Introduction

Author(s):  
Eli Revelle Yano Wilson

This book explores the reproduction of social inequality within everyday service settings. Wilson analyzes everyday relations among different types of workers, managers, and, to a lesser extent, customers in restaurants. Seen from the ground level, workers negotiate their surroundings by finding ways to make their labor conditions more palatable using the resources available to them. Amid compounded forces that pull workers into divided worlds of work, class-privileged whites and working-class Latinos derive meaningful forms of identity and community from their respective roles in restaurants. This nuances the workplace in unexpected ways: while immigrant Latino workers struggle to contend with their structural disadvantages in marginal jobs, later-generation workers have been able to leverage some of these very conditions to their advantage.

2017 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 115
Author(s):  
Ludger Pries ◽  
Martina Maletzky

Internationalization of value chains and of for-profit as well as non-profit organizations, and as a result of cheaper and safer mass migration, transnational labor mobility is of increasing importance. The article presents the development of the different types of cross-border labor mobility (from long-term labor migration over expatriats/inpatriats up to business traveling); it analyses crucial aspects of labor conditions and how the collective regulation of working, employment and participation conditions in general is affected: could local or national forms of labor regulation cope with these new conditions? What are the main challenges when it comes to collective bargaining and the monitoring of labor conditions? The article is based on a three year international and comparative research in Germany and Mexico. First, different ideal types of transnational labor mobility are distinguished that have emerged as a result of increasing cross-border labor mobility. Then potential sources of labor related social inequality and challenges in the regulation of the working, employment and participation conditions for transnational workers are discussed. Finally, some conclusions are drawn for further research.


2011 ◽  
Vol 22 (4) ◽  
pp. 71-88 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sune Qvotrup Jensen ◽  
Ann-Dorte Christensen

Intersektionalitetsbegrebet indebærer, at sociale differentieringsformer som køn, klasse, etnicitet og ”race” er gensidigt konstituerende både på et identitetsmæssigt og strukturelt niveau. Begrebet har haft stor gennemslagskraft og bidraget positivt til fornyelse af dansk og international kønsforskning. Da begrebet rummer potentialer til analyser af komplekse sociale differentieringer, er det imidlertid også relevant for en bredere sociologi. Nutidige højt differentierede samfund fordrer således begreber og metodologier, som er egnede til at gribe kompleksitet. Intersektionalitetstænkningen har teorihistoriske rødder i amerikansk sort standpunktsfeminisme. I Danmark blev begrebet først anvendt af poststrukturalistiske socialpsykologer, som gentænkte det og gjorde det velegnet til at analysere, hvordan komplekse identiteter skabes i hverdagslivet. Senere er begrebet blevet anvendt af kønsforskere med andre faglige og videnskabsteoretiske udgangspunkter. I artiklen fremhæves det, at intersektionalitetsbegrebet kan anvendes til at producere forskellige typer sociologisk viden. I den forbindelse præsenteres en typologi over forskellige tilgange til intersektionalitetsanalyser, som bruges som afsæt til at skitsere tre eksempler på analyser af social ulighed og eksklusion. ENGELSK ABSTRACT: Sune Qvotrup Jensen and Ann-Dorte Christensen: Inter-sectionality as a Sociological Concept Contemporary highly differentiated societies require concepts and methodologies which are suited for grasping complexity. Intersectionality is a fruitful approach to analyze this complexity because social forms of differentiation such as gender, class, ethnicity and “race” are understood as mutually co-constructing at the level of individual identities and at the level of social structures. Intersectionality is a travelling concept which is theoretically rooted in black American feminism. In Denmark, the concept was first used by post-structuralist social psychologists, who adapted it to analyzing how complex identities were created in everyday life. Later on the concept was later taken up by gender researchers within the social sciences. This article analyses how the concept of intersectionality can be used to produce different types of sociological knowledge. It introduces a typology of approaches to intersectionality analyses, which serves as the backdrop for three examples of analyses of social inequality and exclusion. Key words: Intersectionality, complexity, social differentiation, gender, class, ethnicity.


Author(s):  
Eli Revelle Yano Wilson

This chapter brings readers further into the workplace by examining how coworker dynamics reinforce the extant social organization of higher-end restaurants, and ultimately how workers themselves understand their differences. The author details how educated white servers and working-class Latino cooks enact symbolic boundaries against the other that close off two distinct worlds of work by race, class, and gender. The racialized and classed boundaries that employees enact lead to strained and distant interactions, and can disrupt the flow of service in very real ways. More importantly, symbolic barriers decrease the likelihood that workers themselves feel they are able to access jobs for which they do not fit. This disproportionately affects Latino workers by further miring them in the lowest-paying and least visible jobs in the workplace.


2020 ◽  
Vol 98 ◽  
pp. 43-76
Author(s):  
Raino Isto

AbstractAcross former Eastern Europe, the transition from state socialism toward neoliberal capitalism has been accompanied by a marked reduction in emphasis on working-class identities. Because of the centrality of class to socialist-era identity-construction projects, the recent and relatively sudden ascendancy of various forms of individualist, consumption-oriented subjectivity in postrevolutionary societies has produced conflicts that are often more visible than in societies where capitalism has been the accepted economic paradigm for much longer. This shift can be seen in the realm of art and visual culture: Images of the worker once dominated public spaces under state socialism, competing in number with representations of leaders and communist ideologues, but since 1989 they have often been vandalized, dismantled, or else relocated to decay in relative obscurity. Where new public images of the worker do appear in postsocialist neoliberal conditions, they frequently serve as nexuses of controversy, where generational and ideological conflicts regarding current labor conditions and the legacy of worker solidarity play out. The debates surrounding representations of workers in postsocialism are both part of a global history of postsocialist art and part of the history of labor and its relation to contemporary urban space. This article examines artistic representations of the worker sited in public space in postsocialist Albania, in order to map the political and artistic discourses that animate engagements with working-class identity in conditions of neoliberal social transformation.


Author(s):  
William A. Mirola

During the struggle for the eight-hour workday and a shorter workweek, Chicago emerged as an important battleground for workers in “the entire civilized world” to redeem time from the workplace in order to devote it to education, civic duty, health, family, and leisure. This book explores how the city's eight-hour movement intersected with a Protestant religious culture that supported long hours to keep workers from idleness, intemperance, and secular leisure activities. Analyzing how both workers and clergy rewove working-class religious cultures and ideologies into strategic and rhetorical frames, the book shows how every faith-based appeal contested whose religious meanings would define labor conditions and conflicts. As it notes, the ongoing worker–employer tension transformed both how clergy spoke about the eight-hour movement and what they were willing to do, until intensified worker protest and employer intransigence spurred Protestant clergy to support the eight-hour movement even as political and economic arguments eclipsed religious framing. A revealing study of an era and a cause, this book illustrates the potential—and the limitations—of religious culture and religious leaders as forces in industrial reform.


2000 ◽  
Vol 37 (2) ◽  
pp. 414-437 ◽  
Author(s):  
Asim Haldar ◽  
VSN Prasad Yenumula ◽  
T R Chari

The results of eight full-scale tests on directly embedded steel pole foundations are presented. Fully instrumented poles were tested to measure the various design parameters. Different types of backfills such as sand, in situ gravelly sand, crushed stone, and flowable material were used. Various parameters were measured, including applied moment, ground line deflection-rotation, rotation of the pole below the ground level, soil pressures, and bending moments in the poles. The behaviour of these foundations was explained through ultimate capacity and moment-rotation characteristics. Based on these test results, it was found that the capacity of the directly embedded pole foundation depends primarily on the compaction levels of backfill and the embedment length of the pole. Flowable backfill material, which does not require any compaction, was found to be most effective and promising. Even when the backfill was loose, the lateral capacity significantly increased by the addition of a baseplate or by installing the pole with an additional embedment depth. Various theories developed for laterally loaded rigid piles were used to predict the moment-rotation behaviour and the ultimate capacity of the directly embedded pole foundation with different types of backfill material. Results from the analytical investigations were compared with those obtained from the full-scale load tests. Comparisons show that the ultimate capacities predicted by the models ranged from 0.30 to 2.20 times the measured capacities.Key words: backfill, compaction, full-scale tests, laterally loaded rigid piles, transmission steel poles, ultimate moment.


2014 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 105-114 ◽  
Author(s):  
Betty Stoneman

The “American Dream” and “Working Class Promise” ideologies are ubiquitously dispersed in American society. These ideologies posit values of equality and opportunity. In this paper, I deconstruct these two ideologies in order to examine the effects these ideologies have on income inequality, social inequality, and social immobility. I argue these ideologies create a paradox in society whereby the more theseideologies are believed, the more the ideologies exacerbate income inequality, social inequality, and social immobility.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sidra Kamran

Scholars have studied multiple femininities across different spaces by attributing variation to cultural/spatial contexts or in the same space by attributing variation to class/race positions. However, we do not yet know how women from the same cultural, class, and race locations may enact multiple femininities in the same context. Drawing on observations and interviews in a women-only bazaar in Pakistan, I show that multiple femininities can exist within the same space and individual. Working-class women workers in Meena Bazaar switched between performances of “pariah femininity” and “hegemonic femininity,” patching together contradictory femininities to secure different types of capitals at the organizational and personal levels. Pariah femininities enabled access to economic capital but typically decreased women’s symbolic capital, whereas hegemonic femininities generated symbolic capital but could block or enable access to economic capital. The concept of a patchwork performance of femininity explains how and why working-class women simultaneously embody idealized and stigmatized forms of femininity. Further, it captures how managerial regimes and personal struggles for class distinction interact to produce contradictory gender performances. By examining gender performances in the context of social stratification, this article explains the structural underpinnings of working-class women’s gendered struggles for respectability and work.


2021 ◽  
pp. 123-140
Author(s):  
David Farrugia

This chapter summarises the empirical findings of the book and explores the theoretical consequences for studies of youth, work and social inequality. The key argument is that the relationship between youth and work has been transformed by post-Fordism, and that young people have been re-positioned as the ideal post-Fordist subjects through their engagement with the contemporary labour force. In this sense, work has become a site for the production of youth as such – not merely an employment market that young people must ‘transition’ into, but a set of biopolitical practices that constitute the basic conditions for youth identity. In the process, young people’s definitions of themselves have become intertwined with their capacity to produce value at work. Class does not manifest merely in the biographical inequalities that structure youth transitions, or in struggles for status and symbolic value. Instead, class inequalities are manifested in the practices, ethics and forms of selfhood that are mobilised when young people cultivate themselves as subjects of value to the labour force. The book therefore offers a paradigm for understanding the formation of young people as workers, and the production of unique forms of classed identity manifested in the post-Fordist work ethic.


2012 ◽  
Vol 92 (2) ◽  
pp. 303-330 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wiebke Ipsen

Abstract This essay examines the role of upper-class Brazilian women (patrícias) in the public sphere during and after the Paraguayan War (1864–70). Barred from formal citizenship by the Constitution of 1824, upper-class women developed a form of “delicate citizenship” through which they projected themselves onto the national stage. In support of the war effort, they organized fund drives and sent uniforms and other supplies to the front. Following Brazil’s victory, they sponsored parades and other public festivities in honor of the returning troops. While hailing the army’s achievements in Paraguay, the victory celebrations also stressed the theme of peacetime demobilization and the return of the troops to their civilian roles and identities. Such demobilization would reduce or eliminate the potential political role of the veterans, drawn overwhelmingly from the country’s working-class and slave populations, and reaffirm the principles of monarchical rule and social inequality. Particularly important in the symbolism of the victory celebrations was Ana Néri, an upper-class widow and mother from Bahia who served as a nurse in Paraguay. Publicly embraced as the “mãe dos brasileiros” (mother of Brazilians), her embodiment of the female virtues of tenderness, caring, and self-sacrifice made her the perfect exemplar of the patricias’ movement and of delicate citizenship.


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