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In the highly-anticipated second edition of Changing Contours of Work: Jobs and Opportunities in the New Economy, authors Sweet and Meiskins once again provide a rich analysis of the American workplace in the larger context of an integrated global economy. Through engaging vignettes and rich data, this text frames the development of jobs and employment opportunities in an international comparative perspective, revealing the historical transformations of work and identifying the profound effects that these changes have had on lives, jobs, and life chances. This text brings into focus the many complexities of class, race, and gender inequalities in the modern-day workplace, as well as details the consequences of job insecurity and work schedules mismatched to family needs. Throughout, strategic recommendations are offered that could help make the new economy work for us all.
List of contents
Chapter 1: Mapping the Contours of Work
Scenes From the New Economy
Culture and Work
Structure and Work
Agency and Careers
Conclusion
Chapter 2: New Products, New Ways of Working, and the New Economy
A Post-Industrial Society?
The End of Mass Production?
New Skills?
New Cultures of Control?
The End of Organized Labor?
A New Global Economy?
Conclusion
Chapter 3: How New Is the New Economy?
Are Economic Divides or Narrowing or Widening in the U.S?
Are Career Pathways Opening or Closing?
Is the Global Economy Becoming More Flat or Bumpy?
Conclusion
Chapter 4: Whose Jobs Are Secure?
Risk and Work: Historical and Comparative Views
How Insecure Are Workers in the New Economy?
The Costs of Job Loss and Insecurity
Responding to Insecurity: Old and New Careers
Conclusion
Chapter 5: A Fair Day's Work? The Intensity and Scheduling of Jobs in the New Economy
Time, Intensity, and Work
How Long Are We Working? Comparative Frameworks
Working Long, Working Hard
Why Are Americans Working So Much?
Nonstandard Schedules: Jobs in a 24/7 Economy
How Americans Deal With Overwork
Conclusion
Chapter 6: Gender Chasms in the New Economy
When did Home Work Become Nonwork?
Women's Participation in the Paid Labor Force in America
Gender Inequalities in Compensation
Socialization, Career Selection, and Career Paths
Interpersonal Discrimination in the Workplace
Structural Dimensions of Gender Discrimination
Strategies to Bridge the Care Gaps: International Comparisons
Conclusion
Chapter 7: Race, Ethnicity, and Work: Legacies of the Past, Problems in the Present
Histories of Race, Ethnicity, and Work
The Magnitude of Racial Inequality in the New Economy
Intergenerational Transmission of Resources
Geographic Distribution of Race and Work Opportunity
Racial Prejudice and Discrimination
Racialized Jobs
Race, Ethnicity, and Work: Social Policy
Conclusion
Chapter 8: Reshaping the Contours of the New Economy
Opportunity Chasms
The Agents of Change
Conclusion
About the author
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.
