Changing Contours of Work: Jobs and Opportunities in the New Economy (Sociology for a New Century Series) - Softcover

Sweet, Stephen A.; Meiksins, Peter

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1412917441 ISBN 13: 9781412917445

Publisher: Sage Publications, Inc, 2008

Synopsis

The latter part of the 20th century witnessed remarkable transformations in the workplace, including the emergence of new organizational designs, new technologies, new markets, new workers, and the globalization of production.

Changing Contours of Work examines the effects that these (and other) changes have had on workers' lives on and off the job and the ability to make ends meet. Using a historical lens, this book reconsiders the notion of a new economy revealing important changes that have transpired, but also enduring practices that developed in the old economy that continue to shape the opportunity divides that exist today.

By framing the development of jobs and opportunity in an international comparative perspective, Sweet and Meiksins show the roads taken, and those not taken, and the impact these choices have had on the structure opportunity in American society. Their analysis reveals various opportunity chasms, and the continued importance of class, gender, race, nationality in the shaping life chances. As workers struggle to make a living, they do so in an economy being built on risk and overwork. The recommendation offered in this book of value to consumers, activist groups, employers, and governments - offers clear guidance on the strategies of making the new economy work for all.

About this title

About the Author

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); he is co-editor of 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). In 1996, together with Peter Whalley, he received a major grant from the Sloan Foundation to study "Flexible Work for Technical Professionals." His current research, again with Peter Whalley, 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. Stephen Sweet is an assistant professor 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 appeared in the 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. His recent books, College and Society: An Introduction to the Sociological Imagination and Data Analysis with SPSS: A First Course in Applied Statistics (now in its second edition), have been extensively adopted in sociology courses. In 2001 Dr. Sweet was awarded a Sloan Officers Grant to study the effects of corporate downsizing on dual earner couples. He is currently completing two book projects, The Handbook of Work and Family (with co-authors Marcie Pitt-Catsouphes and Ellen Ernst Kossek) which will be published in 2005 by Lawrence Erlbaum Associates and Managing Careers in the New Risk Economy, written in collaboration with his co-investigator Phyllis Moen.

Edition details

• Publisher: Sage Publications, Inc
• Publication date: 2008
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1412917441
• ISBN 13: 9781412917445
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 239