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Shadow Mothers shines new light on an aspect of contemporary motherhood often hidden from view: the need for paid childcare by women returning to the workforce, and the complex bonds mothers forge with the "shadow mothers" they hire. Cameron Lynne Macdonald illuminates both sides of an unequal and complicated relationship. Based on in-depth interviews with professional women and childcare providers— immigrant and American-born nannies as well as European au pairs—Shadow Mothers locates the roots of individual skirmishes between mothers and their childcare providers in broader cultural and social tensions. Macdonald argues that these conflicts arise from unrealistic ideals about mothering and inflexible career paths and work schedules, as well as from the devaluation of paid care work.
Essays and case studies on "the problems of organizing and new models of unionism ... in the context of women's work culture, multiracial workplaces, contingent and part-time work, and participatory innovations to improve service and experience of work simultaneously."--Back cover.
In this lively study, Rachel Sherman goes behind the scenes in two urban luxury hotels to give a nuanced picture of the workers who care for and cater to wealthy guests by providing seemingly unlimited personal attention. Drawing on in-depth interviews and extended ethnographic research in a range of hotel jobs, including concierge, bellperson, and housekeeper, Sherman gives an insightful analysis of what exactly luxury service consists of, how managers organize its production, and how workers and guests negotiate the inequality between them. She finds that workers employ a variety of practices to assert a powerful sense of self, including playing games, comparing themselves to other workers...
"Stereotypes of economically marginalized black and brown youth focus on drugs, gangs, violence, and teen parenthood. Families, schools, nonprofit organizations, and institutions in poor urban neighborhoods emphasize preventing such "risk behaviors." In The Making of a Teenage Service Class, Ranita Ray uncovers the pernicious consequences of concentrating on risk behaviors as key to targeting poverty. Having spent three years among sixteen black and Latina/o youth, Ray shares their stories of trying to beat the odds of living in poverty. Their struggles of hunger, homelessness, and untreated illnesses are juxtaposed with the perseverance of completing homework, finding jobs, and spending lon...
Scholars have made urban mothers living in poverty a focus of their research for decades. These women’s lives can be difficult as they go about searching for housing and decent jobs and struggling to care for their children while surviving on welfare or working at low-wage service jobs and sometimes facing physical or mental health problems. But until now little attention has been paid to an important force in these women’s lives: religion. Based on in-depth interviews with women and pastors, Susan Crawford Sullivan presents poor mothers’ often overlooked views. Recruited from a variety of social service programs, most of the women do not attend religious services, due to logistical ch...
At a Tex-Mex restaurant in a Minneapolis suburb, customers send Christmas and Hanukkah cards to the restaurant, bring in home-baked treats for the staff, and attend the annual employee party. One customer even posts in the entryway a sign commemorating the life of his dog. Diners and servers alike use the Hungry Cowboy as a place to gather, celebrate, relax, and even mourn. Moments such as these fascinate Karla A. Erickson, who worked for the restaurant, and they make up her new book The Hungry Cowboy. Weaving together narratives from servers, customers, and managers, Erickson explores a type of service work that is deeply embedded in personal relationships and community. Feelings, play, and...
Feminist Legal Theory is a groundbreaking collection of feminist work proceeding from the core assumption that the differences among women are essential to feminist analysis. Rather than presenting feminist legal theory sequentially, with “African American feminism” or “critical race feminism” added on at the end, the volume thoroughly integrates key readings from non-white, non-middle class, and non-mainstream writers throughout. The volume explores the intersections of race, class, and gender in such areas as theory, family, work and economic issues, and violence against women. Each section of the book begins with an introduction providing context and insights into how the particular pieces included challenge norms and create new paradigms. This vibrant, challenging collection of work by a broad range of authors represents the cutting edge of feminist theory in concrete applications essential to gender equality. Contributors include: Patricia Hill Collins, Bonnie Thornton Dill, Angela P. Harris, Sylvia A. Law, Mari Matsuda, Martha Minow, Esther Ngan-Ling Chow, john a. powell, Jenny Rivera, and Maxine Baca Zinn.
In her absorbing ethnography of the everyday practice of public policy, Dolores M. Byrnes focuses on Mi Comunidad, a job-creation program founded in 1996 by Vicente Fox when he was governor of Guanajuato. This program was intended to reduce migration and became an important source of empowerment for small businesses in rural Mexico. A significant aspect of the program is the way it encourages former residents who have successfully migrated to the United States to invest in the maquilas back home. Byrnes's close look at policy implementation reveals changing relationships between families and the state. Working as a volunteer in Mi Comunidad, Byrnes attempted to understand how the program wor...
By definitively establishing that racism has broad implications for how the entire field of philosophy is practiced—and by whom—this powerful and convincing book puts all members of the discipline on notice that racism concerns them. It simultaneously demonstrates to race theorists the significance of philosophy for their work.A distinguished cast of authors takes a stand on the importance of race, focusing on the insights that analyses of race and racism can make to philosophy—not just to ethics and political philosophy but also to the more abstract debates of metaphysics, philosophy of mind, and epistemology. Contemporary philosophy, the authors argue, continues to evade racism and, ...
In Hard Sell, Peter Ikeler traces the low-wage, largely nonunion character of U.S. retail through the history and ultimate failure of twentieth-century retail unionism.