Working for Respect: Community and Conflict at Walmart

Adam Reich; Peter Bearman

Published by Columbia University Press 2018

Working for Respect

Community and Conflict at Walmart

Adam Reich and Peter Bearman

In the series The Middle Range Series

https://doi.org/10.7312/reic18842

Overview
Contents

About this book

Adam Reich and Peter Bearman examine how Walmart workers make sense of their jobs in order to consider the nature of contemporary low-wage work, as well as the obstacles and opportunities such workplaces present for social and economic justice. Working for Respect makes important contributions to debates on labor and inequality.

Author / Editor information

Reich Adam :

Adam Reich (Ph.D. UC Berkeley) is an associate professor in the Department of Sociology at Columbia University. He is the author of Selling Our Souls: The Commodification of Hospital Care in the United States (Princeton, 2014) With God on Our Side: The Struggle for Worker's Rights in a Catholic Hospital (Cornell, 2012), and Hidden Truth: The Young Men Navigating Lives in and Out of Juvenile Prison (California, 2010).Bearman Peter :

Peter Bearman (Ph.D. Harvard University) is the Jonathan R. Cole Professor of the Social Sciences, Director of INCITE, Director of the Paul F. Lazarsfeld Center for the Social Sciences, and the Director of the Mellon Training Program in the Humanities and Social Sciences at Columbia University, the Centennial Professor of Methodology and Sociology at the London School of Economics. He is the author of Doormen (Chicago, 2005) and the co-editor of The Middle Range Series for Columbia University Press.Adam Reich is an associate professor of sociology at Columbia University. He is the author of Hidden Truth: The Young Men Navigating Lives in and out of Juvenile Prison (2010); With God on Our Side: The Struggle for Workers’ Rights in a Catholic Hospital (2012); and Selling Our Souls: The Commodification of Hospital Care in the United States (2014).

Peter Bearman is the Cole Professor of the Social Sciences and director of the Interdisciplinary Center for Innovative Theories and Empirics at Columbia University. He is the author of Relations Into Rhetorics (1993) and Doormen (2005) and coeditor of the Oxford Handbook of Analytical Sociology (2009), as well as coeditor of the Middle Range series at Columbia University Press.

Reviews

Andrew Perrin, University of North Carolina:
While Walmart plays enormous economic, symbolic, and employment roles nationwide, the interplay of these dynamics has not been fully explored. Working for Respect makes great progress in understanding Walmart as a social institution and therefore in understanding work at Walmart as a unique bellwether of contemporary work.

Carol Gilligan, author of In a Different Voice:
With Working for Respect, Adam Reich and Peter Bearman issue a rare invitation. To go with them to Walmart, to listen with them to the workers and to the managers who roam the stores, to take in the culture of low-wage work in America, and also to listen to the students who participated in what became the Summer for Respect. This is a gripping book about the relationship between social ties and social change, remarkable for its intelligence and the subtlety of its distinctions. We learn that in the end it is trust rather than good feeling that inspires collective action for social change.

Ruth Milkman, CUNY Graduate Center:
Working for Respect is an engaging read that bristles with fresh insights into both the experience of low-wage service sector work and the dilemmas facing the labor movement. It offers an ethnography of what the authors dub 'Walmartism' as well as an argument about the ways in which social ties centered on trust have the potential to jumpstart social change. A must-read for any sociologist of labor.

Mitchell Duneier, Maurice P. During Professor of Sociology, Princeton University:
Working for Respect is at once a brilliant analysis of the lives of Walmart workers and an original effort to bridge the tension between scholarly work and activism. Along the way, Reich and Bearman raise the bar for mixed-method research in the social sciences.

Erik Olin Wright, author of Envisioning Real Utopias:
Working for Respect is an extraordinary book, both in its deft and original intertwining of multiple research methods and in the insights it generates.

Anna Galland, Executive Director, MoveOn.org:
How do people find and flex their own power to improve their workplaces? What lessons can all of us learn from dogged and creative efforts to organize workers at Walmart, the biggest private employer in the world? What kinds of relationships between organizers and their communities are most likely to lead to organizing breakthroughs? Working for Respect is a gripping read—a thoughtful, perceptive, and accessible work that takes a multi-layered approach, from in-depth interviews with Walmart workers to brain scans to a crash course in front-line organizing and beyond. This is a book for students of organizing, for academics interested in helping to counter rampant economic inequality, and for anyone who cares about winning material gains and respect for all workers in the age of Trump.

Emmanuel Saez, University of California, Berkeley:
Walmart—the largest U.S. employer—is a symbol for high inequality in America. Its many shop-floor employees are paid as little as possible and have never shared in the huge success and profits of the company. Why can’t Walmart workers get a bigger share of the pie they helped create? This book, based on extensive interviews with Walmart workers, helps us understand why a job at Walmart might be the least bad option for many, how workers make sense of their job, and the challenges of organizing work at Walmart. Working for Respect is essential reading for a rich sociological understanding of the struggles of low-paid workers pitted against all-powerful corporations in America today.

Kathryn Edin, coauthor of $2 a Day: The Art of Living on Virtually Nothing in America:
I am obsessed with this book! The prose is riveting. The blend of disparate methods is spectacular. The sheer adventure of student organizers fanning out across the country in a manner reminiscent of Freedom Summer will keep you turning the pages. Taken together, the portrait wrought is simply devastating. Walmart not only demands your labor and your loyalty, it claims your pride and strips you of dignity.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
List of Figures Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	xi
Acknowledgments Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	xiii
Introduction: The Real, Real Walmart Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
1. Pathways Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	47
2. The Shop Floor Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	83
3. The Structure of Domination and Control Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	119
4. Making Contact Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	147
5. Social Ties and Social Change Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	186
6. OUR Walmart on the Line Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	210
7. Our Walmart Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	241
Appendix: The Neural Signatures of Group Life Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	257
Notes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	271
Bibliography Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	303
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	313

Language: English
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Audience: General/trade;
Illustrations
- Other: 11 figures

eBook

Published: September 24, 2018
ISBN: 9780231547826