Search

The article comments on the article "The Sociology of the Professions," written by Keith Macdonald and George Ritzer, published in the August 1988 issue of the journal "Work and Occupations." The 1983 paper was an intentional replication of E.O. Smigel's content analyses of major journals. In these earlier time periods, analyses of the professions dominated what was then called occupational sociology. During the time period that author examined (1976-1982), such analyses had practically disappeared. Author's comments about this fact were meant more as a lament than as the support that is suggested in the Macdonald and Ritzer article. The claims of the professions as well as the social control of their expertise and their privileged position in society were to be related to market position and state institutions. Ultimately both the knowledge and the service claims of the professions and their privileges had to be understood in terms of power and political processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents information on developments related to the periodical "Work and Occupations." Work and Occupations publishes articles of high quality that address the world of work. Appropriate papers deal with theoretical issues or theory-based research. The respect the journal has achieved is due in no small part to its past editors and reviewers, most recently to the outstanding performance of editor Richard Hall and the editorial board. As the new editor, the author plan to maintain continuity with the basic policies and direction of the journal. Although selecting articles for publication has become a bigger task, the larger pool of submissions assures that manuscripts successfully completing the review process clearly merit a wide audience. The subtitle of the periodical is "An International Sociological Journal." Accordingly, submissions directed to cross-national topics will be encouraged. And theory-grounded applied research papers also will be welcomed for consideration.

The article presents information on authors who have contributed papers on work and occupation. Mary Blair-Loy is an assistant professor of sociology at Washington State University. She studies work, family, gender, and culture, often in the context of the financial services industry. Randy Hodson is a professor of sociology at Ohio State University. His research interests include worker-management conflict, managerial behavior, coworker relations, and technological change. His international interests include ethnic relations in the states of the former Yugoslavia and the socialism to market transition in China. Shane R. Thye is an assistant professor of sociology at the University of South Carolina and series co-editor of Advances in Group Processes. He has published articles on status, power, organizational commitment, and measurement bias in experimental research. Jeongkoo Yoon is an associate professor in the School of Business Administration at Ajou University, South Korea. His research interests are power, networks, and exchange theories.

Arlie Hochschild is one of the most influential sociologists of the 20th and 21st centuries. Her many contributions include her research on emotion and emotion work, the gender division of labor in the household, work–family relations, and the global dimensions of carework. A less visible aspect of Hochschild’s career involves her efforts to nurture, encourage, and engage those inspired by her work. This essay examines Hochschild’s influence as revealed in a new book on work and family life edited by two of her former students. The book offers a look at “Hochschildian sociology” as practiced by those who have expanded and built on her ideas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Third-wave marketization in South Korea has changed the social structure of academic knowledge production, revealing the dilemmas and limitations of both traditional and organic public sociology. The emergence of collective intellectuals during the candlelight movement points to an alternative relationship between the researcher and the researched. The candlelight vigils that recently rocked Korean society have pointed to new possibilities for a public sociology of labor. This article discusses the conditions for public labor sociology as a new paradigm based on collective knowledge and argues that when facing increasing professionalization of public sociology, the "crisis of labor" calls for a collective public sociology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The past two decades witnessed unprecedented growth in the number of children of immigrants living in the United States. The successful socioeconomic adaptation of these youth to the United States will be determined, in part, by their early work experiences. The authors use data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health) to evaluate differences in the work participation of youth enrolled in high school by immigrant generation. They find that immigrant youth work significantly less during middle and high school than their native-born peers. However, these native immigrant differences in youth labor-market participation decline as high school graduation approaches. Native-immigrant differences in youth labor market participation partially reflect differences in the racial-ethnic compositions of first-, second-, and third-generation cohorts. Beyond race and/or ethnicity, native immigrant differences in youth labor-market participation also stem from systematic differences in their family socioeconomic characteristics, school orientations, social networks, and labor market opportunities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

`Although American sociology has long been concerned with racial and ethnic inequality within work organizations, this traditional strength has languished in recent years. Few ethnographic studies have managed to capture what E. C. Hughes once called "the knitting of racial groups" at work. This article critically reviews the literature on race and work organizations and offers a set of propositions that target neglected aspects of racial boundaries at work. These center on the spatial dimension of race and organizations, the relevance of racial boundaries for the acquisition of skill and expertise, the bearing of status hierarchies on the reproduction of racial boundaries, and the character of corporate and judicial responses to racial inequalities at work. This article offers a tentative strategy for research in the field that might reclaim the lost tradition of E. C. Hughes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This overview of the recent intellectual history of the sociology of work in Latin America contextualizes this history in economic globalization and restructuring and political institutions in Latin America. The three-stage intellectual history addresses the development of a Latin American discipline whose theoretical models and empirical research strategies reflect cross- national similarities and variations in work, workers, and workplaces within Latin America and questions the acritical application of European and North American theoretical and research approaches. The analysis also describes the important role of social networks in the institutionalization of the discipline, including the establishment of the Latin American Sociology of Work Association in 1993. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This analysis takes a lift-course approach to the study of gender inequality in earnings among young adults. The authors construct hypotheses that assess the effects of family role accumulation, earnings atrophy and occupational choice, occupational segregation, and statistical discrimination. The authors find considerable support for the hypothesis that the effects of current labor force attachment, work experience, and occupational segregation are conditioned by family roles. The negative effects of women's representation within occupations are confined to married parents, although the results for women are consistent with social closure explanations, whereas the results for men are more consistent with status composition explanations of the effects of gender segregation. This analysis also reveals interesting differences in the effects of current and prior labor force attachment that are conditioned by gender and life-course group. The results point to the need for more research that studies the relationship between labor force activity, occupational segregation, and family roles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept of "skill" provides the linchpin for many debates on work. Yet occupational sociologists have seldom thought to ask what the concept means. This article reviews the literature and develops critical observations on skill research. Although recent theorists have tended to dismiss deskilling theory, the research findings remain equivocal. Despite their inability to measure compositional shifts in skill, case studies continue to play an important function. New lines of inquiry have emerged, indicating a growing consciousness of the limitations of the dominant theories of skill. Absent greater rigor in the study of skill, policy debates will proceed without a sociological contribution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]