Welcome to our book review site go-pdf.online!
You may have to Search all our reviewed books and magazines, click the sign up button below to create a free account.
Work in the Fast Lane
Arguing that a new form of industrial organization is generating new patterns of inequality, the authors explore the relationship between growth in the high-tech sector and trends in inequality. While considering the promise of high-tech industries in light of the realities of high-tech work, the authors report considerable unevenness in the high-tech sector. Some high-tech industries fulfill optimistic expectations, but others are in decline. In some high-tech industries, work is organized in ways that generate inequality along gender, racial, and ethnic lines. The authors link these contrasts to different strategies of flexible production. Building upon the distinction between static flexibility, in which harsh measures are taken to control costs, and dynamic flexibility, in which production processes are constantly adapted to market conditions, they conclude that the most innovative and successful high-tech industries are those employing dynamic flexibility. Expansion of dynamically flexible production strategies is essential if high-tech industries are to fulfill their promise.
Blacks in Rural America
This volume is unique in its focus on the current economic status of black Americans in rural areas. This topic has had relatively limited visibility in recent years due, in part, to the high degree of urbanization among blacks. However, to neglect rural blacks in the United States would constitute a tremendous disservice both to the legacy of the ongoing struggle of blacks to achieve overall economic parity and to current efforts to ameliorate the particular disadvantages faced by this segment of the American population. Blacks in Rural America will help fill a gap in the literature examining the disadvantaged status of rural blacks. It remedies the lack of information about how the well-being of blacks in rural America is affected by various public policies. This important volume will challenge readers to pay greater attention to the structure of the agrarian sector of the population as such. It is a necessary addition to the libraries of economists, political scientists, sociologists, and scholars of black studies.
Getting By
homeworking on workers--mainly women--and their families and explores the role of the state in subsidizing the development of homeworking jobs that depend on gender as an organizing principle. She focuses on two Midwestern communities--Riverton, Wisconsin and Prairie Hills, Iowa--where more than 80 families have supplemented their incomes since 1986 as home-based contractors of small auto parts for The Middle Company, a Fortune 500 manufacturer and subcontractor of General Motors. Gringeri looks at rural development from the perspective of local and state officials as well as that of the workers. Through the use of extensive personal interviews, she shows how the advantage of homework for women--being able to stay home with their families--is outweighed by the disadvantages--piecework pay far below minimum wage, long hours, unstable contracts, and lack of company benefits. Instead of providing the hoped-for financial panacea for rural families, Gringeri argues, industrial homework reinforces the unequal position of women as low-wage workers and holds families and communities below or near poverty level.
ARED News
None
Engineering Labour
Engineers, often perceived as central agents of industrial capitalism, are thought to be the same in all capitalist societies, occupying roughly the same social status and performing similar functions in the capitalist enterprise. What the essays in this volume reveal, however, is that engineers are trained and organized quite distinctly in different national contexts. The book includes case studies of engineers in six major industrial economies: Japan, France, Germany, Sweden, Britain and the United States. Through a comparison of these six cases, the authors develop an approach to national differences which both retains the place of historical diversity in the experience of capitalism and accommodates the forces of convergence from increasing globalisation and economic integration. Contributions from: Boel Berner, Stephen Crawford, Kees Gispen, Kevin McCormick and Peter Whalley.
Reaping the Whirlwind
As early as the sixteenth century the liberal democratic state has been forced to confront the question of religion in politics. The result has been a tense and uncomfortable balancing act. Today, in the public square of liberal democracy, a number of religious confessions and beliefs compete for attention. In the American experience, some sense of religious pluralism and relative social harmony has been maintained. However, for this relationship to prevail, a tension must continue to exist—one that balances the political and social pursuits of self-interest with meeting the objectives of the common good. In Reaping the Whirlwind, John R. Pottenger shows how this process began in the moder...
Technocracy at Work
Technocracy, loosely defined, is "rule by experts." Technocracy at Work focuses on the organizational dimensions and aspects of technocracy. Substantial sociological literatures have analyzed contemporary changes in factories, bureaucracies, and professional organizations. What has not been well investigated is the interrelatedness of these changes and the emergence of technocracy in the workplace. This book fills this gap and analyzes the social and political implications of technocracy, in both particular work organizations as well as the world-wide technocratic system, so as to inform future democratic debate.
