During the nineteenth century, very different templates for organizing the economy emerged in Europe and North America. Perhaps the single most important difference across countries concerned the roles of public and private action. Is the state a legitimate and rational participant in decisions...

Between the mid-1970s and the late 1990s, American employers adopted sexual harassment grievance procedures and anti-harassment training in droves even though legislation did not require these programs and the courts had not unequivocally vetted them. Where did these strategies come from and how...

What is colloquially known as the "post-socialist transition" comes at an opportune time for economic sociologists, for we are in the midst of developing sociological ways of thinking about economic practices and structures. We had long ceded economic institutions to economists, satisfying...

The Great Depression called Western nations' most fundamental ideas about economic growth into question by disrupting the march of progress. Governments responded by rejecting orthodox growth strategies in favor of new policies they hoped would turn their economies around.' In the realm of...

Until the late 1950s, companies in both the North and the South practiced discrimination openly. Women, African-Americans, and Latinos were rarely given opportunities to work alongside white men in the same jobs. They were generally offered unskilled jobs without promotion prospects. Most unions...

Determined to figure out whether there is any hope for service-sector workers caught in the downward spiral of deskilling, declining wages, deunionization, outsourcing, and job insecurity, Virginia Doellgast examines a workplace that exemplifies these trends, the call center. Her intensive study...

This book will reorient the discussion not only of business interests, but of the welfare state and social democracy, for it explains not only the rise of peak associations, but their support for welfare state measures today. Martin and Swank explain American exceptionalism as well as any book...

In 2000, Nancy Plankey-Videla began an ethnography at a high-end men’s suit factory in central Mexico. Three months later, reacting to layoffs, bonus cuts, and an effort to break the union contract, which managers blamed on global competition and the U.S. recession, the largely female...

Corporations have implemented a wide range of equal opportunity and diversity programs since the 1960s. This chapter reviews studies of the origins of these programs, surveys that assess the popularity of different programs, and research on the effects of programs on the workforce. Human...