Working for Respect: Community and Conflict at Walmart
2019; Oxford University Press; Volume: 97; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1093/sf/soz019
ISSN1534-7605
Autores Tópico(s)Labor Movements and Unions
ResumoWalmart has long been the hardest of anti-union eggs to crack. In their new book, Adam Reich and Peter Bearman set out to better understand the problems and possibilities associated with organizing Walmart workers. Using a rich blend of methods, the authors focus on the ways that people make sense of their work, what they feel about their working conditions, and the social and institutional contexts that structure these perceptions and experiences. But their book is about much more. They aptly note that the book is “something like a Russian [nesting] doll” (14), as couched within the story about Walmart workers is the story of the summer organizing program led by the authors, involving 20 college students and recent graduates. These aspiring activists are scattered around the country to organize workers with the labor organization OUR Walmart and to interview Walmart workers for the project. Embedded within this story is another about social ties and social change in general. While relying primarily on ethnographic data, the authors bring in other sorts of data to enhance their argument—including networks analyses, surveys, and even brain scan data. In doing so, they push social scientists to think about how varying levels of data interweave to tell us about social ties and social change more generally.
Referência(s)