Gillian Hadfield's astute Rules for a Flat World proposes a private market solution to rule-making because the current legislative or regulatory framework no longer meets the needs of a fast-paced digital economy. Further, lawyers have largely priced themselves out of the reach of many who would benefit from their services. By laying out…

We introduce an exercise designed to make Marx's theory of alienated labor accessible to students in a Sociology of Work class. Through a role-playing activity where students create and sell goods under conditions of both alienated and nonalienated labor, students actually experience the different material and social consequences of these…

Migrant and seasonal farmworkers are typically Spanish-speaking, Latino immigrants with limited formal education and low literacy skills and, as such, are a vulnerable population. We describe the development of the "Pesticides and Farmworker Health Toolkit", a pesticide safety and health curriculum designed to communicate to farmworkers…

In this article, the author talks about labored learning under the auspices of the "outing program" of Sherman Institute, an Indian boarding school in Riverside, California. The outing system functioned as a vital part of a larger federal Indian boarding school system that sought, in the words of historian Matthew Sakiestewa Gilbert, to…

Cesar Chavez, who co-founded the United Farm Workers (UFW) with Dolores Huerta in 1962, dedicated his life to grassroots organizing to persuade lawmakers and the public to help improve the working conditions of migrant farm workers. In October 1992, the author had been teaching a unit of study on civics to her sixth grade bilingual students in…

Using semistructured interviews and participant observation, this two-year pilot study of male Mexican migrants in Freehold, New Jersey, explored how day laborers perceive their struggles to support families despite escalating anti-immigrant legislation at virtually all levels of government. In particular, the author looks at efforts by Mexican…

Contingent, non-standard or "casual" work is present in large numbers in virtually every sector of the United States economy. Staffing strategies that use subcontracted or contingent work--strategies that once characterized only some low-wage workers such as garment and agriculture--have now spread to virtually every area of industry, including…

Post-Fordism suggests that trade work practices are outmoded and industrial restructuring will improve economic outcomes. This view overlooks an important characteristic of industrial trades--the integrity of the work culture--and is oblivious to the merits of the tradespersons' cultural identity. (SK)

Details the history and activities in New Jersey of "El Comite de Apoyo a los Trabajadores Agricolos" (CATA) or Farmworkers' Support Committee. The Committee was founded in 1979 to help Puerto Rican migrant workers who suffer from social and political isolation and are denied basic rights. Successes, goals, and problems are noted. (PS)

The article discusses potential remedies for three major issues that prevent seasonal agricultural workers from maintaining the kind of working and living conditions which lead to cohesive cumulative social experience: undocumented workers; worsening living and working environments; and societal attitudes regarding agricultural labor and its…

Covers women's labor history in the United States and in industrialized nations from the early 1800s to the present. Provides primary source documents from New England workers in the 1830s and 1840s and from women workers on global assembly lines in the 1980s. Includes discussion questions. (LS)

After Papua New Guinea (PNG), Fiji is the second largest island nation in the South-west Pacific and the hub of the region. Nearly all Fiji Islanders have either Fijian or Fiji Hindi as their first language, in roughly equal numbers, while the former colonial language, English, with very few native speakers, has retained an important role,…