Reading List For the Comprehensive Exam – Work, Occupations, and Organizations
Fall 2015
I. Organizations
Acker, Joan. 1990. “Hierarchies, Jobs, Bodies: A Theory of Gendered Organizations.” Gender
and Society, 4:139-158.
Fligstein, Neil and Robert Freeland. 1995. “Theoretical and Comparative Perspectives on
Corporate Organization.” ARS 21:21-43.
Granovetter, Mark. 2005. “Business Groups and Social Organization.” In HES, pp. 429-450.
Hannan M, Freeman J. 1984. “Structural Inertia and Organizational Change.” ASR 49:149-64.
Powell, Walter. 2001. “The Capitalist Firm in the Twenty-First Century: Emerging Patterns in
Western Enterprise.” From The Twenty-First Century Firm, edited by Paul DiMaggio. Princeton
University Press, pp.33-68.
Roy, William. 1990. “Functional and Historical Logics in Explaining the Rise of the American
Industrial Corporation.” In SEL, pp. 305-326.
Williams, Christine, Chandra Muller, and Kristine Kilanski. 2012. “Gendered Organizations in
the New Economy” Gender & Society 25(4): 549-573.
II. Occupations and Inequality
Perspectives on Inequality
Avent-Holt, Dustin, and Donald Tomaskovic-Devey. 2010. "The Relational Basis of Inequality
Generic and Contingent Wage Distribution Processes." Work and Occupations 37.2 : 162-193.
Davis, Kingsley and Wilbert Moore. 1945. “Some Principles of Stratification.” ASR 10:242-249.
Tumin, Melvin. 1953. “Some Principles of Stratification: A Critical Analysis.” ASR 18:387-393.
Wright, Eric Olin.1984. “A General Framework for the Analysis of Class Structure." Pp.116-120
in G.
Sorensen, Aage B. 1996. “The Structural Basis of Social Inequality.” AJS 101:1333-1365.
Charles Tilly. 2000. "Relational Studies of Inequality." Contemporary Sociology. 29:782-785.
Vallas, Steven, and Emily Cummins. 2013. "Relational Models of Organizational Inequalities:
1
Emerging Approaches and Conceptual Dilemmas." American Behavioral Scientist.
Rising Inequality, Financialization, and Rents
Sorensen, Aage B. 2000. “Symposium on Class Analysis: Toward a Sounder Basis for Class
Analysis." AJS 105, no 6: 1523-58.
Wright, Erik Olin. 2000. “Class, Exploitation, and Economic Rents: Reflection on Sorensen's
“Sounder Basis"." AJS 105. no 6:1559-71.
Goldthorpe, John H. 2000. “Rent, Class conflict, and Class Structure: A Commentary on
Sorensen." AJS 105. no 6:1572-82.
Lin, Ken-Hou, and Donald Tomaskovic-Devey. 2013. "Financialization and US Income
Inequality, 1970–2008." American Journal of Sociology 118(5): 1284-1329.
Sakamoto, Arthur and Jeng Liu. 2006. “A Critique of Wright's Analysis of Exploitation.”
Research in Social Stratification and Mobility 24:209-221.
Tomaskovic-Devey, Donald, and Ken-Hou Lin. 2011. “Income Dynamics, Economic Rents, and
the Financialization of the U.S. Economy.” American Sociological Review 76(4):538 –559.
Income Inequality and Organization
Allison, Paul. 1978. “Measures of Inequality.” ASR 43:865-880.
Autor, David H., Lawrence F. Katz, and Melissa S. Kearney. 2006. “The Polarization of the U.S.
Labor Market.” The American Economic Review 96(2):189–194.
Baron, James N. and William T. Bielby. 1980. "Bringing the Firms Back In: Stratification,
Segmentation, and the Organization of Work," American Sociological Review 45(5)737-65
Card, David and John E. DiNardo. 2002. “Skill-Biased Technological Change and Rising Wage
Inequality: Some Problems and Puzzles.” Journal of Labor Economics 20:733-783.
England, Paula, Budig, Michelle and Folbre, Nancy. 2002. “The wages of virtue: The Relative
Pay of Care Work.” Social Problems 49:455-473.
Hedstrom, Peter. 1991. “Organizational Differentiation and Earnings Dispersion.” AJS
43:865-880.
Kalev, Alexandra. 2009. “Cracking the Glass Cages? Restructuring and Ascriptive Inequality at
Work.” American Journal of Sociology. 114:1591-1643.
2
Kalleberg, Arne L. 2011. Good Jobs, Bad Jobs: The Rise of Polarized and Precarious Employment
Systems in the United States, 1970s-2000s. New York: Russell Sage.
Kim, ChangHwan, and Arthur Sakamoto. 2008. “The Rise of Intra-Occupational Wage
Inequality in the United States, 1983 to 2002.” American Sociological Review 73(1):129-157.
Picketty, Thomas and Emmanuel Saez. 2003. “Income Inequality in the United States:
1913-1998.” The Quarterly Journal of Economics 68:1-39.
Stainback, Kevin Donald Tomaskovic-Devey, and Sheryl Skaggs. 2010. “Organizational
Approaches to Inequality: Inertia, Relative Power, and Environments.” Annual Review of
Sociology 36: 225-247
Mobility and Attainment
Breen, Richard. 1997. “Inequality, Economic Growth and Social Mobility.” The British Journal
of Sociology 48:429-449.
Correll, Shelley, Stephen Benard, and In Paik. 2007. “Getting a Job: Is There a Motherhood
Penalty?” AJS, 112:1297-1339.
Granovetter, Mark. 1973. “The Strength of Weak Ties." AJS 78(6):1360-1380.
Lin, Nan. 1999. “Social Networks and Status Attainment.” Pp. 451-453 in G.
Smith, Sandra. 2005. “‘Don’t put my name on it’: Social Capital Activation and Job-Finding
Assistance Among the Black Urban Poor.” AJS 111:1-57.
Sorensen, Aage B. 1977. “The Structure of Inequality and the Process of Attainment.” ASR
42:965-978.
Yu, Wei-hsin. 2009. Gendered Trajectories. Stanford University Press.
III. Work
Labor Market
Cha, Youngjoo. 2010. “Reinforcing Separate Spheres: The Effect of Spousal Overwork on Mens’
and Women’s Employment in Dual-Earner Households. American Sociological Review
75(2): 303-329.
3
Pedulla, David. 2012. “To Be Young and Unemployed.” New Labor Forum 21(3):26–36.
Reskin, Barbara and Roos, Patricia. 1990. Job queues, gender queues. Philadelphia: Temple
University Press. Pp. 1-90.
Royster, Dierdre. 2003. Race and the Invisible Hand. Univ of Calif Press.
Tilly, Chris and Charles Tilly. 1994. “Capitalist Work and Labor Markets,” Chapter 12 in HES
(1st Ed).
Tomaskovic-Devey, Donald and Sheryl Skaggs. 2002. “Sex Segregation, Labor Process
Organization and Gender Earnings Inequality.” AJS 108:102-128.
Labor Unions
Clawson, Dan and Mary Ann Clawson. 1999. ”What Has Happened To the U.S. Labor
Movement? Union Decline and Renewal.” ARS 25:95-119. ???
Lichtenstein, Nelson. 2002. State of the Union. Princeton University Press, pp.1-177.
Milkman, Ruth.
Farewell to the Factory.
Rosenfeld, Jake. 2013. What Unions No Longer Do. Harvard U Press.
Western, Bruce, and Jake Rosenfeld. 2011. “Unions, Norms, and the Rise in U.S. Wage
Inequality.” American Sociological Review 76(4):513-537.
Work
Braverman, Harry. 1998 [1974]. Labor and Monopoloy Capitalism. New York: Monthly Review
Press, pp.1-95.
Clawson, Dan, and Naomi Gerstel, 2014. Unequal Time. Russell Sage Foundation.
England, Paula. 2005. “Emerging Theories of Care Work.” ARS, 31:381-399.
Dwyer, Rachel E. 2013. “The Care Economy? Gender, Economic Restructuring, and Job
Polarization in the U.S. Labor Market.” American Sociological Review 78(3):390-416.
Glass, Jennifer. 2000. “Toward a Kinder, Gentler Workplace: Envisioning the Integration of
Family and Work.” Contemporary Sociology 29:129-143.
4
Lambert, Susan. 2008. “Passing the Buck: Labor Flexibility Practices That Transfer Risk onto Hourly
Workers.” Human Relations 61 (9):1203–27.
** (recommended) Lambert, Susan and Julia Henly. 2012. “Frontline Managers Matter: Labour
Flexibility Practices and Sustained Employment in US Retail Jobs.” In Are Bad Jobs Inevitable?
Trends, Determinants and Responses to Job Quality in the Twenty-First Century, edited by Chris
Warhurst, Françoise Carré, Patricia Findlay and Chris Tilly, 143–59. Basingstoke, Hampshire,
England: Palgrave Macmillan.
Noonan, Mary, and Jennifer Glass. 2012. “The Hard Truth About Telecommuting”, Monthly
Labor Review, June: 38-45.
Vallas, Steven and John Beck. 1996. ”The Transformation of Work Revisited: The Limits of
Flexibility in American Manufacturing.” Social Problems 43:339-361.
Western, Bruce. 2006. Punishment and Inequality in America. NY: Russell Sage.
IV. Economic Sociology
Foundations
Berezin, Mabel. 2005. “Emotions and the Economy.” In HES, pp. 109-127.
Block, Fred. 2005. “The State and the Economy.” In HES, pp.505 - 526.
Dobbin, Frank. 2001. “Why the Economy Reflects the Polity: Early Rail Policy in Britain,
France, and the United States.” In SEL, pp. 401-424.
England, Paula and Nancy Folbre. 2005. “Gender and Economic Sociology.” In HES,
pp.627-649.
Fourcade, Marion, and Kieran Healy. 2007. “Moral Views of Market Society.” Annual Review of
Sociology 33:285-311.
Gereffi, Gary, 2005. "The Global Economy: Organization, Governance and Development." In
HES, pp.160 -182.
Granovetter, Mark. 1985. “Economic Action and Social Structure: The Problem of
Embeddedness." AJS 91(3):481-510.
Nee, Victor. 2005. “The New Institutionalisms in Economic Sociology.” In HES, pp.49-74.
Polanyi, Karl. 2001[1957]. “The Economy as Instituted Process.” In SEL1, pp. 31-50.
“SEL”: The Sociology of Economic Life, edited by Mark Granovetter and Richard Swedberg. 2001. Boulder,
CO:Westview Press.
1
5
Portes, A. and William Haller. 2005. “The Informal Economy.” In HES, pp.403-425.
Zelizer, Viviana. 2011. Economic Lives. Princeton University Press. Parts 5 and 6.
Sociology of Markets
Fligstein, Neil, and Luke Dauter. "The sociology of markets." Annu. Rev. Sociol. 33 (2007):
105-128.
MacKenzie, D and Yuval Millo. 2003. “Constructing a Market, Performing Theory: The
Historical Sociology of a Financial Derivatives Exchange.” AJS 109:107-145.
Podolny, Joel. 1993. “A Status Based Model of Market Competition.” AJS 98: 829-72.
Polanyi, Karl, 1968[1957], “The Self-Regulating Market and the Fictitious Commodities: Land,
Labor, and Money,” in Primitive, Archaic, and Modern Economies Essays of Karl Polanyi,
George Dalton (ed.), Boston: Beacon Press, pp. 26-38.
Prasad, Monica. 2006. The Politics of Free Markets. The University of Chicago Press.
Quinn, Sarah. 2008. ”The Transformation of Morals in Markets.” AJS 114: 738-780.
Swedberg, Richard. 2005. “Markets in Society.” In HES, pp.233-253.
White, Harrison. 1981. “Where Do Markets Come From?” AJS 87:517-547.
6