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Newsday has also reviewed Dalton Conley’s latest book, ‘Elsewhere USA,’ and presented some strong feelings about the substantive focus of the book.

“Only in these times of economic meltdown could the common reader be persuaded to feel sympathy for the rich; in the past few months, multimillion-dollar portfolios evaporated and the noblesse oblige were bilked out of dollars destined for philanthropic causes. Into this unsteady new reality comes Dalton Conley’s “Elsewhere, U.S.A.,” in which the author argues that for the first time in our history, America’s rich are working harder and feeling more stressed out than our poor.

Is that the sound of a million tiny gold violins screeching? (Or should I say billion, since everything seems to have inflated to 10 figures these days?) Conley, author of six previous books, including the memoir “Honky,” is a member of the upper-income professional class that he writes about. But he also is chairman of the sociology department at New York University, and “Elsewhere” is a measured mix of social science, first-person reporting and historical research that is sometimes awkward but ultimately compelling.

Throughout, Conley traces the origins of “Elsewhere,” the nebulous location of the book’s title. As the disparate spheres of work and home collide and interpenetrate, it creates a sense of “elsewhere” at all times, presumably because one is never fully here nor there but in some murky in-between world.

In drawing a line from the past to the present, Conley sets his first pin squarely midcentury, highlighting “the growth of women’s work in the formal economy; the rise of information technology that allows many professionals to blend work and leisure on a 24/7 basis; and increasing inequality at the top of the ladder, as disparity grows between the upper-middle and upper classes.”

Conley makes clear that the confluence of these forces – not just working mothers or Blackberries alone – inspired a crippling mixture of guilt and anxiety in our upper class.”

Read on.

Newswise has highlighted a new study by Stephen Sweet and Peter Meiksins titled the ‘Changing Contours of Work.’ In the study, the authors present a picture of the ‘new economy’ characterized by a lack of job security or upward mobility experienced by the majority of workers. Sweet and Meiksins call for a ‘new deal’ to address these issues, including a new worker’s bill of rights. Sweet notes, ““If you look back to the Fair Labor Standards Act —that said if you want to employ a worker more than 40 hours a week you have to pay them overtime at time-and-a-half. This is a wonderful way of reorganizing and creating a disincentive for employing workers for long hours; it could also benefit potential workers who are not in the labor force. The Act did exactly what it was intended to do. Now, it is not working as well, so we have to rethink how we are going to provide health care, how we are going to keep workers from being overworked and how we are going to provide levels of security that currently don’t exist. In short, we need to rethink what we need to expect from employers, what we need to expect from our government, unions and from each other in the workplace.”

About the study…

“Make no mistake, there is a new economy,” says Stephen Sweet, lead-author of “Changing Contours of Work” and an assistant professor of sociology at Ithaca College. He explains how the new economy has opened up prospects for working in new ways and created opportunities for new groups of workers. “But one problematic feature of the new economy is the way it segregates opportunity into ‘good jobs’ (that are increasingly fragile) and ‘bad jobs’ that lack benefits, livable wages and prospects for mobility,” says Sweet. Thus, he explains that the new economy creates chasms that separate many workers from reasonable working conditions, reasonable chances of upward mobility, reasonable chances of job security and reasonable chances to earn a living wage.

But what should we do about it? (According to the authors…)

“As we consider social policy, a key question concerns how to make the new economy work for everyone. This includes dismantling gender and racial chasms, but also addressing the needs of workers laboring in jobs that provide few resources.”

Read on.

Time Magazine recently reviewed Dalton Conley’s new book entitled, ‘Elsewhere, U.S.A.: How We Got From the Company Man, Family Dinners, and the Affluent Society to the Home Office, Blackberry Moms, and Economic Anxiety.’ As for the book’s content? As Time reports, “It’s pretty much all there in the subtitle.”

Conley, a New York University sociologist, asks why middle- to upper-class professionals who were once able to put in a full day’s work at the office, enjoy their leisure time, save up for a house and retire well now find themselves working more for seemingly less. There’s a new class of Americans in town, says Conley. “Changes in three areas — the economy, the family and technology — have combined to alter the social world and give birth to this new type of American professional. This new breed — the intravidual — has multiple selves competing for attention within his/her own mind, just as, externally, she or he is bombarded by multiple stimuli simultaneously.”

Although Time ultimately rated the book a ‘Read,’ they offered some critique of Conley’s work…

Conley’s a sociologist, and at times he writes as if he’s submitting a paper for review rather than penning a book for mass-market consumption. Still, Conley’s concept of intravidualism — “an ethic of managing the myriad data streams, impulses, and even consciousnesses that we experience in our heads as we navigate multiple worlds” — is fascinating. So is another useful but slightly silly neologism: “weisure,” Conley’s term for our increasing tendency to work during leisure time, thanks to advances in portable personal technology. As Conley writes, there are fewer and fewer boundaries in the world of the middle- to upper-class professional. “Investment v. consumption; private sphere v. public space; price v. value; home v. office; leisure v. work; boss v. employee” — the walls between them all are increasingly blurring or falling altogether. We seem to work all the time because technology now makes it possible to do so. Constant motion — between jobs, between relationships, between multiple selves, even — is Conley’s all-too-familiar “Elsewhere Society.”

Read the full review.

According to the Wall Street Journal, a new report based on the study of more than 200 professions puts sociologists firmly in the #8 position of the ‘best jobs’ list.

About the study:

The study, to be released Tuesday from CareerCast.com, a new job site, evaluates 200 professions to determine the best and worst according to five criteria inherent to every job: environment, income, employment outlook, physical demands and stress.

The findings were compiled by Les Krantz, author of “Jobs Rated Almanac,” and are based on data from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics and the Census Bureau, as well as studies from trade associations and Mr. Krantz’s own expertise.

And the article devotes significant time to how well sociologists are doing…

Mark Nord is a sociologist working for the Department of Agriculture’s Economic Research Service in Washington, D.C. He studies hunger in American households and writes research reports about his findings. “The best part of the job is the sense that I’m making some contribution to good policy making,” he says. “The kind of stuff that I crank out gets picked up by advocacy organizations, media and policy officials.”

The study estimates sociologists earn $63,195, though Mr. Nord, 62, says his income is about double that amount. He says he isn’t surprised by the findings because his job generates little stress and he works a steady 7:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. schedule. “It’s all done at the computer at my desk,” he says. “The main occupational hazard is carpal tunnel syndrome.”

Others who made the list…

Read the full story.

The Chicago Sun Tribune ran a story today about how Chinese immigrants working in Italy’s fashion industry have had a transformative effect on the Tuscan city of Prato. While the impact of this wave of immigration and success appears positive, there are some indications that life for Chinese workers in the fashion industry be more grim than originally thought.

Christine Spolar reports:

Like some city neighborhoods, suburbs and small towns across the U.S. where Mexicans and other immigrants gather in search of jobs, Prato is a place where two culturally different communities can live side-by-side and never really know each other.

“In all my travels, I had never seen anything like it,” said Roberto Ye, a son of Chinese immigrants and an Italian citizen who opened a Western Union office in the heart of Prato. “I said to myself: This is not like being in Chinatown in Chicago or New York or anywhere else. This is like China. White people are the foreigners here.”

To understand the impact, follow the money. This year, Chinese immigrants in Italy sent home a whopping 1.68 billion euros, about $2.4 billion, the lion’s share of all 6 billion euros in remittances recorded by Italy’s government.

“You have to forget anything you have ever learned about immigration when you come to Prato. Forget typical patterns. Europe has turned itself into a global marketplace and the Chinese who come are trying to take advantage of that,” said Andrea Frattani, Prato’s multicultural minister.

The darker side of this success story…

Police have raided hundreds of crowded workshops in the past few years where Chinese live, work and sleep. They earn far-below standard wage yet produce wares reportedly sold even in designer shops.

Some Chinese offer excuses for breaking labor laws. Workers still find conditions in Italy better than in China, they claim. But law-enforcement agents argue that Italian and Chinese entrepreneurs wrongly squeeze the most vulnerable. Italians subcontract with Chinese businessmen to cover dodgy business practices. Chinese owners rule over workers desperate for jobs.

Authorities worry about potential dangers: Criminal networks can prey on outsiders who don’t speak the native language — and Italy is a place where mafias already operate.

Social integration between Italians and Chinese is almost non-existent; schools are the few places where the young of both cultures mingle.

The sociological commentary…

Chinese businesses exist in Italy but they aren’t part of Italy. There has been immigration but not integration,” said Daniele Cologna, a sociologist at the Codici research group in Milan.

Full story.

KCBS, a California-based radio station, ran a story this past weekend that featured the work of sociologist Shila Katz, who has worked with the Obama transition team on issues surrounding families on welfare.

The station reports:

When Shila Katz sits down with President Elect Obama’s transition team, she has a message to get across: “Higher education can really be the key to higher wages that will support a family.”

Katz, an assistant professor of sociology at Sonoma State University, has done research about education as a way to get from welfare to work. “Mothers on welfare who are pursuing higher education here in the Bay Area, [who] earn associate degrees and bachelors degrees, find jobs at wages that they never need welfare again.”…“We need to provide welfare services that are actually supportive and will help people get into jobs that will earn wages so that they can support their families and higher education is the key to that.”

Katz worked on the Obama campaign and says that now is the time to enact policies that show what his values are.

LISTEN TO THE PODCAST HERE.

Yesterday the Telegraph (UK) ran a story about Malcolm Gladwell, famous author of ‘The Tipping Point’ and ‘Blink,’ and pop sociologist extraordinaire. The article was based upon an informal interview with Gladwell to discuss his latest book ‘Outliers: The Story of Success,’ which has received critical acclaim here and abroad. Telegraph (UK) reporter Bob Williams writes about meeting Gladwell in his Greenwich Village apartment, and the pleasure of being greeted with a properly-prepared cup of tea — which is later criticized for its weakness.

Williams writes:

As with his previous books, Gladwell glides effortlessly across every subject imaginable to back up his theories with statistics – from the tendencies of Korean airline pilots to crash and of sportsmen born in January to do well, to why so many top lawyers are Jewish. I wouldn’t be surprised if he had a theory about why he likes watery tea, as he has seems to have one for everything else. It would, by definition, be elegantly framed, somewhat left-field, but guaranteed – when snappily packaged as, say, The Pouring Point – to capture the zeitgeist instantly.

About the book itself:

Exceptional people – or “outliers” as [Gladwell] calls them – excel for rather more prosaic reasons. Geniuses are made, not born, benefiting from very specific advantages in their environment and putting in at least 10,000 hours of practice first. The premise is not exactly counter-intuitive. Indeed, some have carped that it is obvious.

“Hopefully it will be an anti-anxiety book,” says the author. “The route to success is ordinary – it’s not based on extravagant, innate gifts. I want to demystify.” He wants to “humble the successful and strip them of their illusions of their own virtue”.

Read the full story, here.

This weekend the New York Times ran a very flattering review of Malcolm Gladwell’s new book ‘Outliers: The Story of Success.’ Times contributor Stephen Kotkin writes, “Malcolm Gladwell has a rare ability: he can transform academic research into engaging fables spotlighting real people.”

In the book Gladwell disputes the idea of the self-made man and focuses on the fact that success is fundamentally ‘social.’

…Mr. Gladwell promotes a cultural explanation for success no matter how indirect the causal mechanisms. Although the individuals that Mr. Gladwell cites are exceptional, their success, he argues, does not flow from their natural gifts but from their unusual cultural legacies, the uncanny opportunities that come their way, and their really, really hard work.

But Kotkin offers some critique…

…Often the examples are unsatisfying, as in his discussion of the KIPP academy in the Bronx, where 90 percent of the students qualify for free or reduced-cost lunches but do as well in math as privileged suburban children. Why? Supposedly because the academy abolished long summer vacations. Mr. Gladwell, following the research of the sociologist Karl Alexander, contends that virtually the entire educational performance difference between better-off and poorer children derives from what some students do not learn when school’s out.

Read the full review, here.

The Washington Post reports this morning on findings from sociologist Emilio J. Castilla, of MIT. Castilla’s study, published in the most recent issue of the American Journal of Sociology, examines merit-based pay plans that aim to distribute rewards without racial or gender bias. He concludes that they still favor white men.

The Post reports:

The biases [in pay] were introduced when a supervisor recommended raises or when the human resources department approved them, [Castilla] said. His research, published in the latest issue of the American Journal of Sociology, found that minorities and women had starting salaries similar to those of white men. Biases crept in over time, creating a pay gap. Even though merit-based systems create the appearance of meritocracy, he said, they need more transparency and accountability to live up to it.

Read more.

Recently the headlines have been filled with commentary on Republican VP pick Sarah Palin. Two articles that caught the Crawler’s attention brought in the sociologists to answer current questions about Palin’s future.

Reuters generated an article on Palin’s ability to galvanize the political ‘left.’ For this article they drew upon the expertise of Michael Lindsay.

“Everybody pays attention to the mobilizing affect on the right but equally important is the mobilizing affect that Palin’s nomination makes for the left,” said Michael Lindsay, a political sociologist at Rice University in Houston who has written extensively on the U.S. evangelical movement.

“In many ways she is a much more mobilizing figure for both sides than John McCain because he is seen as much more of a moderate middle of the road political figure,” he said.  [Full article]

But will a ‘middle of the road’ image win the Republican ticket the election?

The second article supplemented by sociologist expertise ran in the LA Times and purported to explain the ‘new feminism’ offered by Palin’s candidacy. 

Debbie Walsh, director for the Rutgers Center for the American Woman and Politics, said Palin had already been caught in a bind between her political obligations and her family. That happened when she and her husband, Todd, issued a news release announcing that their daughter Bristol was pregnant.

“It’s terrible, like a Sophie’s choice situation, where you are in this horrible position as a mother,” said Walsh, “to feel that you have to reveal this piece of information about your daughter and not just to a few people in your family but to the national press corps?”

Pepper Schwartz, a University of Washington sociologist, agreed that the parenting questions came up more readily for Palin because she is a woman.

“I’m all for being a working mom,” Schwartz said. “But I do have a sense from having two children how totally unsuited and uncapable I would be with five.” [Full Article]

Can Palin convince the American voters that she can successfully balance work and family?