Synopses & Reviews
2009 Choice Outstanding Academic TitleIs job insecurity the new norm? With fewer and fewer people working in steady, long-term positions for one employer, has the dream of a secure job with full benefits and a decent salary become just that—a dream?
In Nice Work If You Can Get It, Andrew Ross surveys the new topography of the global workplace and finds an emerging pattern of labor instability and uneven development on a massive scale. Combining detailed case studies with lucid analysis and graphic prose, he looks at what the new landscape of contingent employment means for workers across national, class, and racial lines—from the emerging “creative class” of high-wage professionals to the multitudes of temporary, migrant, or low-wage workers. Developing the idea of “precarious livelihoods” to describe this new world of work and life, Ross explores what it means in developed nations—comparing the creative industry policies of the United States, United Kingdom, and European Union, as well as developing countries—by examining the quickfire transformation of China's labor market. He also responds to the challenge of sustainability, assessing the promise of “green jobs” through restorative alliances between labor advocates and environmentalists.
Ross argues that regardless of one's views on labor rights, globalization, and quality of life, this new precarious and “indefinite life,&” and the pitfalls and opportunities that accompany it is likely here to stay and must be addressed in a systematic way. A more equitable kind of knowledge society emerges in these pages—less skewed toward flexploitation and the speculative beneficiaries of intellectual property, and more in tune with ideals and practices that are fair, just, and renewable.
Review
"Nice Work provides insight into a sea change in labor markets and work lives that has occured over the past forty years. It is an intellignet work that raises thought-provoking questions about contingent labor . . ."-Steven T. Sheehan,Enterprise and Society
Review
“Economic liberalization, [Ross] demonstrates, has opened up a frenetic global traffic in jobs and migrants, uprooting people in a manner both useful and troubling to the managers of capital. In short, more people are available to exploit, but they are also harder to control. . . . A thorough and thoughtful study of global professional insecurity.”
-The Times Literary Supplement,
Review
“With admirable timing, [Ross] examines a global workplace infrastructure thats as shaky as the economy would indicate. . . . Though far from uplifting, this is a bold, pointed look at reality as it is, a far more valuable commodity.”
-Publishers Weekly, Starred Review,
Review
“According to Ross, job insecurity became commonplace long before the current financial debacle. As economies shifted from industry to information, the benefits and securities of the Keynesian era quietly gave way to a workforce of temps, freelancers, adjuncts, and migrants. Ross finds that city fathers are more interested in Olympic bids and stadium projects than in sustainable employment, while corporations spend more on ‘social responsibility public-relations campaigns than on addressing worker complaints, and activists are too focussed on narrow concerns to find common cause with natural allies.”
-The New Yorker,
Review
“Illuminating. . . . Who knows what will be on the table when the damage of the global crisis is told? At the very least, one may hope for a return to security, sensible financial regulation, and a renewed interest in economic equity. Other worlds are possible, and with luck thinkers like Ross can point the way to imagining them more fully.”
-BookForum,
Review
“Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic, prolific contributors to and tireless propagators of the Critical Race Theory gospel, here combine their understandings in a marvelously readable overview of this pathbreaking and controversial field of legal thought that will enlighten newcomers while offering new perspectives for critics as well as adherents.”-Derrick Bell,author of Faces at the Bottom of the Well
Synopsis
Normal 0 MicrosoftInternetExplorer4 /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name: "Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow: yes; mso-style-parent: ""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom: .0001pt; mso-pagination: widow-orphan; font-size:10.0pt; font-family: "Times New Roman";} In 2001, Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic published their definitive Critical Race Theory, a compact introduction to the field that explained, in straightforward language, the origins, principal themes, leading voices, and new directions of this important movement in legal thought.Since then, critical race theory has gone on to influence numerous other fields of scholarship, and the Delgado and Stefancic primer has remained an indispensible guide for students and teachers. Delgado and Stefancic have revised the book to include material on key issues such as colorblind jurisprudence, Latino-Critical scholarship, immigration, and the rollback of affirmative action.This second edition introduces readers to important new voices in fields outside of law, including education and psychology, and offers greatly expanded issues for discussion, updated reading lists, and an extensive glossary of terms."
Synopsis
In 2001, Richard Delgado and Jean Stefancic published their definitive Critical Race Theory, a compact introduction to the field that explained, in straightforward language, the origins, principal themes, leading voices, and new directions of this important movement in legal thought. Since then, critical race theory has gone on to influence numerous other fields of scholarship, and the Delgado and Stefancic primer has remained an indispensible guide for students and teachers.
Delgado and Stefancic have revised the book to include material on key issues such as colorblind jurisprudence, Latino-Critical scholarship, immigration, and the rollback of affirmative action. This second edition introduces readers to important new voices in fields outside of law, including education and psychology, and offers greatly expanded issues for discussion, updated reading lists, and an extensive glossary of terms.
About the Author
Richard Delgado and
Jean Stefancic are Professors of Law at Seattle University and have collaborated on four previous books, including
The Latino Condition, 2d edition (NYU Press, 2010),
The Derrick Bell Reader (NYU Press, 2005
), How Lawyers Lose Their Way: A Profession Fails Its Creative Minds, and
Understanding Words That Wound.
Jean Stefancic, research professor of law at Seattle University, is the author of many articles and books on civil rights, law reform, social change, including No Mercy: How Conservative Think Tanks and Foundations Changed Americas Social Agenda.