economics

In recent weeks, we’ve seen multiple examples of women on the political right straddling two kinds of womanhood: the girlboss and the tradwife. The visibility of these women exposes a hidden link between conservative womanhood and girlboss feminism that deserves our attention. 

Katie Britt broadcast her response to the State of the Union from her kitchen. Michelle Morrow, the conservative activist from North Carolina who has just been elected state Superintendent of Education in North Carolina, burnishes her credentials as a wife and mother above all else.

They aren’t the first to do this; #tradlife has been trending since at least 2019. Tradwife influencers perform a version of femininity that leans on a strong husband providing financial support so they can devote themselves to caring for children and the home. There is almost always an apron, a kitchen, and a perfectly coiffed, carefully made-up woman in a serene environment cooking from scratch recipes — a vibe that belies the real chaos of having young humans to care for in a home. 

We might assume that tradwives hearken back to an earlier “backward” mode of femininity and marriage. But this way of being in the world is unmistakably modern because it involves “choice” and entrepreneurship. It is not enough for a tradwife to simply focus on her husband and kids, she must be entrepreneurial about it. She must blog about it, vlog about it, become an influencer. This is where the “girlboss” mentality comes in.

Sheryl Sandberg’s 2013 book Lean In told women that if they would just ask for what they wanted in the workplace, like the men, they too would advance. But women continue to face barriers in corporate America and marginalization in labor markets. Despite this girlboss feminism has been incorporated into our culture across the political spectrum. US women widely believe structural problems are with women ourselves. With individual effort, good planning, the right domestic help, and a little luck and chutzpah, we can overcome societal inequalities. We rely on a myth of mutuality that belies the true gender division of labor in American families.

It turned out lean-in feminism was both colorblind and a sham. And the #tradwives know it – there are even Black tradwife influencers. They say proudly: we have decided it’s way too exhausting to run the family and corporate America at the same time. So we will focus on our family and “opt out” of the vulnerability and constant stress of the labor market, which values our labor less. And in doing so, we take a stand with men and shore up the dying ideology of the father as breadwinner. We choose this, and you too can see just how great this choice is on our successful TikTok channels. 

As we discuss in depth in our new book, The Gender Order of Neoliberalism, U.S. has long drawn soft power from the idea that its women are “empowered.” Not “backward,” like those oppressed women in the Middle East or India or Africa, who are poor and come from patriarchal cultures. Our women, we like to tell the world, make choices of their own, work outside the home in high-powered jobs, fly planes, and even save women in other parts of the world.

But focusing on the individual choices of women who must “do it all” was not always what “women’s empowerment” meant. We show in our book that women involved in transnational feminist organizing in the 1950s and 60s lobbied for reproductive justice, fair pay for fair work, universal childcare, universal healthcare, and fair trade between countries. Those visions of empowerment have all but disappeared from our collective political imaginations. What would a joyful life look like if there were community kitchen tables, childcare collectives, and widely available healthcare? Where are the inviting visuals for that kind of empowerment?

Our impoverished feminist imagination leaves us straddling the skinny divide between tradwives and girlbosses and reinforcing the notion that women should continue to be America’s social safety net.

Smitha Radhakrishnan is Marion Butler McLean Professor in the History of Ideas and Professor of Sociology at Wellesley College. She is author of Making Women Pay: Microfinance in Urban India.

Cinzia D. Solari is Associate Professor of Sociology at University of Massachusetts Boston. She is author of On the Shoulders of Grandmothers: Gender, Migration, and Post-Soviet Nation-Building.

I love this podcast conversation with Rachel Sherman and Anne Helen Petersen about Sherman’s recent book, Uneasy Street: The Anxieties of Affluence. It is a great source for introduction to sociology courses looking to open up a conversation about differences in social class, especially because it draws attention to the fact that people do a lot of work to hide that social class position.

When we think about wealth, it is tempting to focus on flaunting riches through conspicuous consumption of flashy clothes, large homes, and other reality TV fodder. Sherman’s work makes an important point: phrases like “middle class” actually do a lot to hide our economic positions in society, and wealthy people often work to manage others’ perceptions of their wealth.

The podcast pairs well with a recent Twitter thread from John Holbein tracing research from around the world on how people’s perceptions of their economic position line up with their actual income and wealth. In case after case, many people report a social class that doesn’t line up with what they actually have.

This is a point I always try to make with my students: our social relationships are as much about the things we hide and avoid talking about as the things we openly share with each other. One of the most powerful points sociologists can make is to show these hidden patterns in the way we interact. The goal is not to call people out or to accuse them of lying, but rather to ask ourselves what it is about our economic lives that makes us want to work so hard to manage others’ perceptions in this way.

Evan Stewart is an assistant professor of sociology at University of Massachusetts Boston. You can follow his work at his website, or on BlueSky.

As summer approaches and ads for part-time student work start popping up all over campus, it is a good time to talk about the sociology of sales. The Annex podcast recently ran a segment on multi-level marketing (MLM) organizations, and I just finished the binge-worthy podcast series The Dream, which follows the history of these companies and the lives of people who sell their products.

Sometimes called direct sales or network marketing, these organizations offer part time, independent work selling everything from handbags to health supplements. The tricky part is that many of these groups spend more time encouraging people to recruit friends and family to sell, rather than moving products through traditional retail markets. People draw on their nearby social networks to make sales and earn bonuses, often by hosting parties or meeting in small groups.

You might have seen pitches for one of these groups at your local coffee shop or campus. Some MLMs get busted for using this model to build illegal pyramid schemes, while other direct sales companies claim to follow the law by providing employee protections.

MLMs are a rich example for all kinds of sociology. You could do an entire Introduction to Sociology class branching out from this case alone! Here are a few examples that The Dream inspired for me (find episodes here):

• Economic sociologists can talk about the rise of precarious labor and the gig economy—conditions where more people feel like they need to be entrepreneurs just to survive. MLMs are particularly good at using these social conditions for recruitment.
• Sociologists of gender will have a lot to say about how these groups recruit women, targeting our gendered assumptions about who needs part-time, flexible work and who is best suited to do the emotional work of sales. Pair readings with Episode 2: “Women’s Work.”
• I’ve seen a fair number of MLM pitches in coffee shops and accidentally walked into a few in college. Watching these pitches is a masterclass in symbolic interactionism, and students can see how people build rapport with each other through face work and sales parties as rituals. Pair with Episode 3: “Do you party?” 
• Many of these companies are either religiously-affiliated or lean on religious claims to inspire and motivate recruits. Sociologists of religion and culture can do a lot with the history of the New Thought movement. Pair The Protestant Ethic with Episode 4: “The Mind is a Fertile Field.”
• Political sociologists can use the history of how these groups get around regulation to talk about corporate influence in the political world and how elites coordinate. Sociologists of Law will also love the conversation about legitimacy, especially how direct sales organizations learned to distinguish themselves from “clearly illegal pyramid schemes.” Pair with Episode 7: “Lazy, Stupid, Greedy or Dead.”

This is a great focus topic for the social sciences, both because it touches on so many trends in the US culture and economy, and because college students and recent graduates are often a target market for many of these groups.

Evan Stewart is an assistant professor of sociology at University of Massachusetts Boston. You can follow his work at his website, or on BlueSky.

“There is a real danger of taking food too seriously. Food needs to be part of a bigger picture”
-Anthony Bourdain

As someone who writes about food, about its ability to offer a window into the daily lives and circumstances of people around the globe, Anthony Bourdain’s passing hit me particularly hard. If you haven’t seen them, his widely-acclaimed shows such as No Reservations and Parts Unknown were a kind of personal narrative meets travelogue meets food TV. They trailed the chef as he immersed himself in the culture of a place, sometimes one heavily touristed, sometimes more removed from the lives of most food media consumers, and showed us what people ate, at home, in the streets and in local restaurants. While much of food TV focuses on high end cuisine, Bourdain’s art was to show the craftsmanship behind the everyday foods of a place. He lovingly described the food’s preparation, the labor involved, and the joy people felt in coming together to consume it in a way that was palpable, even (or especially) when the foods themselves were unusual.

At their best, these shows taught us about the history and culture of particular places, and of the ways places have suffered through the ills of global capitalism and imperialism. His visit to the Congo was particularly memorable; While eating tiger fish wrapped in banana leaves, spear-caught and prepared by local fishermen, he delved into the colonial history and present-day violence that continue to devastate this natural-resource rich country. After visiting Cambodia he railed against Henry Kissinger and the American bombing campaign that killed over 250,000 people and gave rise, in part, to the murderous regime of the Khmer Rouge. In Jerusalem, he showed his lighter side, exploring the Israeli-Palestinian conflict through debates over who invented falafel. But in the same episode, he shared maqluba, “upside down” chicken and rice, with a family of Palestinian farmers in Gaza, and showed the basic humanity and dignity of a people living under occupation.

Bourdain’s shows embodies the basic premise of the sociology of food. Food is deeply personal and cultural. Over twenty-five years ago Anthony Winson called it the “intimate commodity” because it provides a link between our bodies, our cultures and the global political economies and ecologies that shape how and by whom food is cultivated, distributed and consumed. Bourdain’s show focuses on what food studies scholars call gastrodiplomacy, the potential for food to bring people together, helping us to understand and sympathize with one another’s circumstances. As a theory, it embodies the old saying that “the best way to our hearts is through our stomachs.” This theory has been embraced by nations like Thailand, which has an official policy promoting the creation of Thai restaurants in order to drive tourism and boost the country’s prestige. And the foods of Mexico have been declared World Heritage Cuisines by UNESCO, the same arm of the United Nations that marks world heritage sites. Less officially, we’ve seen a wave of efforts to promote the cuisines of refugees and migrants through restaurants, supper clubs and incubators like San Francisco’s La Cocina that help immigrant chefs launch food businesses.

But food has often been and continues to be a site of violence as well. Since 1981 750,000 farms have gone out of business, resulting in widespread rural poverty and epidemic levels of suicide. Food system workers, from farms to processing plants to restaurants, are among the most poorly paid members of our society, and often rely on food assistance. The food industry is highly centralized. The few major players in each segment—think Wal-Mart for groceries or Tyson for chicken—exert tremendous power on suppliers, creating dire conditions for producers. Allegations of sexual assault pervade the food industry; there are numerous complaints against well-known chefs and a study from Human Rights Watch revealed that more than 80% of women farmworkers have experienced harassment or assault on the job, a situation so dire that these women refer to it as the “field of panties” because rape is so common. Racism is equally rampant, with people of color often confined to poorly-paid “back of the house” positions while whites make up the majority of high-end servers, sommeliers, and celebrity chefs.

More than any other celebrity chef, Bourdain understood that food is political, and used his platform to address current social issues. His outspoken support for immigrant workers throughout the food system, and for immigrants more generally, colored many of his recent columns. And as the former partner of Italian actress Asia Argento, one of the first women to publicly accuse Harvey Weinstein, Bourdain used his celebrity status to amplify the voice of the #metoo movement, a form of support that was beautifully incongruous with his hyper-masculine image. Here Bourdain embodied another of the fundamental ideas of the sociology of food, that understanding the food system is intricately interwoven with efforts to improve it.

Bourdain’s shows explored food in its social and political contexts, offering viewers a window into worlds that often seemed far removed. He encouraged us to eat one another’s cultural foods, and to understand the lives of those who prepared them. Through food, he urged us to develop our sociological imaginations, putting individual biographies in their social and historical contexts. And while he was never preachy, his legacy urges us to get involved in the confluence of food movements, ensuring that those who feed us are treated with dignity and fairness, and are protected from sexual harassment and assault.

The Black feminist poet Audre Lorde once wrote that “it is not our differences that divide us. It is our inability to recognize, accept, and celebrate those differences.” Bourdain showed us that by learning the stories of one another’s foods, we can learn the histories and develop the empathy necessary to work for a better world.

Rest in Peace.

Alison Hope Alkon is associate professor of sociology and food studies at University of the Pacific. Check out her Ted talk, Food as Radical Empathy

Originally posted at Reports from the Economic Front.

What is work like for Americans?  The results of the Rand Corporation’s American Working Conditions Survey (AWCS) paint a troubling picture. As the authors write in their summary:

The AWCS findings indicate that the American workplace is very physically and emotionally taxing, both for workers themselves and their families.

The authors do note more positive findings.  These include:

that workers appear to have a certain degree of autonomy, most feel confident about their skill set, and many receive social support on the job.

Despite the importance of work to our emotional and physical well-being, social relations, and the development of our capacities to shape our world, little has been published about our experience of work. Here, then, is a more detailed look at some of the Survey’s findings:

The Hazardous Workplace

An overwhelming fraction of Americans engage in intense physical exertion on the job. In addition to physical demands, more than one-half of American workers (55 percent) are exposed to unpleasant or potentially dangerous working conditions.

The Pressures of Work

Approximately two-thirds of Americans have jobs that involve working at very high speed at least half the time; the same fraction works to tight deadlines at least half the time.

The Long Work Day

While presence at the work place during business hours is required for most Americans, many take work home. About one-half of American workers do some work in their free time to meet work demands. Approximately one in ten workers report working in their free time “nearly every day” over the last month, two in ten workers report working in their free time “once or twice a week,” and two in ten workers report working in their free time “once or twice a month.” 

The Work Environment

Nearly one in five American workers were subjected to some form of verbal abuse, unwanted sexual attention, threats, or humiliating behavior at work in the past month or to physical violence, bullying or harassment, or sexual harassment at work in the past 12 months. 

At the same time, it is also true that:

While the workplace is a source of hostile social experiences for an important fraction of American workers, it is a source of supportive social experiences for many others. More than one-half of American workers agreed with the statement “I have very good friends at work,” with women more likely to report having very good friends at work than men (61 and 53 percent, respectively).

In sum, the survey’s results make clear that work in the United States is physically and emotionally demanding and dangerous for many workers. And with the government weakening many of the labor and employment regulations designed to protect worker rights and safety, it is likely that workplace conditions will worsen.

Worker organizing and workplace struggles for change need to be encouraged and supported. A recent Pew Research Center survey showed growing support for unions, especially among younger workers.  It is not hard to understand why.

Monday is Labor Day in the U.S. Though to many it is a last long weekend for recreation and shopping before the symbolic end of summer, the federal holiday, officially established in 1894, celebrates the contributions of labor.

Here are a few dozen SocImages posts on a range of issues related to workers, from the history of the labor movement, to current workplace conditions, to the impacts of the changing economy on workers’ pay:

The Social Construction of Work

• The surprisingly racist reason we don’t tip flight attendants
• Luxury and the consumption of labor
• The unsung heroes of the crash landing in San Francisco
• Why do firefighters take such risky jobs?
• McDonald’s delusional blame-the-victim budget
• Devaluing hospitality workers
• Domestic  behavior as both gendered and raced: Who does what for airlines?
• Child labor and the social construction of childhood
• Child labor, 1908-1912
• Women are 49% of the workforce, but we still think work is for men

Work in Popular Culture

• Children’s books and segregation in the workplace
• Alienation and orange juice: The invisibility of labor
• Hurricane Sandy and high fashion: Portraying a class hierarchy
• Whimsical branding obscures Apple’s troubled supply chain
• The “working family” discourse and the invisibility of individuals
• The DJ in American culture: Resonant but misunderstood
• Whiteness and tokenism on the runway
• The solution to patriarchy? Pantene says shine!
• Forbes’ photostock faux paus (what do women workers look like?)

Unemployment, Underemployment, and the “Class War”

• The “Precariat”: The new working class
• When classes collide: Workers and guests at high end hotels
• Who benefits from government programs?
• $22.62/hr: The minimum wage if it had risen like the incomes of the 1%
• Why can’t conservatives see the benefits of affordable child care?
• Food stamps, public policy, and the working poor
• The striking rise in “missing workers”
• Can the minimum wage cover average housing costs?
• Discrimination against the long-term unemployed
• Jon Stewart on class warfare
• Mike Rowe defends blue-collar manual labor

Unions and Unionization

• What have unions ever done for us?
• Footage of strikes and protests
• “Is your washroom breeding Bolsheviks?”
• A way for feminism to overcome its “class problem”
• Target’s anti-union video for new employees
• Unemployment and support for unions
• César Chávez and the fight for farmworkers’ rights
• Hiring non-union workers to staff picket lines
• “A woman’s place is in her union!”

Economic Change, Globalization, and the Great Recession

• U.S jobs are back, but they’re no match for population growth
• The U.S. is replacing good jobs with bad ones
• Whose economic recovery is it?
• Prison labor and taxpayer dollars
• The austerity agenda and public employment
• Comparing black and white job loss in the recession
• The exploitation of worker productivity
• What kinds of jobs are we gaining in the slow recovery?
• Historical look at changes in types of work
• Two American families trapped in a changing economy
• Race and the economic downturn

Work and race, ethnicity, religion, and immigration

• Distrust for Black entrepreneurs
• Race in the NFL draft
• Are Mexicans the most successful immigrant group?
• Race, criminal background, and employment
• The curious evolution of the sign spinnner
• Linguistic occupational segregation
• International politics and the first African American flight attendants
• Luxury and the consumption of labor
• Children’s books and segregation in the workplace
• Whiteness and tokenism on the runway
• Whimsical branding obscures Apple’s troubled supply chain
• When classes collide: Workers and guests at high end hotels
• The surprisingly racist reason we don’t tip flight attendants
• Questioning the benefits of “rescue” from prostitution
• Porn producers with a heart of gold?
• Anti-Muslim bias on the French job market
• Race/ethnicity and the pay gap
• Race, ethnicity, and McDonald’s marketing strategy

Gender and Work

• Majority of “stay-at-home dads” aren’t there to care for family
• Most women would rather divorce than be a housewife
• Before the stewardess, the “steward”: When flight attendants were men
• Star Trek is scaring the ladies: Why women don’t major in computer science
• What do little girls really learn from “Career Barbies”?
• “Dude, you need to get into nursing”: How organizations recruit men into nursing
• Stay-at-home mothers on the rise among low-income families
• Gender at The New York Times
• Mother, sex object, worker: The transformation of the female flight attendant
• Female movie stars peak at 34, but men see success till the end (pictured)
• What kind of work does Women’s History month value?
• Men’s and women’s work: It’s the 1950s at Brinks Home Security
• Women’s refusal to be deferent and the words that describe them
• Why “breadwinner moms” don’t portend a coming matriarchy
• Single mother, meet jobless man
• Gender, work, and family time
• First-time mothers and access to paid work leave
• The role of employer selection in gendered job segregation

The U.S. in International Perspective

• Overwork and its costs
• The U.S. is las in paid vacation and holidays
• International comparison of workplace leave policies
• Vacation in international perspective

Academia

• What do professors do all day?
• Gender and the dual career academic couple
• How many PhDs are professors?
• Professors join the “precariat”
• How professors spend their time
• Precious academic moments

Just for Fun

• Who is the highest paid employee of your state?
• Secrets of the Internet Adult Film Database
• Two-thirds of college students think they’re going to change the world

Bonus!

• Advice for new college grads from two sociologists

Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

I discovered a nice gem of an insight this week in an article called The 11 Ways That Consumers Are Hopeless at Math: the symbolism of the number 9.

We’re all familiar with the convention of pricing items one penny below a round number: $1.99 instead of $2.00, $39.99 instead of $40.00, etc. Psychologically, marketers know that this works. We’re more likely to buy something at $89.99 than we are at $90.00.

It’s not, though, because we are tricked by that extra penny for our pockets. It’s because, so argues Derek Thompson, the .99 symbolizes “discount.” It is more than just a number, it has a meaning. It now says to us not just 9, but also You are getting a deal. It doesn’t matter if it’s a carton of eggs for $2.99 or a dishwasher for $299.99. In both cases, putting two 9s at the end makes us feel like smart shoppers.

To bring this point home, in those moments when we’re not looking for a deal, the number 9 has the opposite effect. When marketers want to sell a “luxury” item, they generally don’t use the 9s. They simply state the round number price. The whole point of buying a luxury item is to spend a lot of money because you have the money to spend. It shouldn’t feel like a deal; it should feel like an indulgence. Thompson uses the example of lobster at a high-end restaurant. They don’t sell it to you for $99.99. That looks cheap. They ask you for the $100. And, if you’ve got the money and you’re in the mood, it feels good exactly in part because there are no 9s.

Definitely no 9s:

Not yet convinced? Consider as an example this price tag for a flat screen television. Originally priced at $2,300.00, but discounted at $1,999.99. Suddenly on sale and a whole lot of 9s:

Lisa Wade, PhD is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of American Hookup, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender; and a forthcoming introductory text: Terrible Magnificent Sociology. You can follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

Originally posted at There’s Research on That!

With a group of coal miners standing behind him, President Donald Trump signed an executive order in his first 100 days reversing Obama-era climate change policies, claiming that he would bring back coal while putting miners to work. Yet, can or will coal mining jobs come back, and will this lead to economic and social development in places like Appalachia?

Probably not.

Much research has shown that the loss of mining jobs in the U.S. is largely due to mechanization and labor-cutting management practices — not environmental protections. Thus, placing the blame on climate change policies is unfounded. Instead, it’s used to scapegoat environmentalists and draw our attention away from corporations and changes in the global economy.

Even if Trump’s executive order could bring back the jobs, it might not have the effects coal miners are hoping for. Researchers find that mining does not always lead to economic growth and well-being. Thus, keeping coal mines open does not guarantee economic prosperity and well-being. A study found that in West Virginia the counties with coal mines have some of the highest poverty and unemployment rates compared to surrounding counties without active mines.

Moreover, sociologist William Freudenberg argues that economies based solely around mining are prone to booms and busts, subject to the whims of the industry. Towns in Appalachian coal country and the Bakken oil fields of North Dakota become “addicted” to extraction. But dependence on fossil fuel industries is economically precarious.

Why don’t these facts change miners’ deep ties to mining as a way of life? Because many have strong cultural connections to mining, often coming from multiple generations of miners. Through her experiences working in a coal mine, anthropologist Jessica Smith Roylston saw how the miner identity connects with masculine ideals of hard work and providing for one’s family.

Industry has tapped into these sentiments to generate public support and weave the industry into the fabric of community life. Mining companies, particularly in Appalachia, have actively worked to create a positive image through public relations and other cultural and political tactics, such as sponsoring high school football tournaments and billboard ads.

These corporate strategies place the blame on outsiders and environmentalists, provide a cover for environmentally destructive and job-cutting industry practices, and keep coal politically relevant.

Erik Kojola is a PhD student in the Department of Sociology at the University of Minnesota interested in the environment, labor, social movements and political economy.