly compared with the biblical Hagar, depicted as having African ancestry, and characterized as an untamed woman who is free of society’s gender constraints. Nineteenth-century domestic novels thus present stories about Hagar as a temporary escape for middle-class white women’s perceived enslavement to traditional gender expectations, as they experienced them in their individual lives. At the same time, the domestic novels disregard the experiences of nineteenth-century enslaved black women.

scholarly journals EMPLOYEE COMPENSATION EVALUATION BASED ON COST OF LIVING ADJUSTMENT (COLA) IN RETAIL INDUSTRY BOGOR, INDONESIA

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
pp. 180
Author(s):  
Aldy Rizaldy ◽  
Lindawati Kartika ◽  
Roni Jayawinangun
Keyword(s):  
Control Chart ◽  
Descriptive Analysis ◽  
Secondary Data ◽  
Primary Data ◽  
Retail Industry ◽  
Retail Sector ◽  
Literature Study ◽  
Financial Compensation ◽  
Work Accidents ◽  
Retail Workers

<p>The retail industry is a field that has a high contribution to the Indonesian economy. This research will examine the compensation based on the need for a decent living for retail workers. The purpose of this study is to (1) Analyze and evaluate the fulfillment of compensation (2) Creating a design and compensation strategy based on the requirements of decent living in Bogor. The type of data in this study is primary data (interview and questionnaires) and secondary data obtained from the <em>website</em> of Bogor, BPS, literature study, and relevant report. The method used is the descriptive analysis, control chart, and Grid ERRC. The results show that according to 60 components of Living Standards/KHL, only 53 items have been fulfilled and the rest (7 items are expected to be reviewed/Omited) and equal to Rp 2.753.000 which are below to Minimum Wage in Bogor. There is a priority in financial compensation and non-financial compensation, which are health benefits, holiday benefits, work accidents, and work incentives and non-financial compensation consists of career systems, work facilities, responsibilities, work status, working conditions. According to the control chart only 38% of the total respondents whose number of the COLA can be fulfilled above the average retail sector worker.</p>

Examining the Differential Impact of Recessions and Recovery across Race and Gender for Working- versus Professional-Class Workers

2021 ◽  
Vol 695 (1) ◽  
pp. 158-172
Author(s):  
Ofronama Biu ◽  
Christopher Famighetti ◽  
Darrick Hamilton
Keyword(s):  
Black Women ◽  
Wage Gap ◽  
White Men ◽  
Black Workers ◽  
Differential Impact ◽  
Race And Gender ◽  
Professional Class ◽  
Class Status ◽  
And Gender ◽  
White Workers

We investigate how wages and occupation sorting vary by race, gender, and class during recessions. We performed repeated Kitagawa-Blinder-Oaxaca decompositions of the Black-White wage gap from 1988 to 2020. Black professional-class workers’ wages are more unstable and take a more substantial hit during recessions. Black workers see a lower return to their labor market characteristics during recessions, and this is pronounced for the professional class. Using an occupational crowding methodology, we find that Black women are overrepresented in essential work and roles with high physical proximity to others and receive the lowest wages. White men are crowded out of riskier work but, within these categories, dominate higher-paying roles. Black workers earn less in professional riskier work than in working-class roles, while the reverse is true for White workers. We find that class status does not protect Black workers to the same extent as White workers, especially during recessions.

Major Choice and the Wage Differential between Black and White Women

2018 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 145-163
Author(s):  
Margaret R. Letterman ◽  
Maryanne T. Clifford ◽  
Jennifer L. Brown
Keyword(s):  
Black Women ◽  
White Women ◽  
Wage Differential ◽  
Major Choice ◽  
Recent Change ◽  
Bachelor's Degree ◽  
Black And White ◽  
White Workers ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Degree Recipients

Black workers continue to earn lower salaries than white workers, even among those with comparable levels of education. Previous research has explored the impact that the choice of college major will have on this disparity in earnings. The results of this research suggest that, among men, black bachelor’s degree recipients consistently choose lower paying majors than whites. However, among women, black bachelor’s degree recipients have, in recent years, begun to choose higher paying majors than whites. This recent change in major choice among black women is expected to result in higher starting salaries for black women on average, helping to close the racial earnings gap between black and white women. This paper empirically explores the distributional difference across majors between black and white women in Connecticut and explores the psychological reasons for this shift among black women toward higher paying majors.

Robert Rodgers Korstad,Civil Rights Unionism: Tobacco Workers and the Struggle for Democracy in the Mid-Twentieth-Century South. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003. 576 pp. $55.00 cloth, $24.95 paper.

2005 ◽  
Vol 68 ◽  
pp. 159-161
Author(s):  
Jeffrey Helgeson
Keyword(s):  
North Carolina ◽  
Black Women ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Working Conditions ◽  
White Supremacy ◽  
Tobacco Plant ◽  
Racial Democracy ◽  
Urban South ◽  
Tobacco Workers ◽  
White Workers

Robert Rodgers Korstad's dramatic story of tobacco workers in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, during the 1940s and 1950s, reveals the intricate connections between a local struggle for better wages and working conditions and the broader fight for racial democracy and civil rights. On June 17, 1943, a group of black women at the Reynolds Tobacco plant stopped work, rejecting the authority of a dictatorial white foreman and expressing long-simmering anger over speed-ups, dangerous working conditions, and unjust wages. With the help of organizers from the left-leaning United Cannery, Agricultural, Packing, and Allied Workers of America (UCAPAWA), hundreds of black (and a few white) workers at Reynolds built Local 22 of the Food, Tobacco, Agricultural, and Allied Workers of America (FTA-CIO). Korstad eloquently tells us how the FTA succeeded. He points to the temporary convergence of factors, an active federal government in labor relations, the labor movement's aggressive Southern Front, and the move in the urban South toward white supremacy with “a lighter touch” (376) that created a moment of extraordinary opportunity for “working-class blacks [who], through their participation in the labor movement, were in the vanguard of civil rights efforts of the 1940s.”(422)

Nationalism, Racial Difference, and “Egyptian” Meaning in Verdi’s Aida

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher R. Gauthier ◽  
Jennifer Mcfarlane-Harris
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Identity Formation ◽  
Race Relations ◽  
Racial Difference ◽  
The World ◽  
Racial Dynamics ◽  
Opera House ◽  
World Premiere

This chapter examines the dynamics of race and race relations in Giuseppe Verdi's Aida in the context of nationalism in nineteenth-century Egypt. The world premiere of Aida took place at the Cairo Opera House on December 24, 1871. However, there seems to be little information available on the opera's Cairo production, particularly with regards to Egyptian reaction to this first performance. Focusing on its Cairo premiere, this chapter analyzes Aida's libretto and music in order to elucidate the workings of racial difference as it lies on the surface of the opera. It suggests that, for Egyptians, Aida may have spoken to a sense of emergent Egyptian identity. It also reveals Aida's racial dynamics by linking it to discourses of light-skinned Egyptian superiority and dark-skinned African inferiority. Furthermore, the relationships between characters in the opera highlight the specificities of Egypt's relations with its racial-national Others, implying a larger project of Egyptian identity formation through “racial fabrication.”

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