5th Edition
Working in America Continuity, Conflict, and Change in a New Economic Era
This leading, comprehensive text for courses on the sociology of work covers many vital new topics since the last edition (2015), just as it continues to offer foundational writings and discusses different types of jobs, inequality and intersectionality, work and family, and more.
New to this edition:
• The gig economy and new digital platforms and their effects on how work is organized.
• Precarious work and precarious workers, changes that reflect fundamental changes in employment relationships, increased job insecurity, and how people think about their jobs.
• The new retail, from customer interactions to a world where consumption is driven by data science.
• The latest research on call centers as the archetypal 21st-century workplace, illustrating many important issues about interactive work, transnational workplaces, gender, etc.
• The post-pandemic workplace, including essential workers and frontline workers, healthcare work and care workers; job flexibility, and implications for gender, work, and family.
Part I: Conceptual Foundations
1. Alienated Labour
Karl Marx
2. Bureaucracy
Max Weber
3. Fundamentals of Scientific Management
Frederick Winslow Taylor
4. The Division of Labor
Harry Braverman
5. The Managed Heart
Arlie Hochschild
Part II: The New Workplace
6. The Rise of the Temp Economy in America
Erin Hatton
7. Beyond Carrots and Sticks: How Outsourcing Companies Manufacture Effort via "Permanent Pedagogy"
Jeffrey J. Sallaz
8. Work and Identity: How Precarious Workers Respond to ‘Personal Branding’ Discourse
Steven P. Vallas and Angèle Christin
9. Precarious Futures: How White-Collar Workers Experience Unemployment
Benjamin H. Snyder
10. Being Nowhere in the World: Indian Call Center Operators and the Transnational Service Economy
Kiran Mirchandani
Part III: On The Job
11. Algorithmic Control in Platform Food Delivery Work
Kathleen Griesbach, Adam Reich, Luke Elliott-Negri, and Ruth Milkman
12. Cool Clothes and Fun Times? Consumer Identity in Retail Clothing Work
Kyla Walters and Joya Misra
13. ‘I Can Never Be Too Comfortable’: Race, Gender, and Emotion at the Hospital Bedside
Marci D. Cottingham, Austin H. Johnson, and Rebecca J. Erickson
14. Creative Freelancers: Occupational Community and Crowdsourced Work
David Schwartz
15. The Portfolio Ideal Worker: Insecurity and Inequality in the New Economy
Megan Tobias Neely
Part IV: The Changed Landscape Of Opportunity
16. Mock Schedules and the Meaning of ‘Flexible Employment’ for Undocumented Workers
Brian W. Halpin
17. Working for Redemption: Incarcerated Black Women and Punishment in the Labor Market
Susila Gurusami
18. Moral Storytelling: Employers’ Use of Credit Reports in Hiring Decisions
Barbara Kiviat
19. How Does a Silicon Valley Company Approach Gender Equality Change?
Alison T. Wynn
20. How Much is Too Much? The High Pay of CEOs
Esra Burak
Part V: Work And Family
21. How Do Mothers Make Sense of Work-Family Conflict? A Cross-National Interview Study
Caitlyn Collins
22. Signaling Parenthood: Managing the Motherhood Penalty and Fatherhood Premium in the U.S. Service Sector
Sigrid Luhr
23. Returning to Work After a Job Loss: How Class and Gender Shape Workers’ Decisions
Sarah Damaske
24. The Gendered Pandemic: The Implications of COVID‐19 for Work and Family
Jill E. Yavorsky, Yue Qian, and Amanda C. Sargent
Biography
Amy S. Wharton is Professor Emerita of Sociology at Washington State University, USA.
"To my knowledge, there are no books that offer a wide and diverse set of readings on work experience in America."
Stephen Sweet, Ithaca College
"Working in America has been the backbone of my work courses since its publication. The articles and excerpts in this reader help my students understand work as a site where the inequalities of gender, race, class, and sexual orientation are recreated and perpetuated."
Kevin D. Henson, Loyola University Chicago
"The book offers a variety of materials that allow me the flexibility to offer a broad scope and challenging class."
William T. Clute, University of Nebraska at Omaha
