Relational Inequalities

Donald Tomaskovic-Devey is a Professor of Sociology at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He has been a leading proponent of organizational approaches to inequality. His work major works include examinations of the birth of what we now call neoliberalism, the financialization of the US economy, and workplace racial and gender desegregation since the 1964 US Civil Rights Act. Currently he is developing general theory around inequality as well as deepening scholarly and public access to organizational data on inequalities. Dustin Avent-Holt is an Associate Professor of Sociology at Augusta University. He focuses on the causes and consequences of social inequalities, particularly as they intersect with organizations and markets. His empirical work has primarily examined the various processes through which social relations within workplaces produce income inequalities.

Chapter 1. Generating Inequalities
Relational Inequality Theory
How Else Do Social Scientists Think About Inequality?
Status Attainment and Human Capital Theories
Conventional Economics
Heterodox Economics
Institutional Political Economy
Thinking Relationally
Plan of the Book

Chapter 2. Observing Inequalities
From There to Here?
Comparative Organizational Research Exemplars
Class Inequality Regimes in Institutional Context
Inequality Regimes in Interactional Context
Comparisons of Ethnographic Cases

Chapter 3. Relational Inequality Theory
Building Blocks of Relational Inequality
Categorization
Organizations
Generic Inequality Generating Processes
Exploitation and Social Closure
Claims-Making
Contextual Variation in Generic Processes
Organizational Resources
Institutional Variation

Chapter 4. Organizational Inequality Regimes
The Ubiquity of Regime Variation
Gender Wage Gaps in Japan and the U.S.
Immigrant Status and Skill Distinction in Sweden
Education, Gender and Immigrant Status and German Wage Gaps
Elements of Inequality Regimes
Resource Levels
National Institutions
Organizational Rules and Practices
Local Organizational Cultures
Intersectionality

Chapter 5. Exploitation
Conceptualizing Exploitation
Observing Exploitation
Comparing Firm Productivity to Wages Paid and Profits Extracted
Rising Income Inequality
Exploitation across Categorical Distinctions in Linked Employer-Employee Analyses
How does Exploitation Happen?
Exploitation on the Shop Floor and in the Office Corridor
Total Exploitation
Exploitation in Institutional Context

Chapter 6. Social Closure
Conceptualizing Social Closure
Observing Closure Processes
Organizational Data Matched to Employees
Ethnographic accounts of closure processes
Integrating Science and Engineering Fields
Gender and Engineering in the Age of Affirmative Action


Chapter 7. Relational Claims Making
Conceptualizing Claims Making
Legitimacy and Claims-Making
Observing Claims Making
Claims Making and the Labor Process
Negotiating Work-Family Relationships
Claims Making and Wages
Claims Making and Dignity
Neoliberalism and the Legitimacy of Claims
Organized Labor
Financialization
Mobilizing Claims in Cultural Context

Chapter 8. Organizational Surplus and Rising Inequalities
Market Power
Closure, Exploitation, and Power in Markets
Relationality and Market Closure in Biotech Innovation
Institutionalizing Airline Monopolies
Embedded Exchange and the Limits of Exploitation
Linking Organizational Inequality and Resource Pooling
Financialization and Shifting Claims
Reconfiguring Organizational Boundaries to Monopolize Surplus

Chapter 9. Expanding the Moral Circle
Implications for Social Science
RIT and the Politics of Egalitarianism
From Tribalism to Universalism
From Hierarchy to Organizational Citizenship
From Markets to Dignity
Institutional and Organizational Politics
Destabilize Status Hierarchies
Increase the Bargaining Power of the Least Powerful
Reduce Organizational Resource Inequalities