Sociology of Work – Exam #2
The exam will consist of fifteen short open-ended questions.
Chapter 6: Blue Collar Workers and the Hidden World of Work
Braverman vs. Blauner on deskilling
Blauner’s four dimensions of alienation (power, meaning, self-fulfillment, community)
--Soft skills vs. hard skills
Tacit skills
--Manual labor, mental labor, emotional labor
[Section on Informal Work Practices – games, deals and times]
[Good citizenship in the workplace – why people who are less monitored are more productive]
Chapter 7: Managers, Careers at Work
Activities of managers (figurehead, liason, information, negotiation for resources, allocation of
resources, handling conflicts, innovating, planning, directing subordinates)
Evaluation of managers
Relationship between authority (supervision of others and making decisions about resources) to
income and occupational status
Glass ceiling effect
Homosocial reproduction and connection to predominance of soft skills in managerial
occupations
[Supply side discussion of barriers for women and racial minorities to corporate leadership]
[The Future of Management – cult of the CEO, globalization]
Chapter 8: The Professions, Power and Status in the Workplace
Sociological characteristics of a profession (abstract knowledge, autonomy, authority over
clients, altruism)
Socialization as primary mechanism of worker control
Professional careers – work hours, gender differences
--Professionalization as a process – what it entails and when it has been successful or partly
successful
--Differences between professionalization and unionization as strategies for raising wages and
working conditions
Chapter 9: Service Jobs, Close Encounters with Customers
Definition of service work – service industries and service occupations
Emotional labor
Routinization and control in service work
Deference and the symbolism of servitude among low-wage service jobs
Power in service jobs as related to gender, race, nationality
--Nursing home workers as described by Tim Diamond as an example of service work
--Arlie Hochschild’s The Managed Heart as an explanation of emotional labor and a study of
flight attendants
Chapter 10: Unions in America, The Struggles of the Labor Movement
--Guest speaker Ethan Snow
--Relationship of unions to democracy
--Process of union formation and contract negotiation
--Elements of a contract negotiated by the union
[Wagner Act/National Labor Relations Act]
[Impact of labor movement in first half of 20th century – wages and benefits of blue-collar
workers created prosperous working class]
[Decline of unions after WWII – Taft-Hartley Act of 1947 shifts Wagner Act provisions to give
more power back to employers, management opposition to unions]
[Impact of union decline on worker wages and voice]
Chapter 11: Gender and Work
Rise in women’s labor force participation
Push factors pushing women out of the home – declining wages of men, divorce rates/perceived
instability of marriage
Pull factors pulling women into labor force – opportunities across occupations expanded during
1960s and 1970s, legal challenges to sex discrimination in education, women’s movement
Sex segregation of jobs and occupations
Reskin and Roos – shifts in occupational sex makeup – appropriateness as a social construction –
most jobs contain both stereotypical male and stereotypical female elements – depends on
emphasis and changes over time and with place
Role of “protective” legislation for women limiting them to “appropriate” jobs and limiting
hours or times of day – sometimes limiting to unmarried
Explaining occupational sex segregation – supply side – worker preferences, values and abilities
and demand side – opportunity structure
Tokens – visibility, contrast and assimilation – glass escalator for men
Gender wage gap
--Lily Ledbetter talk/Lily Ledbetter Act (gender wage discrimination within occupation)
--England article and class lecture on gender wage gap by occupational segregation
--Theoretical explanations for the wage differential between female dominated and male
dominated occupations: human capital, supervisory capacity, non-pecuniary benefits, valuative
discrimination