Work, Economy and Organizations Commons^™

Of Sweatshops And Human Subsistence: Habermas On Human Rights, David Ingram

Philosophy: Faculty Publications and Other Works

In this paper I argue that the discourse theoretic account of human rights defended by Jürgen Habermas contains a fruitful tension that is obscured by its dominant tendency to identify rights with legal claims. This weakness in Habermas’s account becomes manifest when we examine how sweatshops diminish the secure enjoyment of subsistence, which Habermas himself (in recognition of the UDHR) recognizes as a human right. Discourse theories of human rights are unique in tying the legitimacy of human rights to democratic deliberation and consensus. So construed, their specific meaning and force is the outcome of historical political struggle. However, unlike …

Where Do Latinos Work? Occupational Structure And Mobility Within New York City’S Latino Population, 1990 - 2006, Laura Limonic

Center for Latin American, Caribbean, and Latino Studies

Introduction: This report examines the difference in occupational changes across racial and ethnic groups in New York City as well as across Latino origin groups from 1990 to 2006.

Methods: Data on Latinos and other racial/ethnic groups were obtained from the U.S. Census Bureau American Community Survey, reorganized for public use by the Minnesota Population Center, University of Minnesota, IPUMSusa. Cases in the dataset were weighted and analyzed to produce population estimates. All figures pertain to individuals 16 years of age or older.

Results: While there has been an overall increase in employment gains in the management sector, which includes …

Domestic Work, Amanda Moras

Sociology Faculty Publications

This encyclopedia entry provides a brief history of domestic work and its relationship to race and ethnicity in the United States.

Np2020: Issues And Answers From The Next Generation, Dorothy A. Johnson Center For Philanthropy

Research, Reports, and Publications

A report of a three-day conference on nonprofit leadership, held in Grand Rapids, MI in July 2007, identified that there is a leadership deficit, mentoring is needed for emerging leaders, structural challenges create barriers to nonprofit careers, and Generation X and Y believe the nonprofit sector needs more diversity. Funder support for infrastructure and operating costs, and communication to facilitate the generational leadership transition were identified as key to mitigating the leadership deficit.

Institutional-Anomie, Political Corruption, And Homicide Rates, Jerry K. Daday, Lisa M. Broidy, Dale Willits

Sociology Faculty Presentations

Messner and Rosenfeld’s institutional-anomie theory (IAT) has advanced our understanding of cross-national variation in homicide rates. Empirical tests of IAT have primarily examined how non-economic institutions alleviate or mitigate the mal-effects of economic inequality and economic deprivation. As economic institutions gain strength and dominance, non-economic institutions tend to weaken and are forced to accommodate the market. This creates an elevated state of institutional anomie that is conducive to higher violent crime rates. Most cross-national quantitative tests of IAT have examined the comparative strength of economic and social support institutions (especially social welfare) and find support for the theory. However, prior …

When Disability Enters A Teacher’S Life, Must The Teacher Stop Teaching?, Laura L. B. Border

Professional and Organizational Development Network in Higher Education: Archives

Disabilities are usually discussed in academe in the context of the undergraduate student population; nevertheless, graduate students and faculty also represent a certain percentage of persons with disabilities. This essay presents a case study and an analysis of a consultation with a graduate instructor, inviting us to examine the issues of disability in the life of a teacher.

Sexing Capitalism: Condoms And Industrial Change, Peter Chua

Faculty Publications, Sociology

In the late 1700s, condoms were luxury items for the affluent in Western Europe, but by the 1970s, the US government gave free condoms out to poor women in Third World areas. Moreover condom availability has increased dramatically since the global emergence of the AIDS pandemic in the 1980s, adding to the already fervent social stigmatization and political contentions on morality, sexuality, and wellbeing that condom use brings. This paper focuses on the strategically joint-relationship between manufacturing firms and governments to foster distinct profit-oriented condom social relations and moral-symbolic regimes of sexual cultures. Proposing a sex-situated theory of capitalist firms, …

Voices From The Middle: How Performance Funding Impacts Workforce Organizations, Professionals And Customers, Roberta Rehner Iversen

The Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare

Under recent policy reforms, the landscape of authority relations in welfare and workforce development organizations has radically changed from one that privileged internal professional autonomy to one that privileges external authorities. Performance, rather than input funding is the medium for this change. Longitudinal ethnographic research reveals that performance requirements in workforce development both contribute to and challenge organizational structure and program design, professional practices, and job seeker outcomes. As such, when the "voices" of job-seeking customers, directly and through their affiliated workforce organizations, professionals, and employers, are added to the "voices" of funders under performance funding, polyvocality may result in …

Final Frontier: The Methodist Church Involvement With The Recolonization Of Blacks To Liberia, Sharletta Michelle Green

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

Missionary work over the course of one hundred years has changed the face of Liberia as a country. The work has affected the culture, economic structure, ethnic relationships within the country and surrounding areas and the political climate. The missionary movement into Africa did not start until the early eighteen hundreds.

In my thesis, I will focus on the ways the major stakeholders socially constructed the issues involved. I will focus on the ways in which the ideologies of racism in this period reflected American perceptions of the “dark continent.” This analysis will include the social constructions of church leaders, …

Chinese Women In Industrial Home-Based Subcontracting In The Garment Industry In Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia : Neither Valued Nor Costed, Lee Lee Ludher Loh

Student Works (2000-2009)

The Chinese home-based subcontractors entered the formal labour force, mainly as workers i" the garment industry when they were young and single but withdrew into home-based subcontracting after marriage and childbirth. The industrialization of Malaysia in I 970s offered increasing employment opportunities for young women. These women were 'greened' as ·unskilled' and therefore 'cheap' secondary workers with the manual dexterity suitable for labour intensive work such as sewing. This attracted garment manufacturers in search of low cost labour to relocate from newly industrialized countries to Malaysia as part of the International Division of Labour. It led to the double-digit growth …

Black Out-Migration From West Virginia In The Context Of Racial Discrimination In Employment In The Coal Industry: 1935-1955, Megan E. Cox

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

This research assessed two major theories of black labor migration patterns, Marx’s theory of exploitation and Bonacich’s labor market segmentation. These theories have been applied to the coal producing counties of southern West Virginia. Institutional discrimination of black workers, coupled with the exploitation of coal miners in general, created the social relationship of super-exploitation.

This study investigated the conditions the coal companies utilized to aid and abet the exploitation of black workers and ultimately push black labor out of West Virginia. Also, this thesis examined the migration patterns of black workers into West Virginia from the failing southern agricultural industry …

Technocratic Teamwork: Mitigating Polarization And Cultural Marginalization In An Engineering Firm, Jerry K. Daday, Beverly B. Burris

Sociology Faculty Publications

Many corporations attempt to establish a unified corporate culture as a way of orienting employees toward corporate goals and objectives. However, a technocratic organizational structure has been found to exist in many high-tech corporations, which divides employees into an expert and non-expert sector based on differences in credentials and technical expertise. Because of this division, employees working within these two sectors experience differences in corporate rewards, worker autonomy, and creative freedoms. These factors have been found to lead to a polarized, divided, and discontented workforce. To understand how a technocratic structure influences and affects a dominant corporate culture and organizational …

The Americans With Disabilities Act And Academic Libraries In The Southeastern United States, Linda Lou Wiler, Eleanor Lomax

E-JASL: Electronic Journal of Academic and Special Librarianship (1999-2009, Volumes 1-10)

Individuals with disabilities are one of the fastest-growing segments of United States society. In 1970, 11.7% of the United States population was limited in activity, a major factor in measuring and identifying people with disabilities. In 1990, because of the aging of America, 13.7 % of the population could be so identified. By 1994, 15% of the population fell into this group. During this latter period, the older population stayed fairly stable but children and younger adults with disabilities increased greatly. Many different figures, depending upon the method of counting, e.g., age groups included, or whether residence was in a …

Ua1b3 A Study Of The Status Of Women On Campus, Wku Task Force On Status Of Women On Campus

WKU Administration Documents

Report given by the WKU Task Force on the Status of Women on Campus regarding research methodology and findings about employment, advancement, compensation, climate and culture for women at Western Kentucky University.

Discrimination Against Female Graduate Teaching Assistants, Joanne Ardovini-Brooker

Dissertations

Many studies have been done concerning the classroom climate, particularly in the university setting. It has been found that the classroom climate for women is one that is cold, unreceptive, unwelcoming, and even hostile to women. This chilly reception is endured by female undergraduate students, graduate students, and professors. This researcher believes that the chilly classroom climate also extends to female graduate teaching assistants/instructors. I also believe that this chilly climate may be chillier and more hostile for them, since graduate teaching assistants/instructors do not have the status associated with a doctoral degree. This concept is the basis for what …

Out Of The Shadows: Homebased Workers Organize For International Recognition, Renana Jhabvala, Jane Tate

Poverty, Gender, and Youth

Home-based work is a vital and growing part of economic modernization, exponentially linked to the globalization of industry and the never-ending search for less costly sources of labor and more efficient means of production. As governments seek to attract industrial development, the availability of low-cost labor and labor stability is a valuable bargaining commodity. Furthermore, the income it produces is not supplementary but rather increasingly vital to families and nations alike. The women who embroider on the island of Madeira, Portugal, the home-based workers assembling electronic devices in Brazil, the Chinese women machine stitching garments at home in major cities …

Latinos And Labor: Challenges And Opportunities, Andrés Torres

New England Journal of Public Policy

The growing presence of Latino workers in the Massachusetts labor force presents opportunities as well as challenges for the labor movement. An overview of occupational, industrial, and unionization patterns helps to describe the potential for Hispanic contribution to renewed union strength in the region. But revitalizing the house of labor in the twenty-first century requires an innovative interplay of workplace and community strategies. As labor comes to terms with its multiracial/multicultural constituency, the relationship between class and race/ethnicity is being revisited, as is the very definition of "labor movement."

Barriers To The Employment And Work-Place Advancement Of Latinos, Gaston Institute, University Of Massachusetts Boston

Gastón Institute Publications

This study examines barriers to the employment and work-place advancement of Latinos. The understanding of these barriers requires the consideration of factors affecting access to employment and advancement in firms, occupations, and industries. We have organized the discussion of the factors affecting the work-place situation of Latinos under the major headings of employment structures and work-place organizations. Employment structures refer to the labor-market context in which work organizations operate. The advancement of Latinos within organizations is affected by the structure of career ladders, stereotypes, intergroup relations, and work-place culture.

Self-Employment As A Means To Women's Economic Self-Sufficiency: Women Venture's Business Development Program, Katharine Mckee, Sara Gould, Ann Leonard

Poverty, Gender, and Youth

While the "feminization of poverty" has been widely recognized as a global phenomenon in recent years, the term originated in the United States where the number of women and women-headed households living in poverty is growing. This is especially true in the inner cities where fewer unskilled jobs remain; likewise, in rural communities, many factories have closed, family farming is declining, and few other nonfarm options are available. Today these American women face many of the same obstacles that limit women's economic participation in all parts of the world. This issue of SEEDS focuses on the evolution of WomenVenture's business …

A. Philip Randolph And Boston's African-American Railroad Worker, James R. Green, Robert C. Hayden

Trotter Review

On October 8, 1988, a group of retired Pullman car porters and dining car waiters gathered in Boston's Back Bay Station for the unveiling of a larger-than-life statue of A. Philip Randolph. During the 1920s and 1930s, Randolph was a pioneering black labor leader who led the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters. He came to be considered the "father of the modern civil rights movement" as a result of his efforts to desegregate World War II defense jobs and the military services. Randolph's importance as a militant leader is highlighted by a quote inscribed on the base of the statue …

Connecticut Local Labor Market Areas 1980, Thomas E. Steahr, Kenneth P. Hadden

Storrs Agricultural Experiment Station

No abstract provided.

Social Background And Bureaucratic Behavior In Egypt, Earl L. Sullivan, El Sayed Yassin, Ali Leila, Monte Palmer

Faculty Books

This study of the role of gender and religion in the Egyptian bureaucracy provides general background information pertaining to the three major topics of this book: bureaucratic behaviour, the role of women in Egyptian society and relations between Egypt's religious groups, the Muslims and the Copts. The author hypothesizes that the attitudes and behaviour of Egyptian bureaucrats will differ markedly on the basis of sex, but that the attitudes and behaviour of Coptic bureaucrats will not differ significantly from those of their Muslim counterparts. The two hypotheses were tested in reference to eight sets of attitudes and behaviour, viz. media …

Income Variability In Connecticut: 1980, William H. Groff, Kenneth P. Hadden

Storrs Agricultural Experiment Station

No abstract provided.

Poverty In Connecticut: 1979, Kenneth P. Hadden

Storrs Agricultural Experiment Station

No abstract provided.

Capitalism, Corporate Liberalism And Social Policy: The Origins Of The Social Security Act Of 1935, Barbara G. Brents

Sociology Faculty Research

This paper looks at the involvement and influence of capitalists on the Social Security Act of 1935. Instead of positing direct corporate control, the research shows how social security was formulated within a corporate liberal ideological framework which defined problems and their solutions in terms of putting the maintenance of capitalism above the needs of individual workers. This framework set the limits of the, social insurance debates long before the act itself was written. The thesis is that the Social Security Act came about as a result of an interplay between the environment and an ideology advanced by corporate leaders …

Toward A Critical Theory Of Female Criminality, Ann Curry Thompson

IUSTITIA

Twentieth-century theories about female criminality are the weakest link in conventional criminology, representing the most conservative and unscientific thinking about human nature and social organization. Traditional thinking about female criminality reflects the general inability of conventional theorists to examine categories of sex, race, and class oppression as determined by the basic social structure of a particular society and as they relate to deviance and crime. The result has been that female deviance has been analyzed solely in light of assumptions about women's biological nature. Whether there is indeed something distinctive about female crime which can be explained apart from a …

Labor Force Participation And Employment Status In Connecticut, 1970, Kenneth Hadden

Storrs Agricultural Experiment Station

No abstract provided.

Ua68/10/1 Sociological Symposium No. 7 – Childhood Life Cycle Series, Wku Sociology

WKU Administration Documents

Table of Contents:

• Bachelor, David L. & Rosalie S. Donofrio. Poor Children: Images & Interpretations
• Birenbaum, Arnold. The Recognition & Acceptance of Stigma
• Denzin, Norman K. Childhood as Conversation of Gestures
• Miller, James Jr. A Comparison of Racial Preference in Young Black & Mexican American Children
• Rath, Robert A. & Douglas J. McDowell. Coming Up Hip: Child Rearing Perspectives & Life Style Values Among Counter Culture Families
• Thomas, Darwin L. & James M. Calonico. Birth Order & Family Sociology: A Reassessment