Wage work, as a norm and institution, is more and more obviously incapable of fulfilling its promises: for gender equality, social integration, meaning, or even equitably meeting our basic needs. Yet, despite struggles for more, less, or better work, there is minimal public protest against work itself. Using qualitative, open-ended survey responses from 34 people who described themselves as resisting traditional work norms, this study explores the ways the participants conceive of work and their resistance to it. A feminist work-critical theoretical lens and reflexive thematic analysis as method are brought to bear on underexplored collective motivations and justifications for resisting work. The results indicate that people are not only driven by individualistic motives to resist work, but see work as in conflict with the basic needs of human connection and caring for social relationships.They also desire even more freedom from work than they have already achieved, and for this freedom to include everybody.

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Scholars conventionally begin their investigation of U.S. labor history with industrialization, focusing on forms of industrial labor, union organization, and labor legislation, to the exclusion of work performed in the “private sphere”: domestic, service, and care labor. But by presuming that these forms of “women’s work” were outside the market and the interests of labor, scholars obscure a vast array of historical possibilities that precede our present economic and social order. This dissertation reads against this prevailing tendency in labor and working-class studies to pose the question: what if the antecedents of our present culture and economy may be found not merely in the industrial past, but in the nineteenth-century home? After all, whether in the gig and service economies, or in white-collar workplaces, the vast majority of working people now engage in some form of service, care, and affective labor. Figuring Women’s Work seeks to denaturalize our relationship to work, revealing that labor is a historically contingent political concept in order to expand the scope of what counts as work and open further lines of inquiry into both working-class studies and U.S. literary and cultural studies. To pursue its hypothesis, this dissertation performs a genealogical investigation of service labor, beginning in the antebellum period when housewives and their servants struggled over the meaning of domestic labor in a slaveholding republic, and continuing through the early twentieth century as forms of women’s work were commercialized in the public sphere. In this context, social anxieties about the relationship among gender, race, economic dependency, and labor were articulated in literary forms like the seduction novel and servants’ tale, by leaders of social movements, and in legal battles that sought to distinguish market from domestic relations. These social tensions, each chapter argues, found symbolic resolution in the cultural idealization of a figure of labor—whether the celebration of the housewife as a pillar of democratic society, the Mammy as a selfless caregiver, the “office wife” as a model of industriousness and accommodation, or the sweated immigrant homeworker as a pitiable and romantic object of the philanthropic housewife’s charity. Reading literature written by working women, including Catharine Beecher, Harriet Jacobs, Harriet Wilson, Willa Cather, Anzia Yezierska, and Alice Childress, I demonstrate how the figures of women’s work were forged in relation to each other in order to apprehend the elaborate and racially segregated system of women workers engaged in the labor of social reproduction. Whereas conventional approaches to labor treat domestic work and service as “invisible,” Figuring Women’s Work argues instead that the domestic labor relations that emerged in the antebellum home were described by a metaphorics of kinship, modeled on the myth of the “plantation family” that figured master and slave as parent and child. Within the cultural mythology that developed, housewives were imagined as “second mothers” to their childlike, foreign, and racialized charges, in a relationship of mutual obligation and affection. Even as women’s work was commercialized, and the labor of social reproduction was increasingly performed outside of the home, the notion that women should perform out of a sense of duty to others, rather than in pursuit of economic self-interest, persisted. The metaphorics of kinship, the idea that workers should see themselves as a “part of the family” was adapted to public workplaces like offices, businesses, and retailers. Now, a century later, the cultural imperative to perform an affect of “self-denying benevolence,” a demand first issued by nineteenth-century housewives to their slaves and servants, is widely felt by working people across industries and classes who, dominant cultural ideologies suggest, should labor out of “love” and love to labor. / English

[pt] Essa dissertação pretende debater o encontro entre feminismo e marxismo, a partir da análise central da Campanha Internacional Salários pelo Trabalho Doméstico, que tomou forma na década de 1970. A atual relevância da produção teórica e atividade política dessas feministas se dá na medida em que contribui para uma crítica da situação das mulheres no contexto de sua inserção no sistema capitalista, ou seja, das relações que se estabelecem entre elas e o capital. Segundo as autoras cujos trabalhos serão fundamentais para esta dissertação, no capitalismo, a posição social da mulher está atrelada, em boa medida, a sua exploração invisibilizada na esfera da reprodução social – aquela que engloba tudo que é necessário à reprodução da classe trabalhadora em sua condição de dependência e subordinação – da qual o modo de produção capitalista é dependente. Essas análises se desenvolveram à luz dos debates sobre a exploração do trabalho doméstico e sexual das mulheres no interior da família e perderam sua força desde a chamada virada neoliberal. A partir da década de 80, a agenda feminista se concentraria cada vez mais em pautas liberais, refletindo uma política individualista e abandonando, em boa medida, os debates em torno dos efeitos que a reorganização mundial da reprodução social, nesse período, impunha sobre os corpos e as subjetividades femininas. Acreditamos que, sem atentar para essas questões, arrisca-se a manter um feminismo que cuide sempre de sintomas, entendendo-os como a raiz dos problemas. / [en] This dissertation intend to discuss the encounter among feminism and Marxism, based on the main analysis of the International Campaign Wages for Housework, which took shape in the 1970s. The current relevance of the theoretical production and political activity of these feminists is given as it contributes for a critique of the women situation in the context of their incorporation in the capitalist system, that is, of the relations established between them and capital. According to the authors whose work will be fundamental to this dissertation, in capitalism, women s social position is, to a large extent, tied to their invisible exploitation in the sphere of social reproduction – that which encompasses all that is necessary for the reproduction of the working class in conditions of dependence and subordination – on which the capitalist mode of production is dependent. These analyzes have developed in the light of the debates about the exploitation of women s domestic and sexual work within the family and have lost their strength since neoliberal politics has taken place. From the 1980s, the feminist agenda would increasingly focus on liberal patterns, reflecting an individualistic political view, and largely abandoning debates about the effects of the worldwide reorganization of social reproduction on the female bodies and subjectivities. We believe that, without looking at these issues, we risk maintaining a feminism that always takes care of symptoms, understanding them as the root of problems.

In 1986, the Carnegie Forum on Education and the Economy published A Nation Prepared: Teachers for the 21st Century in which it recommended that a National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS) be established to ascertain and institute criteria for teacher excellence (Steiner, 1995). No Child Left Behind Act of 2001 (NCLB) mandated that every classroom employ a "highly qualified teacher" (No Child Left Behind, 2001a); moreover, NCLB articulated the relationship between improving student achievement and higher standards for qualifying classroom teachers (Rotberg, Futrell & Lieberman, 1998). Research conducted in Miami-Dade County supports Florida's use of National Board Certification (NBC) as an "effective signal of teacher quality"(CNA Corporation, 2004, p.1). Critical theorist, Michael Apple, emphasized the role of education as an agent for the maintenance of hegemony (Apple, 2004). However, Apple further posited that the actual bureaucracy of school - the institution of education itself - is reflective of the same consumerist ideology of society, thus making the hegemony even more complete. Using the aforementioned theoretical construct, the researcher examined the development of the National Board for Professional Teaching Standards (NBPTS), the distribution of Nationally Board Certified Teachers (NBCTs) in a central Florida school district, and their professional responsibilities as a means of examining whether this mechanism for identifying "highly qualified teachers" achieves its stated aim of providing every student with access to a "highly qualified" teacher, as is legislated and funded per NCLB.

Family farms practicing organic agriculture often struggle to make a profit. Unable to pay wages, farms are increasingly recruiting laborers who agree to work without pay, instead receiving food and accommodation. To date, there has been little research examining everyday life in farm households shared by familial owner-operators and non-waged laborers. Based on ethnographic fieldwork at organic farms in the southeastern United States, this thesis describes how farm work, housework and consumption are organized in these households. Situating my analysis within debates on the agrarian question, I investigate how the recruitment of non-waged labor affects the ability of farm-family households to reproduce themselves. My findings suggest that, though farm owner-operators recruit non-waged laborers with the expectation of solving labor challenges, their recruitment produces numerous conflicts internal to the household. I analyze how farm owner-operators deploy scale constructions to defend and legitimize arrangements of productive and social-reproductive work which preserve the ability to self-exploit. I also show how laborer’s bodies are identified as both the problem and the solution in conflicts over consumption. Through attention to the lived experiences of farmworkers, this thesis contributes to debates concerning the social sustainability of organic farming.

Students with parents with different levels of education motivate their choice of Växjö University differently. They who have parents with at least three years academic studies motivate more frequently their choice with the program they are studying while those who have parents with lower studies are more inclined to motivate their studies with contacts and nearness to their hometown. I found this in a survey study with 201 respondents involved. The result was followed by interviews on respondents from the survey study. The interviewees were four women whose parents had different levels of education, two with parents with higher education and two with parents with lower education. The interviews were in this way limited to female students only. The conclusion is that the difference in how the students motivate their choice of Växjö University can partly be explained by the theory called “könskontraktet” which says, women from higher social classes want to brake out from the old gender roles, and that makes them value education and carrier, while those who are from lower social classes accept the old traditions between genders which makes them value family and safety. This don´t need to lead to reproduction of social classes and that it goes from parents to children if there is good accessibility to the universities and you can get higher education without moving a long distance.

Thesis advisor: Karen Arnold / Maximizing college summer breaks for career preparation and prestige accumulation is an established routine for elite undergraduates in the United States. Social reproduction, meritocracy, and changes to the world of work increasingly complicate this issue. Yet despite this additional burden, there is little research into the costs and benefits of participation and limited comprehension of how and why elite undergraduates internalize norms around summer breaks. This study fills that gap by introducing the High Prestige Summer Experience Model, a framework for understanding this decision-making process. Using interviews with 13 undergraduates and recent alumni from an Ivy League university, this grounded theory study presents the five phases of summer planning and participation. Students refine decisions at each stage by measuring possible opportunities against three mental measurements (Threshold of Acceptability, Narrative Currency Value, and Summer Prestige Ranking). The norms and beliefs inculcated through peer culture influence this paradigm through which they view their college summers. Underlying this process are the mediating factors that nudge and shape each particular student’s decisions: personal context; campus context; and societal context. Participants reported that summer experiences play an important role in peer positioning. They carry a narrative currency on campus and the ability to frame their experiences buys social acceptance for undergraduates. Summer experiences allow students to explore jobs in ways not normally available during term-time study, provide opportunities for personal development and growth, and equip them for their post-graduate elite status through capital accumulation. Participants noted that significant emotional and social consequences flow from actions in the summer experience process while simultaneously questioning its value to them in the long term. The findings of an additional comparison group of participants at a different selective campus indicate that this trend toward high prestige summer experiences is being normalized at lower rungs on the institutional prestige ladder as well. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2022. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Educational Leadership and Higher Education.

<p>Under neoliberal capitalist globalization, women's poverty and the deepening of women’s oppression and exploitation have been notorious. Indeed, women are facing poverty all over the world, including in industrialized capitalist countries. Women living in poverty and particularly poor single mothers have been targets of the counter neoliberal reform of the capitalist welfare state. This counter reform is a gendered, classist, and complex alteration that has assaulted the social responsibilities and budgets of the welfare state. The impact of neoliberal policies against single mothers is evident in Ontario. However, policymakers continue taking away the assistance and social welfare programs that used to support single mothers. Neoliberal governments have created provincial policies to reinforce women’s unpaid caring responsibilities and to intensify the surveillance and control exerted over poor Ontarian single mothers. This qualitative case study has explores critically the role of neoliberal social policy in Ontario child welfare. Through a feminist approach and using official documentary data, this research analyzes Ontario Kinship Care Policy. The study looks at the historical and social context in which the policy was formulated, depicts the main goals of the policy, and analyzes the policy’s outcomes both, for the system and for women. Possible areas of future research on this policy are listed in the conclusions.</p> / Master of Social Work (MSW)

This study is an investigation into the ways that intersectional social actors conceptualize their position as raced, classed, and gendered, and how they seek to pass down identity categories, cultural frames, and behavioral habits to their children. In particular, it is an examination of Jack and Jill of America, Inc. as an intersectional social club, which seeks to socialize upper-middle class black youth into the habits that this community sees as legitimate and productive in modern society. Using interview, archival, and focus group data, this project analyzes the discursive frames of current club members, former child participants, and documentary evidence from historical correspondence. This project seeks to respond to racial formation and social reproduction scholarship by interrogating the ways that parents articulate the meanings of race, class, and gender, the ways such meanings are engaged by Jack and Jill, as a legitimating organization, and the absorption or internalization of such meanings by young people. It asks three questions to examine such mechanisms: 1) How do intersectional social actors talk about race, class and gender? 2) How do such community members engage social reproduction strategies that highlight their unique race and class positions? 3) How do recipients (children) rearticulate those messages and indicate their absorption or rejection of those norms? I find that discourse around race frames blackness as a salient social stigma, despite socioeconomic privilege. Mothers engage race explicitly, having frank discussions about their hopes and fears around their child’s racialized bodies. Therefore, messages about race are illuminated in organizational discourse and are well-absorbed by children. Secondly, the study finds that discourse around class obscures the ways that cultural and social capital is accumulated and activated in the larger social world. While discourses about class are largely silenced, Jack and Jill serves as a location for capital accumulation, developing ease with elite cultural forms, and cultivating dense social networks saturated with resource-rich nodes. Members talk very little about the role of class stratification in their lives. Finally, this project finds that parents articulate gender expectations according to the bimodal demands of black respectability politics. Whether mothers sought to protect children from state violence or sexual derogation is fundamentally tied to their children’s gender. Further, the aspirational desires that they have for children, particularly for children’s future spouse, differed for sons and daughters in marked ways. Ultimately, I argue that the substance of norms around race, class and gender, as well as the processes of socializing such norms and discourses, serve to reproduce this intersectional community over time. Because of their intersectional positionality, discourses about race are saturated with simultaneous messages about gender or class, and vice versa. Not only do mothers perform mastery of such intricate narratives, but though individual work and the efforts of the social club, they enjoy success in socializing these frames into their children. These narratives are more than identification markers; they serve as strategies to minimize the effect of racial stigmatization experienced in their neighborhoods and at work, teaching children the behaviors and codes that are most useful in navigating away from the worst effects of a marginalized position. As the next generation grows up to develop their own native ideological frames, I predict that we will continue to see persistent meanings about racial marginality, socioeconomic privilege, and gender respectability as part of the vocabulary of these intersectional actors. Mastery of these meanings allows individuals access into this private community and also serves as protection from the worst effects of local discrimination. / Sociology