Martha Crowley

Education and the Inequalities of Place

Students living in inner city and rural areas of the United States exhibit lower educational achievement and a higher likelihood of dropping out of high school than do their suburban counterparts. Educational research and policy has tended to neglect these inequalities or, at best, focus on one type but not the other. In this article, we integrate literatures on spatial stratification and educational outcomes, and offer a framework in which resources influential for achievement/attainment are viewed as embedded within, and varying across, inner city, rural and suburban places. We draw from the National Educational Longitudinal Survey and the Common Core of Data, and employ hierarchical linear and hierarchical logistic modeling techniques to test our arguments. Results reveal inner city and rural disadvantages in both family and school resources. These resource inequalities translate into important educational investments at both family and school levels, and help explain deficits in attainment and standardized achievement. We conclude by discussing the implications of our approach and findings for analyses of educational stratification specifically and spatial patterning of inequality more generally.

Sexual Harassment in Organizational Context

This study sheds light on the organizational foundations of sexual harassment. The authors evaluated a theoretical model underscoring the influence of worker power, workplace culture, and gender composition using unique data derived from the population of English-language, book-length workplace ethnographies. The authors used ordered and multinomial logistic regression to test whether organizational explanations vary in their capacity to predict three distinct forms of sexual harassment: patronizing, taunting, and predatory conduct. The findings reveal that organizational attributes influence not only the presence of workplace sexual harassment but also the specific form in which it manifests. The result is a more conceptually refined model of sexual harassment in organizational context. The authors conclude with a discussion of the contribution of this study to sociological explanations of sexual harassment, including linkages to more recent qualitative work underscoring its complexity, and with implications for policy in light of current workplace trends.

The Benefits of Being There Evidence from the Literature on Work

This study draws on the sociology of work to extend discussions of informational yield in ethnographic research. The authors examine the existing population of English-language workplace ethnographies and find that relative to interviews, observation and especially participant observation consistently yield more information. Participant observation provides greater informational yield as well as more detailed descriptions of workplace behaviors and group dynamics. Interviews, however, are more likely to provide information on basic organizational characteristics, such as organization size and product market conditions. The authors’ findings have important implications for university institutional review boards, which have in recent years made it increasingly difficult for projects based on participant observation to receive human subjects clearance. Our conclusions caution against bureaucratic and legalistic curtailments of embedded field observation.

Control and Dignity in Professional, Manual and Service-Sector Employment

This study investigates implications of complex control combinations applied in manual, service and professional occupations for expressive, behavioral and emotional aspects of workplace dignity. Qualitative comparative analyses of 154 content-coded workplace ethnographies suggest that professionals encounter persuasive ‘bundles’ of control that enhance expressive and behavioral manifestations of dignity as well as pride. However, these benefits come at the expense of high levels of stress associated with internal drives and externally driven normative orientations and behaviors. Workers in manual and service occupations confront a broader array of approaches, including coercive control combinations that erode pride and effort by dehumanizing workers and inviting abuse. Furthermore, the benefits of persuasive control combinations in these settings are mitigated by supplementary constraints, which promote maintenance of a protective distance from employers that may also help to limit stress. The paper concludes with organizational strategies for curbing abuse in coercive manual and service environments and a discussion of changes necessary to address the problem of stress in the professions.

Neoliberalism at Work

Organizational decision-makers increasingly promote neoliberal work practices, which emphasize market processes and unrestricted deployment of organizational resources, as a means to optimize economic performance in an intensely competitive environment. A growing number of sociologists have raised questions about their tactics and pointed to negative consequences for employee well-being. We expand on this literature by using content-coded data on 217 work groups to investigate implications of neoliberalism at work for well-being of workers and firms. We especially emphasize on how neoliberal practices influence relationships and day-to-day behaviors that underwrite organizational functioning and success. Findings indicate negative ramifications, including increases in turnover and quitting, and reductions in informal peer training and effort as well as job quality. Importantly, these associations are net of any secular time trend. Qualitative materials capture how and why these relations exist and additional consequences with strong potential to undermine foundations for prosperity and future organizational success.

Diverging fortunes? Economic well-being of Latinos and African Americans in new rural destinations.

The geographic diffusion of Latinos from immigrant gateways to newly-emerging rural destinations is one of the most significant recent trends in U.S. population redistribution. Yet, few studies have explored how Latinos have fared in new destinations, and even fewer have examined economic implications for other minority workers and their families. We use county-level data from the 1990 and 2000 U.S. Census and the 2006-2010 American Community Survey to compare the changing economic circumstances (e.g., employment and unemployment, poverty, income, and homeownership) of Latinos and African Americans in new Latino boomtowns. We also evaluate the comparative economic trajectories of Latinos in new destinations and established gateways. During the 1990s, new rural destinations provided clear economic benefits to Latinos, even surpassing African Americans on some economic indicators. The 2000s, however, ushered in higher rates of Latino poverty; the economic circumstances of Latinos also deteriorated more rapidly in new vis-à-vis traditional destinations. By 2010, individual and family poverty rates in new destinations were significantly higher among Latinos than African Americans, despite higher labor force participation and lower levels of unemployment. Difference-in-difference models demonstrate that in both the 1990s and 2000s, economic trajectories of African Americans in new Latino destinations largely mirrored those observed in places without large Latino influxes. Any economic benefits for Latinos in new rural destinations thus have not come at the expense of African Americans.

Class, Control, and Relational Indignity: Labor Process Foundations for Workplace Humiliation, Conflict, and Shame

This article investigates how complex combinations of control contribute to class variations in the experience of work through their impacts on relational aspects of workplace dignity. Analysis of content-coded data on 154 work groups suggests that control structures vary by class and have significant implications for levels of abuse and shame, but exert little direct impact on hostility toward management or coworker conflict. Abusive treatment rooted in coercion, however, generates hostility toward management and intensifies feelings of shame associated with coercive control. Contrary to expectations, a pattern of abuse does not tend to generate coworker conflict. Reimmersion in the case studies suggests that when it does, the cause is often favoritism—a correlate of abuse.

Coding Ethnographies for Research and Training: Merging Qualitative and Quantitative Sociologies:

The project of merging qualitative and quantitative approaches in sociology is advancing on many fronts—most typically through appending in-depth interviews to surveys. This research note describes an alternative approach of amassing in-depth qualitative accounts and content coding them for statistical analysis. Funding requirements for such projects are minimal and students can easily be involved—providing important training opportunities that broaden their appreciation of and expertise in diverse methodologies. Such endeavors thus present valuable opportunities for advancing training and research. We illustrate how this approach has been applied in a project focusing on workplace ethnographies. We conclude with a discussion of additional bodies of ethnographic research similarly ripe for systematic analysis.

Working better together? Empowerment, panopticon and conflict approaches to teamwork

Scholars often offer competing accounts of the consequences of workplace teams. Researchers in the empowerment tradition describe autonomy in teams as generating satisfaction and pro-social behaviors. The panopticon approach emphasizes the disciplinary aspect of teamwork – arguing that peer monitoring elicits intense effort and discourages resistance through visibility and normative control. The conflict school highlights variation in experiences of and responses to teamwork, calling particular attention to worker resistance. This study uses mixed methods to investigate these perspectives simultaneously, analyzing content-coded data on 204 work groups. Though evidence supports both empowerment and panopticon theories, especially when used in combination, the conflict perspective emerges as pivotal to understanding not only worker resistance but also consent to empowerment and even panoptic control.

Inequality in the Promised Land: Race, Resources, and Suburban Schooling:

term care provision as a social responsibility or expanding the safety net for middle-class caregivers. Yet this is not a fatalistic story; there is hope. Levitsky is quick to suggest the important role advocacy organizations can play by serving as sources of new models of social arrangements. Another promising achievement is Levitsky’s augmentation of the caregiving literature by highlighting ‘‘The Rewards of Caregiving’’—the positive dimensions of providing care to a loved one. In contrast to what the predominant tales of tragedy suggest, relationships can deepen, moments can be cherished, and carers can learn about their own character, strengths, and abilities. Ultimately, they are also successful in meeting the needs of their loved ones; and by demonstrating the tenacity, resilience, and resourcefulness of carers, Levitsky reveals their collective potential for confronting these seemingly countless barriers. Levitsky optimistically concludes that the growing constituency of current and past carers willing and able to participate in reform efforts give us reason to believe that this nascent rise of politicization can emerge as a political force to be reckoned with in the very near future. Rather than focusing on whether or not their efforts will lead to the passage of new social policies, Levitsky is persuaded that when family caregivers do politicize, they will unmask the political cover for maintaining the status quo once and for all.