In addition to current labor activism, movements for economic justice have also emerged from students, retirees, consumers, and other communities outside traditional unions and leftist political parties. Today’s mass movements range from the Indignados movement in Spain to Occupy in the U.S. to anti-austerity protests in Greece to massive student demonstrations in Chile. Protestors are contesting the inevitability of privatization, cuts to public spending, and rising inequality, among other issues worldwide.

• Wolfgang Rudig and Georgios Karyotis. 2013. “Beyond The Usual Suspects? New Participants In Anti-Austerity Protests In Greece.” Mobilization: An International Journal 18(3):313–30.
• Ruth Milkman, Penny Lewis, and Stephanie Luce. 2013. “The Genie’s out of the Bottle: Insiders’ Perspectives on Occupy Wall Street.” The Sociological Quarterly 54(2):194–98.
• Cesar Guzman-Concha. 2012. “The Students’ Rebellion in Chile: Occupy Protest or Classic Social Movement?” Social Movement Studies 11(3-4):408–15.
• Ernesto Castañeda. 2012. “The Indignados of Spain: A Precedent to Occupy Wall Street.” Social Movement Studies 11(3-4):309–19.

Read Part I (The U.S. & Inequality) and Part II (Global Labor).

Free trade globalization has had largely negative impacts on workers by driving down wages and allowing capital to move when workers organize and demand better pay and working conditions. Free trade agreements like NAFTA have also destroyed local industries and hurt farmers in the global South who cannot compete with cheap products from the U.S.

Global trade also creates new possibilities for the workers of the world to unite. Transnational organizing campaigns targeted at multinational companies and global union federations have made concrete gains, helping workers improve working conditions and build working-class power.

• Tamara Kay. 2005. “Labor Transnationalism and Global Governance: The Impact of NAFTA on Transnational Labor Relationships in North America.” American Journal of Sociology 111(3):715–56.
• Jamie K. McCallum. 2013. Global Unions, Local Power: The New Spirit of Transnational Labor Organizing. Cornell University Press.
• Gay W. Seidman. 2007. Beyond the Boycott: Labor Rights, Human Rights, and Transnational Activism. Russell Sage Foundation.
• Jill Louise Esbenshade. 2009. Monitoring Sweatshops: Workers, Consumers, and the Global Apparel Industry. Temple University Press.

Even in sweatshops and among immigrants in precarious jobs, workers are finding new ways of organizing. Workers in the global South are protesting and unionizing in factories that make consumer goods, despite state repression and the power of multi-national corporations. Migrant workers in the informal sectors of the U.S. are getting around the barriers of labor law to organize outside traditional unions.

• Janice Ruth Fine. 2006. Worker Centers: Organizing Communities at the Edge of the Dream. Cornell University Press.
• Ching Kwan Lee. 2007. Against the Law: Labor Protests in China’s Rustbelt and Sunbelt. University of California Press.
• Biju Mathew. 2005. Taxi!: Cabs and Capitalism in New York City. Cornell University Press.
• Ruth Milkman and Ed Ott. 2014. New Labor in New York: Precarious Workers and the Future of the Labor Movement. Cornell University Press.

Read May Day Part I: The U.S. and Inequality

Workers of the World, Unite!

Since the late 1800s May Day—the first of May and a traditional European spring celebration—has been recognized as International Workers Day. It’s a time to celebrate working people and the possibilities for international solidarity. On May Day 2015, the state of workers looks rather grim: expanding inequality, increasing fiscal austerity, and degrading working conditions. Amid these negative trends, though, there are glimmers of hope as global workers organize and mobilize to assert their rights, curtail corporate power, and create a more equitable world.

To mark May Day, we are exploring issues of inequality, labor, and social movements in a three-part series.

Part I: The U.S. & Inequality

Deregulation, privatization, and declining unionization have exacerbated the gulf between rich and poor in the past 50 years. Researchers have documented how much of the increase in wage inequality is due to the weakening of policies and institutions that have historically protected and empowered workers—unions, minimum wage laws, unemployment insurance, and labor law—in addition to structural changes in the economy and labor market.

• ChangHwan Kim and Arthur Sakamoto. 2010. “Assessing the Consequences of Declining Unionization and Public-Sector Employment: A Density-Function Decomposition of Rising Inequality From 1983 to 2005.” Work and Occupations 37(2):119–61.
• Bruce Western and Jake Rosenfeld. 2011. “Unions, Norms, and the Rise in U.S. Wage Inequality.” American Sociological Review 76(4):513–37.
• Winfried Koeniger, Marco Leonardi, and Luca Nunzjata. 2007. “Labor Market Institutions And Wage Inequality.” Industrial and Labor Relations Review 60(3):340–56.

Read May Day Part II: Global Labor. There’s Research on That!

Read May Day Part III: Social & Political Movements. There’s Research on That!

A recent scholarly article in the Journal of Marriage and Family by Melissa Milkie, Kei Nomaguchi, and Kathleen Denny (first covered in the Washington Post) has sparked a plethora of commentary in the news media, including several critiques by Justin Wolfers of The Upshot, and a convincing response by the authors in the Washington Post. Using high-quality time use data from a national panel study, Milkie, Nomaguchi, and Denny found that the overall amount of time mothers spend with either adolescents or younger children does not matter for their children’s behaviors, emotions, or academics. What do sociologists know about the impact of parenting time on children’s wellbeing?

First, the kind of parenting time matters. Time mothers spend engaging with children makes more of a difference than the time mothers are available to or are supervising their children. So being long on love but short on time isn’t a bad thing. Engaged maternal time is related to fewer delinquent behaviors among adolescents, and engaged time with both parents was related to better outcomes for adolescents. Other studies show too much “unstructured” parental time, such as watching TV together, may actually be worse for some children under age 6, and that the quality of parent-child relationships factors in. Family dinners contribute to fewer depressive symptoms and less delinquency among adolescents, but only when parent-child relationships are strong.

• Melissa A. Milkie, Kei M. Nomaguchi, and Kathleen E. Denny. 2015. “Does the Amount of Time Mothers Spend With Children or Adolescents Matter?” Journal of Marriage and Family 77(2):355–72.
• Amy Hsin and Christina Felfe. 2014. “When Does Time Matter? Maternal Employment, Children’s Time With Parents, and Child Development,” Demography 51(5):1867–94.
• Ann Meier and Kelly Musick. 2014. “Variation in Associations Between Family Dinners and Adolescent Well-Being,” Journal of Marriage and Family 76(1):13–23.

Why did this finding spark such a media response? In part, it’s because society believes ideal mothering means spending lots of time with children. Many parents strive to attain this ideal, but many working mothers who cannot attain it must redefine their definition of a “good mother” to fit with work responsibilities. Still, working mothers today spend more time with their children than employed mothers in the past.

• Sharon Hays. 1998. The Cultural Contradictions of Motherhood. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.
• Annette Lareau. 2003. Unequal Childhoods: Class, Race, and Family Life. Berkeley: University of California Press.
• Karen Christopher. 2012. “Extensive Mothering: Employed Mothers’ Constructions of the Good Mother,” Gender & Society 26(1):73–96.
• Liana Fox, Wen-Jui Han, Christopher Ruhm, and Jane Waldfogel. 2013. “Time for Children: Trends in the Employment Patterns of Parents, 1967–2009,” Demography 50(1):25–49.

For more on the original article and the critiques, see Sociological Images.

California is facing record drought, water restrictions, and threats of wildfires. The solution seems simple—just find more water through increased pumping or desalination—but these quick fixes ignore deeper questions about how we turn public necessities into commodities and determine who can lay claim to natural resources. These issues can lead to cultural conflict, but struggles for water can also renew solidarity across different social groups.

Sociological case studies remind us that professional environmental responsibilities to the land, its residents, owners, and governments change over time and through particular institutional cultures. Power and inequality shape who is exposed to environmental problems and how we address solutions.

• Wendy N. Espeland. 1998. The Struggle for Water: Politics, Rationality, and Identity in the American Southwest. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
• David N. Pellow and Hollie Nyseth Brehm. 2013. “An Environmental Sociology for the Twenty-First Century.” Annual Review of Sociology 39:229-250.

Water conflicts also bring up commodification—the way we turn public necessities like water and health into market goods. Research on commodification examines everything from how the water industry actively competes with the tap to how insurance markets change the culture of life and death in the United States.

• Viviana A. Zelizer. 1978. “Human Values and the Market: The Case of Life Insurance and Death in 19th-Century America.” American Journal of Sociology 84(3):591-610
• Daniel Jaffee and Soren Newman. 2012. “A Bottle Half Empty: Bottled Water, Commodification, and Contestation.” Organization and Environment. 26(3): 318-335.

Water resources—even when scarce—do not inevitably lead to conflict. Environmental concern is not only high in affluent nations; even in places as tense as the Middle East, local activists regularly use the environment to bridge cultural, political, and religious tensions.

• Riley E. Dunlap and Richard York. 2008. “The Globalization of Environmental Concern and the Limits of the Postmaterialist Values Explanation: Evidence from Four Multinational Surveys.” The Sociological Quarterly 49(3):529-563.
• Nicole Harari and Jesse Roseman. 2008. “Environmental Peacebuilding Theory and Practice.” Eco Peace Middle East.

Rebecca Farnum is a 2012 EPA Marshall Scholar researching for a PhD in Geography at King’s College London, where she explores environmental conflict and cooperation around food and water resources in the Middle East and North Africa. She has an LLM in International Law on environmental and human rights law, an MSc in Water Security and International Development, and undergraduate degrees in anthropology, interdisciplinary humanities, international development, and international relations.

During his April 1 on-air radio show, Rush Limbaugh cited a recent SocImages post titled, “Are Economics Majors Anti-Social?” In debating the content of the post, Limbaugh frequently referred to author and editor Lisa Wade as “professorette.” In making up this word, he intentionally gendered the gender-neutral title “professor.” Given the cultural devaluation of femininity, the unnecessary gendering of Wade’s profession signals a discounting of her position and expertise. While Wade is, notably, the author (with Myra Marx-Ferree) of the new book, Gender, women of all professions face challenges to their legitimacy.

Education, prestige, and capital do not exempt women from sexist stereotypes about incompetency. Female researchers and professors are often viewed as less competent than their male colleagues, and male-dominated academic disciplines are perceived to draw more innately brilliant and talented practitioners than female-dominated disciplines.

• Rhea E. Steinpreis, Katie A. Anders, Dawn Ritzke. 1999. “The Impact of Gender on the Review of the Curricula Vitae of Job Applicants and Tenure Candidates: A National Empirical Study.” Sex Roles 41(7-8): 509-528.
• Lillian MacNell, Adam Driscoll, and Andrea N. Hunt. 2014. “What’s in a Name: Exposing Gender Bias in Student Ratings of Teaching.” Innovative Higher Education 1–13.
• Corinne A. Moss-Racusin, John F. Dovidio, Victoria L. Brescoll, Mark J. Graham, and Jo Handelsman. 2012. “Science Faculty’s Subtle Gender Biases Favor Male Students.” Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 109(41):16474–79.
• Sarah-Jane Leslie, Andrei Cimpian, Meredith Meyer, and Edward Freeland. 2015. “Expectations of brilliance underlie gender distributions across academic disciplines.” Science 347: 262-265.

Even when women occupy high status positions of expertise they are more likely to be interrupted than men. Furthermore, men are more likely to interrupt women even when women occupy a higher professional prestige, suggesting that the gender hierarchy can be more influential to power dynamics than professional status.

• Adrienne B. Hancock and Benjamin A. Rubin. 2015. “Influence of Communication Partner’s Gender on Language.” Journal of Language and Social Psychology 34(1):46–64.
• Candace West. 1984. “When the Doctor is a ‘Lady’: Power, Status, and Gender in Physician-Patient Encounters.” Symbolic Interaction 7(1): 87-106.

Women are also limited in the range of emotions and behaviors they can exhibit in the workplace without being judged negatively. Emotional displays of anger, for example, are interpreted differently if exhibited by men or women, to the likely disadvantage of women. Additionally, displays of dominance by agentic (that is, self-organizing and proactive) female leaders are subject to dominance penalties, backlash, and prejudice.

• Victoria L. Brescoll and Eric Luis Uhlmann. 2008. “Can an Angry Woman Get Ahead? Status Conferral, Gender, and Expression of Emotion in the Workplace.” Psychological Science 19(3):268–75.
• Laurie Rudman, Corinne A. Moss-Racusin, Julie E. Phelan, and Sanne Nauts. 2012. “Status incongruity and backlash effects: Defending the gender hierarchy motivates prejudice against female leaders.” Journal of Experimental Social Psychology 48: 165-179.

Curious what our friends in sociolinguistics have to say about gendered titles? Consider listening to Lexicon Valley’s exploration of feminine word endings here.

Indiana’s recently passed Religious Freedom Restoration Act (not to be confused with the 1993 Federal RFRA), faced widespread public controversy and brought a number of high profile boycotts against the state. The law allows private businesses to use the free exercise of religion as a defense in court should they face a lawsuit for discrimination, raising concern about whether businesses are allowed to discriminate against clients on religious grounds. Similar laws are under debate in other states, while in Madison, Wisconsin, officials have signed the first legislation that includes the “non-religious” as a legally protected category. The laws illustrate the importance of religion in shaping social and political issues in American lives.

While religion often works as an inclusive, community-building institution, it also has the potential to reinforce existing social boundaries and inequalities. Cultural and historical contexts shape the ways that religious beliefs are interpreted, and in the American context, religious beliefs are often used to exclude religious and sexual minorities.

• Amy Adamczyk and Cassady Pitt. 2009. “Shaping Attitudes about Homosexuality: The Role of Religion and Cultural Context.” Social Science Research 38(2): 338-351.
• Penny Edgell, Joseph Gerteis, and Douglas Hartmann. 2006. “Atheists as ‘Other’: Moral Boundaries and Cultural Membership in American Society.” American Sociological Review 71(2): 211-234.

Even if these laws are repealed or amended, these social boundaries underlie deeper issues in the workplace. Despite being prohibited by the Employment Non-Discrimination act, audit studies find discrimination against religious minorities and openly gay men in the hiring process.

• András Tilcsik. 2011. “Pride and Prejudice: Employment Discrimination against Openly Gay Men in the United States.”American Journal of Sociology 117(2):586–626.
• Michael Wallace, Bradley R. E. Wright, and Allen Hyde. 2014. “Religious Affiliation and Hiring Discrimination in the American South: A Field Experiment.” Social Currents 1(2):189–207.
• Bradley R. E. Wright, Michael Wallace, John Bailey, and Allen Hyde. 2013. “Religious Affiliation and Hiring Discrimination in New England: A Field Experiment.” Research in Social Stratification and Mobility 34:111–26.

For more on this issue, check out our post from last year: Religious Freedom and Refusing Service.

The Canadian Senate recently passed an amendment that excludes transgender people from using public restrooms of their choice. Transgender rights are facing similar challenges domestically, as Florida, Texas, Kentucky, and Minnesota consider bills that would limit or restrict the use of restrooms based on one’s sex assigned at birth. Additionally, Missouri State Rep. Jeff Pogue is pushing to ban gender-neutral bathrooms. As trans activists take to Twitter, sharing powerful photographs of themselves in bathrooms that do not fit their gender identity, some may be wondering: when did the loo become so political?

Gender policing is by no means new; in fact, regulating and upholding the gender binary has long been key to social and legal organization. Upon meeting someone new, it is common to make assumptions about their gender based on their body and presentation.

• Suzanne Kessler and Wendy McKenna. 1978. Gender: An Ethnomethodological Approach. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Assumptions about gender vary based on context. Whereas gender identity and presentation may be used as criteria for gender-integrated social spaces, biological sex and genital appearance is emphasized in sexualized situations (e.g. dating) and gender-segregated spaces (e.g. bathrooms). Culturally held beliefs that men are dangerous and women are vulnerable exacerbate the policing of women’s only spaces like restrooms, while gender nonconformity may create ‘gender panics’ for nontransgender people.

• Laurel Westbrook and Kristen Schilt. 2014. “Doing Gender, Determining Gender: Transgender People, Gender Panics, and the Maintenance of the Sex/Gender/Sexuality System.” Gender & Society 28(1): 32-57.
• Laurel Westbrook and Kristen Schilt. 2009. “Doing Gender, Doing Heteronormativity: ‘Gender Normals,’ Transgender People, and the Social Maintenance of Heterosexuality.” Gender & Society 23: 440-464.

The policing of gendered bathrooms can include anything from strange looks and verbal challenges to interpersonal violence and arrest. As a result, transgender and gender nonconforming people may avoid public restrooms or alter their presentation substantially to avoid harassment and conflicts.

• Betsy Lucal. 1999. “What is Means to be Gendered Me: Life on the Boundaries of a Dichotomous Gender System.” Gender & Society 13: 781-797.
• Sheila Cavanagh. 2010. Queering Bathrooms: Gender, Sexuality, and the Hygienic Imagination. Toronto, Canada: University of Toronto Press.

Legislation that seeks to regulate bathroom use must first venture down the slippery slope of legally defining sex. This is no small task. In the absence of any federal definition of sex, dozens of judicial gender determination cases demonstrate the variety of factors courts use to determine gender, including personal identity, physical presentation, medical history, and genital appearance and function.

• Tey Meadow. 2010. “‘A Rose is a Rose’: On Producing Legal Gender Classifications.” Gender & Society 24: 814-837.

In March 2015, 47 Republican Senators signed a letter, authored by Sen. Tom Cotton and addressed to “the Leaders of the Islamic Republic of Iran.” In what the New York Times called a rare direct congressional intervention into diplomatic negotiations, the cosigners warned Iran that any agreements they may negotiate with President Obama’s administration would not have lasting power, because the U.S. Constitution grants the power to ratify treaties to Congress alone and Obama will leave office in 2017. Most political commentators were surprised by this senatorial foray into sensitive diplomatic affairs; even many conservatives have expressed concern about how the letter might affect negotiations regarding Iran’s nuclear weapons program. But there are good sociological reasons to believe that the cosigners’ goals have little to do with Iran.

Jeffrey Alexander argues that social actors, including political parties, develop “power narratives of civil repair” to redefine social groups. The GOP Senators’ invocation of the Constitution can be understood as an attempt “repair” the damage to America’s international standing they believe Obama has done. In this view, the letter is more a nationalistic statement about who defines what America is than a diplomatic maneuver—a cultural performance intended to grant legitimacy to future political goals.

• Jeffrey C. Alexander. 2006. The Civil Sphere. New York: Oxford University Press.
• Jeffrey C. Alexander. 2007. “Cultural Pragmatics: Social Performance Between Ritual and Strategy.” Sociological Theory 22(4): 527–73.

Drawing on Alexander’s theories, Jonathan Wyrtzen argues that elite political actors have strong strategic incentives to try to claim national symbols, such as the Constitution, as their own.

• Jonathan Wyrtzen. 2013. “Performing the Nation in Anti-Colonial Protest in Interwar Morocco.” Nations and Nationalism 19(4): 615–34.

But even if “reclaiming” the Constitution makes strategic sense for Republicans, why choose such a controversial venue as an open diplomatic letter to a foreign government? Craig Calhoun points to the centrality of the nation in modern culture, saying that strong claims to allegiance are especially effective when “the nation” is perceived to be under threat. The Senators, then, may have used their letter to play up Americans’ fear of unstable relations with Iran.

• Craig Calhoun. 2007. Nations Matter: Culture, History and the Cosmopolitan Dream. Routledge.

And Rhys Williams underscores the importance of “blood and land” as symbols in “American Civil Religion.” Iran’s nuclear program invokes both, giving Republicans reason to believe power narratives involving Iran will contribute to a moral panic regarding Obama’s foreign policy—and, by extension, the leadership of any Democrat candidates.

• Rhys H. Williams. 2013. “Civil Religion and the Cultural Politics of National Identity in Obama’s America.” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion 52(2): 239–57.

ISIS recently announced they “will conquer Rome, by Allah’s permission” in a video that showed the murder of 21 Christians in Libya.  Not long after the video’s release, Italians offered cheeky travel advice to the militant group via Twitter, using the hashtag “#We_Are_Coming_O_Rome.”  Tweets warned of traffic jams and tourist traps at landmarks like the Trevi Fountain, while others humorously applauded ISIS’s “vacation” choice.  But is laughter the best medicine for international threats? 

Jokes are a way for societies to cope with threats.  People use irony to lessen their anxieties about an unsettling situation without seeming paranoid.  Humor also give status by discrediting those with strong anxieties and giving the joker an air of nonchalance. 

• K.A. Parkhill, K.N. Henwood, N.F. Pidgeon, and P. Simmons. 2011. “Laughing it Off? Humour, affect and emotion work in communities living with nuclear risk.” The British Journal of Sociology 62(2): 324-346.

Ethnic jokes also draw symbolic boundaries between who does and doesn’t belong.  These jokes reinforce the moral values of the in-group by characterizing outsiders’ unacceptable behavior. Framing is key in being playful with something political—those involved in the interaction need to have shared beliefs and the joke needs the right context.

• Christie Davies. 1982. “Ethnic Jokes, Moral Values and Symbolic Boundaries.” The British Journal of Sociology 33(3): 383-203.
• Elise Kramer. 2011. “The playful is political:  The metapragmatics of internet rape-joke arguments.” Language in Society 40: 137-168.

However, humor is a double-edged sword as evidenced by the events that followed the Charlie Hebdo cartoons earlier this year and the Jyllands Posten depictions of Mohammad in 2006. Targeting a minority group reinforces stereotypes and masks the diversity of individuals within the group. When a member of the dominant culture “punches down,” with an ethnic or racist joke, the audience is more likely to be judgmental of individual members of a minority group.

• Otto Santa Ana. 2009. “Did You Call In Mexican? The Racial Politics of Jay Leno Immigrant Jokes.” Language in Society 83(1): 23-45.
• Marion G. Müller and Esra Özcan. 2007. “The Political Iconography of Muhammad Cartoons: Understanding Cultural Conflict and Political Action.” PS: Political Science and Politics 40(2):287-291.
• Christian F. Rostbøll. 2009. “Autonomy, Respect, and Arrogance in the Danish Cartoon Controversy.” Political Theory 37(5): 623-648.