Working for Respect
Community and Conflict at Walmart
1st Edition
Published on 24. September 2018
256 pages
978-0-231-54782-6 (ISBN)
Description
Walmart is the largest employer in the world. It encompasses nearly 1 percent of the entire American workforce-young adults, parents, formerly incarcerated people, retirees. Walmart also presents one possible future of work-Walmartism-in which the arbitrary authority of managers mixes with a hyperrationalized, centrally controlled bureaucracy in ways that curtail workers' ability to control their working conditions and their lives.
In Working for Respect, Adam Reich and Peter Bearman examine how workers make sense of their jobs at places like Walmart in order to consider the nature of contemporary low-wage work, as well as the obstacles and opportunities such workplaces present as sites of struggle for social and economic justice. They describe the life experiences that lead workers to Walmart and analyze the dynamics of the shop floor. As a part of the project, Reich and Bearman matched student activists with a nascent association of current and former Walmart associates: the Organization United for Respect at Walmart (OUR Walmart). They follow the efforts of this new partnership, considering the formation of collective identity and the relationship between social ties and social change. They show why traditional unions have been unable to organize service-sector workers in places like Walmart and offer provocative suggestions for new strategies and directions. Drawing on a wide array of methods, including participant-observation, oral history, big data, and the analysis of social networks, Working for Respect is a sophisticated reconsideration of the modern workplace that makes important contributions to debates on labor and inequality and the centrality of the experience of work in a fair economy.
In Working for Respect, Adam Reich and Peter Bearman examine how workers make sense of their jobs at places like Walmart in order to consider the nature of contemporary low-wage work, as well as the obstacles and opportunities such workplaces present as sites of struggle for social and economic justice. They describe the life experiences that lead workers to Walmart and analyze the dynamics of the shop floor. As a part of the project, Reich and Bearman matched student activists with a nascent association of current and former Walmart associates: the Organization United for Respect at Walmart (OUR Walmart). They follow the efforts of this new partnership, considering the formation of collective identity and the relationship between social ties and social change. They show why traditional unions have been unable to organize service-sector workers in places like Walmart and offer provocative suggestions for new strategies and directions. Drawing on a wide array of methods, including participant-observation, oral history, big data, and the analysis of social networks, Working for Respect is a sophisticated reconsideration of the modern workplace that makes important contributions to debates on labor and inequality and the centrality of the experience of work in a fair economy.
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Persons
Reich Adam :
Adam Reich (Ph.D. UC Berkeley) is an associate professor in the Department of Sociology at Columbia University. He is the author of Selling Our Souls: The Commodification of Hospital Care in the United States (Princeton, 2014) With God on Our Side: The Struggle for Worker's Rights in a Catholic Hospital (Cornell, 2012), and Hidden Truth: The Young Men Navigating Lives in and Out of Juvenile Prison (California, 2010).Bearman Peter :
Peter Bearman (Ph.D. Harvard University) is the Jonathan R. Cole Professor of the Social Sciences, Director of INCITE, Director of the Paul F. Lazarsfeld Center for the Social Sciences, and the Director of the Mellon Training Program in the Humanities and Social Sciences at Columbia University, the Centennial Professor of Methodology and Sociology at the London School of Economics. He is the author of Doormen (Chicago, 2005) and the co-editor of The Middle Range Series for Columbia University Press.Adam Reich is an associate professor of sociology at Columbia University. He is the author of Hidden Truth: The Young Men Navigating Lives in and out of Juvenile Prison (2010); With God on Our Side: The Struggle for Workers' Rights in a Catholic Hospital (2012); and Selling Our Souls: The Commodification of Hospital Care in the United States (2014).
Peter Bearman is the Cole Professor of the Social Sciences and director of the Interdisciplinary Center for Innovative Theories and Empirics at Columbia University. He is the author of Relations Into Rhetorics (1993) and Doormen (2005) and coeditor of the Oxford Handbook of Analytical Sociology (2009), as well as coeditor of the Middle Range series at Columbia University Press.
Adam Reich (Ph.D. UC Berkeley) is an associate professor in the Department of Sociology at Columbia University. He is the author of Selling Our Souls: The Commodification of Hospital Care in the United States (Princeton, 2014) With God on Our Side: The Struggle for Worker's Rights in a Catholic Hospital (Cornell, 2012), and Hidden Truth: The Young Men Navigating Lives in and Out of Juvenile Prison (California, 2010).Bearman Peter :
Peter Bearman (Ph.D. Harvard University) is the Jonathan R. Cole Professor of the Social Sciences, Director of INCITE, Director of the Paul F. Lazarsfeld Center for the Social Sciences, and the Director of the Mellon Training Program in the Humanities and Social Sciences at Columbia University, the Centennial Professor of Methodology and Sociology at the London School of Economics. He is the author of Doormen (Chicago, 2005) and the co-editor of The Middle Range Series for Columbia University Press.Adam Reich is an associate professor of sociology at Columbia University. He is the author of Hidden Truth: The Young Men Navigating Lives in and out of Juvenile Prison (2010); With God on Our Side: The Struggle for Workers' Rights in a Catholic Hospital (2012); and Selling Our Souls: The Commodification of Hospital Care in the United States (2014).
Peter Bearman is the Cole Professor of the Social Sciences and director of the Interdisciplinary Center for Innovative Theories and Empirics at Columbia University. He is the author of Relations Into Rhetorics (1993) and Doormen (2005) and coeditor of the Oxford Handbook of Analytical Sociology (2009), as well as coeditor of the Middle Range series at Columbia University Press.
Content
List of Figures
Acknowledgments
Introduction: The Real, Real Walmart
1. Pathways
2. The Shop Floor
3. The Structure of Domination and Control
4. Making Contact
5. Social Ties and Social Change
6. OUR Walmart on the Line
7. Our Walmart
Appendix: The Neural Signatures of Group Life
Notes
Bibliography
Index
Acknowledgments
Introduction: The Real, Real Walmart
1. Pathways
2. The Shop Floor
3. The Structure of Domination and Control
4. Making Contact
5. Social Ties and Social Change
6. OUR Walmart on the Line
7. Our Walmart
Appendix: The Neural Signatures of Group Life
Notes
Bibliography
Index
