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Housework—often trivialized or simply overlooked in public discourse—contributes in a complex and essential way to the form that families and societies assume. In this innovative study, Marjorie L. DeVault explores the implications of "feeding the family" from the perspective of those who do that work. Along the way, DeVault offers a new vocabulary for discussing nurturance as a basis of group life and sociability. Drawing from interviews conducted in 1982-83 in a diverse group of American households, DeVault reveals the effort and skill behind the "invisible" work of shopping, cooking, and serving meals. She then shows how this work can become oppressive for women, drawing them into social relations that construct and maintain their subordinate position in household life.
Liberating Method reflects the conviction that feminist insights can and should contribute to a sounder, more rigorous social science. In this book, one of the leading practitioners and teachers of feminist methodology examines profound questions about traditional and customary practices of social research. Marjorie DeVault argues that established methods too often ignore social oppression as she charts her quest for approaches that will more adequately represent marginalized groups.
In this edited collection, institutional ethnographers draw on their field research experiences to address different aspects of institutional ethnographic practice. As institutional ethnography embraces the actualities of people's experiences and lives, the contributors utilize their research to reveal how institutional relations and regimes are organized. As a whole, the book aims to provide readers with an accurate overview of what it is like to practice institutional ethnography, as well as the main varieties of approaches involved in the research.
People at Work is noted sociologist Marjorie L. DeVault’s groundbreaking collection of original essays on the complexities of the modern-day workplace. By focusing on the lived experiences of the worker, not as an automaton on an assembly line, but as an embodied human of flesh and bone, these essays offer important insight on the realities of the workplace, and their effects on life at home and in communities. With contributions from some of today’s top scholars, each essay is a detailed case study of a different aspect of the working world. Compelling, lively, and sometimes chilling, the contributors address issues from disability rights to immigrant labor, welfare reforms to budget cuts, competition to personal motivations. Each one valuable on its own, the essays in People at Work combine to illuminate the hurdles that workers of all backgrounds struggle with and, more broadly, the impact of change on workers’ lives in the new, increasingly global, economy.
The second edition of the Handbook of Feminist Research: Theory and Praxis, presents both a theoretical and practical approach to conducting social science research on, for, and about women. The Handbook enables readers to develop an understanding of feminist research by introducing a range of feminist epistemologies, methodologies, and methods that have had a significant impact on feminist research practice and women's studies scholarship. The Handbook continues to provide a set of clearly defined research concepts that are devoid of as much technical language as possible. It continues to engage readers with cutting edge debates in the field as well as the practical applications and issues for those whose research affects social policy and social change. It also expands on the wealth of interdisciplinary understanding of feminist research praxis that is grounded in a tight link between epistemology, methodology and method. The second edition of this Handbook will provide researchers with the tools for excavating subjugated knowledge on women's lives and the lives of other marginalized groups with the goals of empowerment and social change.
Focusing on British and American novels, Rogers takes a sociological look at the business of literature, the book industry, and the experiences of novelists and readers. Viewing the novel as a vehicle of cultural meaning, the author shows how the literary canon overlooks substantial similarities among novels in favor of restrictive codes based on social as well as literary considerations. She emphasizes the kinship between the social sciences and humanities in her analysis, by reinvigorating affection for the novel and also establishing its rich cultural significance.
An informative real-world guide to studying the "why" of human behavior Introduction to Qualitative Research Methods is a practical, comprehensive guide to the collection and presentation of qualitative data. Unique in the market, this book describes the entire research process — from design through writing — illustrated by examples of real, complete qualitative work that clearly demonstrates how methods are used in actual practice. This updated fourth edition includes all new case studies, with additional coverage of mixed methods, non-sociological settings, funding, and a sample interview guide. The studies profiled are accompanied by observation field notes, and the text includes addi...
This collection of thirteen life stories recaptures the history of a political and intellectual movement that created feminist sociology as a field of inquiry. As the editors' introduction notes, the life history is a crucial tool for sociological thought. Life histories can be a bridge between individual experience and codified knowledge, between human agency and social structure. Life histories can enhance social theory by revealing categories of meaning usually submerged in the conventions of social science. The authors in this volume, all sociologists who have had great impact upon the field in which they write, show how personal relationships, experiences of inequality, and professional conflict and camaraderie interweave with the formation of social theory, political movements, and intellectual thought. The book makes a powerful impression upon anyone who has struggled with the relationship between social theory and everyday life. -- Accessible, lively articles that combine personal narrative with sociological theory. -- Contributors are some of the leading voices in feminist sociology.
This long-awaited fourth edition has the same goal as the preceding editions: to understand families in terms of the kinds of interaction through which family life is constructed. The changes in the family as an institution have influenced these processes, just as they have influenced the ways we understand and write about them. But even in these "postmodern" circumstances, an underlying premise of the volume is that two partners establish a family because they have selected each other as distinctively meaningful to one another. They will affirm, modify, elaborate, or retreat from various aspects of the relationship through interaction over time and in changing circumstances. This volume con...
Borders in Service traces the intersection of service labour and national identity across global call centres in seven countries: El Salvador, Guatemala, Guyana, Mauritius, Morocco, the Philippines, and the US-Mexico border. While most studies on offshore call centres have focused on India this collection explores the experiences of call center workers in many of the newly emerging hubs of transnational service work. In this collection, Kiran Mirchandani and Winifred Poster have gathered a wide range of contributors to explore the dynamics within global call centres. Such dynamics include: language, speech, accent issues, expressions of consumer sentiment, physical space, and organizational, human resource, and labour policies. By grounding the theoretical debates on nationhood and labour in the realities of daily life in global call centres, Mirchandani and Poster have created a timely, accessible and revealing collection that will change what we know about offshored customer service work.