It’s no secret that shifting economic winds have driven American workers to take on more work and more job changes today than in previous generations. But what does this shift mean in a culture where so many invest so much of their identities in their jobs? In this episode, guest host Lisa Gulya interviews professor Allison Pugh [1] about her new book, The Tumbleweed Society: Working and Caring in an Age of Insecurity [2]. In it, Dr Pugh investigates some of the ways that the precarious conditions in today’s workplace have generated ripple effects in the nature of relationships and family life. She explains how changes in obligations at work shape how we think about obligations and commitment in the most intimate corners of life. Download Office Hours #113 [3] [1] http://sociology.virginia.edu/people/faculty/allison-pugh [2] https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-tumbleweed-society-9780199957712?cc=us&lang=en& [3] http://files.thesocietypages.org/downloads/OH113_Pugh.mp3

Jennifer Sykes, Katrin Križ, Karthryn Edin, Sarah Hapern-Meekin, “Dignity and Dreams: What the Earned Income Tax Credit Means to Low-Income Families,” American Sociological Review, 2015 In American Sociological Review, Jennifer Sykes, Katrin Križ, Kathryn Edin, and Sarah Halpern-Meekin argue that for low-income families, the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) is not seen as a stigmatizing […]

Professor Susan Terrio [1] of Georgetown University discusses her new book, Whose Child Am I? Unaccompanied, Undocumented Children in U.S. Immigration Custody [2]. In it, Dr Terrio considers the fraught relationship between the American government and the thousands of child detainees placed under both its care and prosecution. Her work reveals how the immigration system shapes the boundaries of childhood, culpability, and the American Dream. Download Office Hours #107 [3] [1] http://explore.georgetown.edu/people/terrios/ [2] http://www.ucpress.edu/book.php?isbn=9780520281493 [3] http://files.thesocietypages.org/downloads/OH107_Terrio.mp3

Kimberly Kay Hoang, “Flirting with Capital: Negotiating Perceptions of Pan-Asian Ascendency and Western Decline in Global Sex Work,” Social Problems, 2014 Men display their success by spending on women: not a new idea. (Cue “Another Saturday Night.”) What’s new is which men in the world have the dough to get the date, argues Kimberly Hoang […]

Charles Blow recently devoted his Times column to relaying the news that his son, a junior at Yale, was racially profiled and detained at gunpoint by campus police. Blow mentions that he was glad he had had “the talk” with his son—how to deal with police as a black man: This is the scenario I […]