The low-wage service industry is one of the fastest-growing employment sectors in the US economy. Its workers disproportionately tend to be low-income and minority women. Service sector work entails rigid forms of temporal discipline manifested in work requirements for flexible, last-minute, and round-the-clock availability, as well as limited to no eligibil ... Show More
Nov 19
Carl Benedikt Frey, "How Progress Ends: Technology, Innovation, and the Fate of Nations" (Princeton UP, 2025)
In How Progress Ends: Technology, Innovation, and the Fate of Nations (Princeton University Press, 2025), Carl Benedikt Frey challenges the conventional belief that economic and technological progress is inevitable. For most of human history, stagnation was the norm, and even tod ... Show More
54m 29s
May 2024
Elise Andaya, "Pregnant at Work: Low-Wage Workers, Power, and Temporal Injustice" (NYU Press, 2024)
The low-wage service industry is one of the fastest-growing employment sectors in the US economy. Its workers disproportionately tend to be low-income and minority women. Service sector work entails rigid forms of temporal discipline manifested in work requirements for flexible, ... Show More
34m 21s
Apr 2024
Fumilayo Showers, "Migrants Who Care: West Africans Working and Building Lives in U.S. Health Care" (Rutgers UP, 2023)
As the U.S. population ages and as health care needs become more complex, demand for paid care workers in home and institutional settings has increased. This book draws attention to the reserve of immigrant labour that is called on to meet this need.
Migrants Who Care: West Afri ... Show More
1h 2m
Oct 2024
Sabina Faiz Rashid, "Poverty, Gender and Health in the Slums of Bangladesh: Children of Crows" (Routledge, 2024)
Poverty, Gender and Health in the Slums of Bangladesh: Children of Crows (Routledge, 2024) provides comprehensive ethnographic accounts that depict the daily life experiences and health hardships encountered by young women and their families living in the slums of Dhaka city and ... Show More
53m 18s
Oct 2024
Sabina Faiz Rashid, "Poverty, Gender and Health in the Slums of Bangladesh: Children of Crows" (Routledge, 2024)
Poverty, Gender and Health in the Slums of Bangladesh: Children of Crows (Routledge, 2024) provides comprehensive ethnographic accounts that depict the daily life experiences and health hardships encountered by young women and their families living in the slums of Dhaka city and ... Show More
53m 18s
Aug 2024
Claudia Strauss, "What Work Means: Beyond the Puritan Work Ethic" (ILR Press, 2024)
What Work Means: Beyond the Puritan Work Ethic (ILR Press, 2024) goes beyond the stereotypes and captures the diverse ways Americans view work as a part of a good life.
Dispelling the notion of Americans as mere workaholics, Claudia Strauss presents a more nuanced perspective. W ... Show More
59m 6s
Aug 2024
Claudia Strauss, "What Work Means: Beyond the Puritan Work Ethic" (ILR Press, 2024)
What Work Means: Beyond the Puritan Work Ethic (ILR Press, 2024) goes beyond the stereotypes and captures the diverse ways Americans view work as a part of a good life.
Dispelling the notion of Americans as mere workaholics, Claudia Strauss presents a more nuanced perspective. W ... Show More
59m 6s
Jun 2023
César Ernesto Abadía-Barrero, "Health in Ruins: The Capitalist Destruction of Medical Care at a Colombian Maternity Hospital" (Duke UP, 2022)
In Health in Ruins: The Capitalist Destruction of Medical Care at a Colombian Maternity Hospital (Duke UP, 2022), César Ernesto Abadía-Barrero chronicles the story of El Materno—Colombia’s oldest maternity and neonatal health center and teaching hospital—over several decades as i ... Show More
1h 12m
Jan 2024
Benjamin Lorr, "The Secret Life of Groceries: The Dark Miracle of the American Supermarket" (Penguin, 2020)
This episode of the New Books in Economic and Business History is an interview with New York writer Benjamin Lorr. Benjamin Lorr is the author of Hell-Bent: Obsession, Pain, and the Search for Something Like Transcendence in Competitive Yoga, a book that explores the Bikram Yoga ... Show More
54m 20s
Nov 2024
Lauren D. Olsen, "Curricular Injustice: How U.S. Medical Schools Reproduce Inequalities" (Columbia UP, 2024)
Medical schools have increasingly incorporated the humanities and social sciences into their teaching, seeking to make future physicians more empathetic and more concerned with equity. In practice, however, these good intentions have not translated into critical consciousness. Hu ... Show More
51m 10s
Jul 2023
Jessica P. Cerdeña, "Pressing Onward: The Imperative Resilience of Latina Migrant Mothers" (U California Press, 2023)
Pressing Onward: The Imperative Resilience of Latina Migrant Mothers (U California Press, 2023) centers the stories of mothers who migrated from Latin America, settled in New Haven, Connecticut, and overcame trauma and ongoing adversity to build futures for their children. These ... Show More
58m 3s