A Sociology of Work in Japan (Contemporary Japanese Society) (May 11, 2005)
by Ross Mouer, Hirosuke Kawanishi, Yoshio Sugimoto (Series Editor), Harumi Befu (Series Editor), Roger Goodman (Series Editor), Michio Muramatsu (Series Editor), Wolfgang Seifert (Series Editor), Chizuko Ueno (Series Editor)
This comprehensive, introductory overview of the "world of work" in Japan recalls post-war Japan to analyze the development of industrial relations and the Japanese style of management. It considers the changes that took place in the early nineties when disillusionment set in and unemployment and economic insecurity became facts of life. The authors challenge the preeminence of Japanese management practices which have dominated the literature over the last three decades.
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What shapes the decisions of employees in Japan? The authors of this comprehensive and up-to-date survey of the relationship between work and society in Japan argue that individual decisions about work can only be understood through the broader social context. Many factors combine to affect such choices including the structuring of labour markets, social policy and, of course, global influences which have come increasingly to impinge on the organisation of work and life generally. By considering labour markets, social policy and relationships between labour and management, the book offers penetrating insights into contemporary Japanese society and glimpses of what might come in the future. Underlying the discussion is a challenge to the celebration of Japanese management practices which has dominated the literature for the last three decades. This is an important and groundbreaking book for students of sociology and economics.

Worlds of Work : Building an International Sociology of Work (Plenum Studies in Work and Industry) (December 1, 2001)
by Daniel B. Cornfield (Editor), Randy Hodson (Editor)
The advent of transnational economic production and market integration compels sociologists of work to look beyond traditional national boundaries and build an international sociology of work in order to effectively address the human, scientific, and practical challenges posed by global economic transnationalism. The purpose of this volume is to promote transnational dialogue about the sociology of work and help build a truly international discipline in this field.

Communist Neo-Traditionalism: Work and Authority in Chinese Industry by Andrew G. Walder
Daniel Chirot, Journal of Asian Studies
"The best, most insightful work I have ever read about the nature of authority, politics, and social structure in any communist country. . . . [It] builds a coherent theory about the nature of communism that will be widely influential in comparative studies for a long time."
Based on official Chinese sources as well as intensive interviews with Hong Kong residents formerly employed in mainland factories, Andrew Walder's neo-traditional image of communist society in China will be of interest not only to those concerned with China and other communist countries, but also to students of industrial relations and comparative social science.

Tangled Routes: Women, Work, and Globalization on the Tomato Trail   (June, 2002) by Deborah Barndt
Tangled Routes follows a corporate tomato from a Mexican field through the United States to a Canadian table, examining in its wake the dynamic relationship between production and consumption, work and technology, health and environment, bio-diversity and cultural diversity. Three case studies--a Mexican agribusiness, a Canadian supermarket, and a U.S.-owned fast-food restaurant--offer a view of globalization from above (corporate profiles), globalization from below (stories of women who plant, pick, pack, scan, slice, and sell tomatoes), and the other globalization (acts of resistance and alternatives to the corporate model).

Steelworker Alley: How Class Works in Youngstown
by Robert Bruno
Bruno, an assistant professor in the Chicago Labor Education Program at the University of Illinois, blends personal memory, oral history, and archival research to document the social, economic, and political ties that bound Youngstown steelworkers to their fellow workers, families, communities, and class. Bruno argues that the postwar academic picture of "highly paid" manual laborers contentedly assuming middle-class values does not square with the workers' own perception of their lives. His steelworker father and friends defined themselves as working classAthey did hard physical labor, lived and socialized with other steelworkers in plant-gate neighborhoods, and had little in common with the middle-class foremen, plant managers, and owners. This book combines the immediacy of personal recollection with scholarly analysis to describe a working-class life that "unfolds on the plant floor, in the union hall, and throughout the neighborhood." Recommended for academic libraries with labor or oral history collections.ADuncan Stewart, State Historical Society of Iowa Lib., Iowa City
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
For retired steelworkers in Youngstown, Ohio, the label "working class" fits comfortably. Questioning the widely held view that laborers in postwar America have adopted middle-class values, Robert Bruno shows that in this community a blue-collar identity has provided a positive focus for many residents. The son of a Youngstown steelworker, Bruno returned to his hometown seeking to understand the formation of his own working-class consciousness and the place of labor in the larger capitalist society. Drawing on interviews with dozens of former steelworkers and on research in local archives, Bruno explores the culture of the community, including such subjects as relations among co-workers, class antagonism, and attitudes toward authority. He describes how, because workers are often neighbors, the workplace takes on a feeling of neighborhood. He also demonstrates that to understand class consciousness one must look beyond the workplace, in this instance from Youngstown's front porches to its bowling alleys and voting booths. Written with a deeply personal approach, Steelworker Alley is a richly detailed look at workers which reveals the continuing strength of class relationships in America.

Work Under Capitalism (New Perspectives in Sociology (Boulder, Colo.) by Chris Tilly, Charles Tilly
From the Back Cover:
"In an insightful contribution to the sociology of economic life, Tilly and Tilly draw on institutional, Marxist, and organizational analyses to clarify how and why the social organization of work varies across settings and over time. Work situations ranging from seasonal farm work in Normandy to high-tech temps in Silicon Valley are described, compared, and employed to develop and explicate a general analytic framework to account for the divergent conditions under which work is carried out. This highly readable volume renews faith in the power of comparative sociology." W. Richard Scott, Stanford University
"It is the genius of the Tillys to remind us that organized, paid work in labor markets amounts to only one part of the larger world of 'work.' No scholars have ever even tried to integrate the many worlds of work--the household, the farm, the prison, the family business, the school--into a theoretically coherent whole. Nor has any other study succeeded so completely in clarifying that compensation--wages and monetary benefits--constitutes only one form of work incentive; that we must be aware of commitment and coercion, as well. Along the way, the authors completely and gracefully deal the coup de grace to orthodox economic conceptions of work." Bennett Harrison, New School of Social Research
"Tilly and Tilly criticize standard economic models of work for their tendency to 'pluck [work] out of culture and history to make it placeless and timeless.' The structure of labor markets is in reality very much a product of history, and the authors demonstrate how attention to the historical and social context of work provides important insights into the employment relationship in contemporary capitalist societies. Rich with examples of their theoretical approach as applied to hiring, promotions, the earnings distribution, and similar topics, this book provides a useful counterpoint to behavioral approaches based on narrowly construed economic rationality." Thomas A. DiPrete, Duke University
"Admirers of Tilly the elder now have someone else to admire, Tilly the younger. Together, the duo have produced a blockbuster of a book. Work Under Capitalism is a virtuoso piece. It deserves to be-and will be-widely read and thoroughly debated, not just by sociologists studying markets, organizations, and work but by those whose interests are tightly focused on the contingent, asymmetrical, and improvised nature of capitalist contracts for work." Rob Faulkner, University of Massachusetts
"The scope of this book stretches the mind....The historical sweep is impressive, and enables one better to understand the here and now. Fascinating and valuable reading." Richard R. Nelson, Columbia University.

Kids at Work : Lewis Hine and the Crusade Against Child Labor
by Russell Freedman, Lewis Hine
From Publishers Weekly
Hine photographed underprivileged child laborers from 1908-1918; their depleted faces look out from almost every page. "Freedman does an outstanding job of integrating historical photographs with meticulously researched and highly readable prose," said PW in a starred review. Ages 10-up.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.
From School Library Journal
Grade 5 Up-Using the photographer's work throughout, Freedman provides a documentary account of child labor in America during the early 1900s and the role Lewis Hine played in the crusade against it. He offers a look at the man behind the camera, his involvement with the National Child Labor Committee, and the dangers he faced trying to document unjust labor conditions. Solemn-faced children, some as young as three years old, are shown tending looms in cotton mills or coated with coal dust in the arresting photos that accompany the explanations of the economics and industries of the time. Both Freedman's words and quotes from Hine add impact to the photos, explaining to contemporary children the risky or fatiguing tasks depicted. Details such as Hine's way of determining children's height by measuring them against his own coat buttons add further depth and a personal touch to the already eloquent statements made by his thoughtfully composed black-and-white portraits. Also included are some of the photographer's other projects throughout his career. Readers will not only come to appreciate the impact of his groundbreaking work, but will also learn how one man dedicated and developed his skill and talents to bring about social reform.
Susan Knorr, Milwaukee Public Library, WI. Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.

The Sociology of Education and Work (September 30, 2004)
by David B. Bills
The Sociology of Education and Work is a clear and engaging study of the links between schooling and the workplace in modern society. It explains, in accessible and lively prose, how these links have developed over time, what broad social trends are transforming them now, and offers some empirically-based projections about how these relationships are likely to develop in the future. This book adopts a distinctly sociological perspective on these issues, while drawing on the disciplines of history, economics, demography, and policy analysis. It builds equally on the sociology of education and the sociology of work.
Using a series of concepts and models including meritocracy, credentialism, postindustrial society, and the permanently new economy, this book encourages students to think about these issues sociologically. To bring life into these concepts, case examples are included to show the ways in which school and work "come together" in contemporary society. This book has brought together a wide body of literature for students studying education and work throughout the curriculum.

The Transformation of Work (Research in the Sociology of Work)
by Steven Vallas
Hardbound. Analysts are generally agreed: dramatic changes are unfolding in the character of work, managerial authority, and the employment relationship. However, there is little agreement as to precisely how such changes are reshaping people's working lives, the nature of their careers, and the distribution of opportunity among members of different classes, genders, and ethnic groups. Confronting these issues head on, The Transformation of Work focuses on a series of critical questions concerned with the restructuring of work under contemporary capitalism. Written by leading social scientists in the field, the papers collected here address a wide array of workplace settings, from traditional manufacturing settings to "knowledge work" in high tech and university contexts. The volume devotes attention to the impact of new production concepts in various national settings, ranging from Germany to Mexico and Australia.

Globalism/Localism at Work, Volume 13 (Research in the Sociology of Work) (Dec 30, 2004)
by Leni Beukema, Jorge Hector Carrillo Viveros
In this volume the focus is on the interrelations of the global and the local in their consequences for work. The process of restructuring of work is analyzed as an ongoing, locally situated process in which actors within work organizations play an important role. Nevertheless, when taking the context of work organizations into account, the increasing importance of the global on the local processes is obvious. Local practices keep their central importance, but the global doesn't function only as a context for the local anymore but forms more and more a practice of itself in which an increasing number of actors play their part. As we can see on the World Wide Web, people and firms are both emitters and receptors and act on the local and global level at the same time.
Local diversity in a world with increasing interdependencies is shown in a number of contributions from different parts of the world. These contributions are clustered around two main themes:
1. Labor markets in global and local scenarios. From industry to services;
2. Global industries. Restructuring and local jobs
The many case studies presented shed light to the diversity that occurs in different local situations.

Diversity in the Work Force, Volume 14 (Research in the Sociology of Work) (December 13, 2004)
by Nancy DiTomaso, Corinne Post
Increasing diversity in the workforce has several sources: (a) the changing demographic structure of the U.S., (b) the increased importance of globalization to profits and long term survival in many companies, and (c) changes in the structure of how work gets done. People bring with them into organizations the patterns of behavior and thinking, the networks, the social pressures, the habits, and strategies of action that they learned before joining the organization. Further, people are shaped by the perceptions, attitudes, and behaviors of others in regard to them. Although many organizations in the past have tried to homogenize behavior and attitudes by developing their own organizational cultures, the reality in most organizations is the existence of distinct subcultures and microcultures, as each group tries to find its own place, often in competition with others. This volume of the Sociology of Work addresses a number of issues that are brought to the fore because of diversity in the workforce: the structure, impact, and mechanisms of social networks; the policies and political dynamics around trying to redistribute benefits among social groups; issues regarding work and family, especially for professional workers in male dominated jobs; and the link between diversity in the workforce and broader issues of inequality. This set of papers address many of the emerging empirical and theoretical work in the study of diversity in the workforce and create an agenda for future work in the area.

Ready-To-Wear and Ready-To-Work: A Century of Industry and Immigrants in Paris and New York (Comparative and International Working-Class History)
by Nancy L. Green
Reviewer: Michael J. Ryan (Milwaukee, WI USA) - See all my reviews
I thoroughly enjoyed "Ready-to-Wear and Ready-to-Work", Nancy L. Green's erudite and expansive study of a century of the garment industry in Paris and New York. I've worn clothes for most of my life, but never knew much about where they come from. Now I do. Clothes don't come from stores-- they come from people, piece by piece. People with a story to tell.
Green's vastly-researched work is not only a history of the people, usually immigrants, often Jews, who have populated the garment industry. It is also a social history, an economic history and a technological history. The book is not an easy read-- it is a complex analysis of complex topics-- but it is a worthwhile read. Green successfully weaves the topics into a fabric of consistently excellent quality from beginning to end.

Sourcebook of Labor Markets : Evolving Structures and Processes (Plenum Studies in Work and Industry) by Ivar Berg (Editor), Arne L. Kalleberg (Editor)
A distinguished roster of contributors considers the state of the art of the field at the turn of the 21st century and charts an ambitious agenda for the future. Following what the editors describe as an `evolutionist' approach to the study of labor markets, the chapters address issues of continuity and discontinuity in a wide range of topics including: markets and institutional structures; employment relations and work structures; patterns of stratification in the United States; and public policies, opportunity structures, and economic outcomes.

Analyzing the Labor Force: Concepts, Measures, and Trends (Plenum Studies in Work and Industry) (Hardcover) (July 1, 2001)
by Clifford C. Clogg, Scott R. Eliason, Kevin T. Leicht
Clifford C. Clogg, a talented sociologist, demographer, and statistician, died suddenly on 7 May 1995 at the age of 45. Although best known for his methodological contributions, Clogg also made significant substantive contributions to the study of social stratification and the labor force.
This book highlights those contributions by telling the cumulative story of his research and adding update analysis that advances the story beyond the early 1980s to the mid-1990s.