Search

Energy transitions are often portrayed as inexorable technological advances that displace earlier energy systems because of the new energy source's greater technical efficiency and cost savings for capital. However, a few have argued that interest in new energy sources is often motivated by a desire to reduce vulnerability to labor (e.g. oil required much less labor than hand digging for coal in the late 1800s and early 1900s and typically requires less labor than even modern large scale coal mining, LNG production and transport takes almost no labor). In this paper, we utilize our raw materialist lengthened GCCs approach to focus on the role of labor in the development of new energy sources over the last two centuries. Rather than being a simple matter of technical and cost superiority, these transitions can be better characterized as the addition of new energy sources to the capitalist world-economy (Ciccantell and Gellert 2018). We argue that much of this process of addition of energy sources is the result of capital's desire to reduce its vulnerability to demands and disruptions by labor organizations by creating new energy GCCs that incorporate new energy supplies in new areas worked by new and often unorganized workers. In the two newest forms of energy extracting and production, hydraulic fracturing for oil and natural gas and renewable energy wind and solar power, we find a surprising reversal of this long term trend toward using less labor per unit of energy produced. The goal of our final paper will be to deeply probe these empirical patterns and attempt to move our conceptual understanding of how labor, tempered by various global political economy and world-system forces, factors into the changing mix of energy sources in particular countries and the world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Burgeoning sociological interest in logistics as a potential industry for mass blue-collar employment produced a flurry of assessments of the characteristics of logistics work, with the results generally suggesting that the majority of logistics employment is characterized by extremely limited mobility, low wages, and poor working conditions. On the other hand, economic sociologists suggest that those occupying brokerage positions, like logistics workers, ought to be able to leverage their powerful structural positions into increased workplace gains, principally in terms of wages and other financial benefits. In this paper, I assess these two claims by constructing wage equations based on data from the 2009-2011 3-year American Community Survey (ACS) data release to identify the determinants of wages and mobility across a geographically diverse sample of logistics workers. First, I determine if logistics employment, across a wide geography, offers as negative a work experience as previous studies suggest. Next, I consider logistics in comparison to construction workers, another industry employing numerous less-educated, blue-collar workers, to assess if logistics employment is distinct by these quantitative measures. The results of my analysis suggest that logistics work is indeed characterized by limited mobility through returns to education and job type, but also that logistics work is not distinct from work in construction by these measures. Further, logistics work actually demonstrates some minor potential evidence of leveraged brokerage power within logistics in the form of slightly higher logistics wages compared to construction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We contribute to the inquiry on the intimacy/economy interplay by applying Zelizer's (2005) seminar differentiation between "hostile worlds," "nothing but," and "connected lives" perspectives to advice articles in the Family Business Magazine from 1989 to 2012. We aim to make three contributions. First, we apply the framework most often used for households, sexual economies or art markets to business corporations. Second, we ask how economic actors themselves employ these frames in describing the challenges of family business. Third, we go beyond documenting the use of frames to ask how their adoption differs over time and by interpreter's social position, in particular gender and professional affiliation. We conduct content analysis of 339 articles using two coders tofind that most articles align with either the connected lives or nothing but perspectives, in about equal proportions. However, women advice authors use connected lives more frequently, as do psychologists and journalists. Authors who are either economic/financial advisors or (male) business executives frame issues more with a nothing but logic. There is also some evidence that nothing but frames are used less frequently in the period before 2000, rather than later, aligning with the emphasis about the rising penetration of the market logic into everyday lives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine the effect of World Bank structural adjustment programs (SAPs) on national income inequality using random effects pooled time series analysis in nearly 60 countries since 1980. A large literature has criticized the structural adjustment agenda, arguing that it exacerbated a range of social problems by encouraging national indebtedness and forcing the reduction of government services. Building on this work, we argue that SAPs have the potential to magnify income inequality within society. The reduction of state services has the potential to increase poverty, while the enactment of neo-liberal economic policies potentially supports greater wealth accumulation at the top end of the income distribution. The answer is not obvious, however, as the few systematic studies that look at the consequences of SAPs have had mixed findings (e.g., on poverty measures). In fact, however, our longitudinal cross-national statistical models find that measures of SAPs have a positive effect on social inequality. The number of SAP loans and the value of SAP loans have non-significant and marginally significant effects, respectively. A variable indicating the presence of a SAP loan has a large and strongly significant effect. In other words, nations participating in SAPs experienced increasing income inequality during the years SAPs were in effect - but the effect didn't vary with the number or magnitude of the loans. Our findings suggest that the policy changes associated with structural adjustment, and not the magnitude of loan repayments or borrowing, had the greatest impact on inequality. We discuss interpretations and implications. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]