Category: Publications

New Book: American Idle: Late-Career Job Loss in a Neoliberal Era by Annette Nierobisz and Dana Sawchuk

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 Nierobisz, Annette, and Dana Sawchuk. 2025. American Idle: Late-Career Job Loss in a Neoliberal Era. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.

Description: In American Idle, sociologists Annette Nierobisz and Dana Sawchuk report their findings from interviews with sixty-two mostly white-collar workers who experienced late-career job loss in the wake of the Great Recession. Without the benefits of planned retirement or time horizons favorable to recouping their losses, these employees experience an array of outcomes, from hard falls to soft landings. Notably, the authors find that when reflecting on the effects of job loss, fruitless job searches, and the overall experience of unemployment, participants regularly called on the frameworks instilled by neoliberalism. Invoking neoliberal rhetoric, these older Americans deferred to businesses’ need to prioritize bottom lines, accepted the shift toward precarious employment, or highlighted the importance of taking initiative and maintaining a positive mindset in the face of structural obstacles. Even so, participants also recognized the incompatibility between neoliberalism’s “one-size-fits-all” solutions and their own situations; this disconnect led them to consider their experiences through competing frameworks and to voice resistance to aspects of neoliberal capitalism. Employing a life course sociology perspective to explore older workers’ precarity in an age of rising economic insecurity, Nierobisz and Sawchuk shed light on a new wrinkle in American aging.

Annette Nierobisz is a sociology professor and the Ada M. Harrison Distinguished Teaching Professor of the Social Sciences at Carleton College in Northfield, Minnesota. Dr. Nierobisz’s publications have examined a broad range of topics, from fear of crime among women who encounter sexual harassment in public spaces to the role played by the Canadian Human Rights Commission in the 2005 legalization of same-sex marriage in Canada. In her recently published book, American Idle: Late-Career Job Loss in a Neoliberal Era (Rutgers University Press 2025), Dr. Nierobisz and co-author Dr. Sawchuk of Wilfrid Laurier University investigate how a select group of older workers interpret their experience of losing a job in the aftermath of the 2008 Great Recession. This book extends Dr. Nierobisz’s longstanding research focus on the sociology of unemployment.

Dana Sawchuk is a professor of sociology at Wilfrid Laurier University in Waterloo, Canada. She is the author of The Costa Rican Catholic Church, Social Justice, and the Rights of Workers, 1979–1996. Dr. Sawchuk is currently working on three research studies. First, focuses on the Climate Action and Knowledge Survey of first-year students at Laurier (with Dr. Debora VanNijnatten, Department of Political Science/North American Studies). The second involves researching older adults who lost their jobs in the U.S. Great Recession (with Dr. Annette Nierobisz, Carleton College). The third involves an analysis of advocacy and mobilization efforts by and on behalf of unpaid/family caregivers of older adults (with a research team led by Dr. Laura Funk, University of Manitoba). Alongside these research pursuits, Dr. Sawchuk is interested in the scholarship focusing on teaching, learning, and experimenting with innovative ways to engage students in the undergraduate classroom.

New Publication: “Mapping Organizational Theory With SCRIPTS” by Jose Eos Trinidad

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Trinidad, Jose Eos. 2025. “Mapping Organizational Theory with SCRIPTS.” Sociology Compass, OnlineFirst: 1–13. https://doi.org/10.1111/soc4.70059.

Abstract: Organizational theory has developed in numerous directions that have been difficult to integrate. This review synthesizes them into seven perspectives, with theories focused within and beyond the organization (i.e., intra- and extra-organizational dynamics). It proposes the acronym SCRIPTS: structure, culture, relations, institutions, professions, transformation, and social conflict. Within organizations, structure focuses on theories of bureaucracy, management, routines, and decision-making, while culture focuses on shared values, identity, climate, and sensemaking. Relations involve studies of interpersonal and interorganizational networks. Institutions focus on the macro-dynamics of fields and isomorphism, and micro-dynamics of entrepreneurship and inhabited institutions. Professions refer to psychological factors shaping individual performance and sociological factors shaping work and occupations. Transformation involves episodic and gradual changes within organizations and across society. Social conflict involves power and competition, with key theories focused on gendered, racialized, and global inequalities. This paper introduces theories and concepts in the study of organizations by grouping similar perspectives, highlighting their domains within or beyond the organization, and underscoring their utility for researchers and leaders.

New Publication: “Positioning Stories: Accounting for Insecure Work” by Kathleen Griesbach

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Griesbach, K. (2025). “Positioning Stories: Accounting for Insecure Work”. American Sociological Review, OnlineFirst. https://doi.org/10.1177/00031224251328393

Abstract: How do structural features of work shape workers’ interpretations of precarity, or the stories they tell? This article draws on 120 interviews with four groups of workers who confront temporal and spatial instability: Texas-based agricultural and oilfield workers and NYC-based adjunct instructors and delivery workers. I find that rather than adopting one dominant individualizing story, as previous research suggests, workers instead move between what I call positioning stories: narratives that interpret their work’s particular structural features. In doing so, workers combine individualistic and structural frames to cope with their positional uncertainty. Depending on the specific tempo and geography of their work, workers account for spatial instability in stories about sacrifice and self-improvement; they interpret temporal instability in stories about addiction and the burden of time passing without progress. Workers combine these with stories highlighting meaning and exploitation in their labor process. These findings reveal how structural precarity impedes a cohesive narrative by disrupting identities and life projects, but it also undermines the credibility of individualistic accounts. The resulting narrative fragmentation may inspire a wide range of responses, from resignation to contestation.

New Publication: “Reconceptualizing Crisis: An Empirically Based Investigation” by Xiaoying Qi

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Qi, Xiaoying. 2025. “Reconceptualizing Crisis: An Empirically Based Investigation.” Sociological Inquiry. First online. https://doi.org/10.1111/soin.70016

Abstract: Crisis is predominantly characterized in terms of its detrimental consequences. Drawing on in-depth semi-structured interviews in Melbourne and Taipei, the article provides a critical and distinctive understanding of crisis. Crisis is conceptualized here as a disruptive prefiguring of new possibilities, both agentic and structural. In crisis, a situation of adversity is combined with a positive prospect of possibility previously unnoticed or unavailable that is exposed or generated by the disruption. Against the traditional or established tendency to define crisis as a moment or a turning point, the article argues that crisis is best understood as an unfolding dynamic process of change or courses of generative development. In explicating crisis, a counter-transformation approach is developed. Drawing on empirical data, the article expands the sociological understanding of crisis.

Xiaoying Qi, Australian Catholic University 
Associate Professor Xiaoying Qi was awarded a PhD from the Institute for Culture and Society, Western Sydney University. Her thesis won the Jean Martin Award of the Australian Sociological Association, given biennially to ‘the best PhD thesis in social science disciplines from an Australian tertiary institution’. Her most recent book, Entrepreneurs in Contemporary China: Wealth, Connections, and Crisis, is published by Cambridge University Press. A previous book, Remaking Families in Contemporary China(Oxford University Press, 2021), won the Stephen Crook Memorial Prize of the Australian Sociological Association. An earlier book, Globalized Knowledge Flows and Chinese Social Theory (London & New York: Routledge, 2014), was awarded The Raewyn Connell Prize Special Commendation of The Australian Sociological Association. Qi has published articles in leading international journals, including American Journal of Cultural Sociology, British Journal of Sociology, Current Sociology, International Sociology, Journal of Sociology, Sociological Review, and Sociology. Research innovation is evidenced in Qi’s introduction of analytical concepts in sociology, including ‘intellectual entrepreneurs’, ‘paradoxical integration’, and ‘veiled patriarchy’. Qi has extensive teaching experience and received the National Citations for Outstanding Contributions to Student Learning.

New Publication: “The Ghost of Middle Management: Automation, Control, and Heterarchy in the Platform Firm” by Janet A. Vertesi & Diana Enriquez 

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Vertesi, Janet A., and Diana Enriquez. 2025. “The Ghost of Middle Management: Automation, Control, and Heterarchy in the Platform Firm.” Sociologica 19(1):13–35. https://doi.org/10.6092/issn.1971-8853/16415.

Abstract: In an effort to attend to the distinct organizational form of algorithmic management, we interrogate the arrangement of platform labor through the lens of the post-bureaucratic organization instead of that of the industrialized factory. Prior studies of gig workers rely heavily on sociological accounts of factory labor, but we posit that gig economy platforms represent a heterarchical organizational form, marrying the logics of industrial control induced by computational systems with the logics of post-bureaucracy inherited from flattening firms and downsizing middle management. In a technique we describe as automation by omission, we show how middle-managerial roles and responsibilities are excised entirely from the platform firm, how the vestigial traces of such roles are only imperfectly replaced by technical systems, and how “situated” managerial tasks essential to post-bureaucratic organizations are picked up by the worker, uncompensated. This heterarchical arrangement benefits the firm in multiple ways, while its competing structural conditions of labor leave workers to navigate multiple valuation systems at once. Appreciating gig work’s embedded post-bureaucracy shifts our understanding of common worker experiences such as peer-to-peer organizing and just-in-time scheduling illuminates dissonant accounts of empowerment and algorithmic despotism, and exposes new avenues for worker disenfranchisement.

Janet A. Vertesi Department of Sociology, Princeton University
Janet A. Vertesi is Associate Professor of Sociology and Associate Director of the Keller Center for Innovation in Engineering Education at Princeton University (USA). A sociologist of science, technology, and organizations, her ethnographies of NASA missions include Shaping Science (Chicago University Press, 2015) and Seeing Like a Rover (Chicago University Press, 2020), and she is a leader in the digitalSTS (Princeton University Press, 2014) community.

Diana Enriquez  Department of Sociology, Princeton University
Diana Enriquez completed her PhD in Sociology at Princeton University (USA). Her dissertation research focused on high-skill freelancers as a subset of the alternative workforce facing new challenges before and during COVID-19. Other research projects examine the role of platforms in managing gig workers and automation in the workplace. Her research interests include economic sociology, labor, law, and technology.

New Publication: “Location Matters: Everyday Gender Discrimination in Remote and On-Site Work” by Laura Doering & András Tilcsik

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Doering, Laura, and András Tilcsik. 2025. “Location Matters: Everyday Gender Discrimination in Remote and On-Site Work.” Organization Science 36(2):547–71. doi: 10.1287/orsc.2022.16949.

Read Article: https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2022.16949

Abstract: Remote work has dramatically transformed professional environments, sparking considerable scholarly interest in its impact on employees and organizations. Contributing to this burgeoning literature, we investigate how remote versus on-site work affects women’s experiences of gender discrimination. Given that work location can alter the gendered nature of interactions, we focus on everyday gender discrimination: slights and offenses that occur in interactions and are perceived by recipients as reflecting gender bias. Integrating gender frame theory and scholarship on virtual work, we argue that the gender frame tends to be less salient in remote settings. Thus, we predict that women experience less everyday gender discrimination when working remotely than on-site. Moreover, because the gender frame is likely to be more salient during on-site work for younger women and those who work with mostly men, we expect that these women experience a particularly pronounced reduction in everyday gender discrimination when working remotely. To test these predictions, we developed a new measure of everyday gender discrimination and conducted an original survey of 1,091 professional women who work in the same job both remotely and on-site. We find that women consistently report less everyday gender discrimination in remote versus on-site work. This effect is particularly pronounced for younger women and those who interact mainly with men. Overall, this study advances research on how work location shapes workers’ outcomes and experiences, enriches the literature on the trade-offs women face in virtual and on-site settings, and extends scholarship on the contextual factors shaping workplace discrimination.

New Publication: “The Loyalty Trap: Conflicting Loyalties of Civil Servants Under Increasing Autocracy” by Jaime Lee Kucinskas

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The Loyalty Trap: Conflicting Loyalties of Civil Servants Under Increasing Autocracy
by Jaime Lee Kucinskas 


Read an interview with the author about the research behind the book

Columbia University Press

Donald J. Trump took office threatening to run roughshod over democratic institutions, railing against the federal bureaucracy, and calling for dismantling the administrative state. How do civil servants respond to a presidential turn toward authoritarianism? In what ways—if any—can they restrain or counter leaders who defy the norms of liberal democratic governance?

The Loyalty Trap explores how civil servants navigated competing pressures and duties amid the chaos of the Trump administration, drawing on in-depth interviews with senior officials in the most contested agencies over the course of a tumultuous term. Jaime Lee Kucinskas argues that the professional culture and ethical obligations of the civil service stabilize the state in normal times but insufficiently prepare bureaucrats to cope with a president like Trump. Instead, federal employees became ensnared in intractable ethical traps, caught between their commitment to nonpartisan public service and the expectation of compliance with political directives. Kucinskas shares their quandaries, recounting attempts to preserve the integrity of government agencies, covert resistance, and a few bold acts of moral courage in the face of organizational decline and politicized leadership. A nuanced sociological account of the lessons of the Trump administration for democratic governance, The Loyalty Trap offers a timely and bracing portrait of the fragility of the American state.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Jaime Lee Kucinskas is an Associate Professor of Sociology at Hamilton College. She is the author of The Mindful Elite: Mobilizing from the Inside Out (2019) and a co-editor of Situating Spirituality: Context, Practice, and Power (2022).

New Publication: “Gone Too Long or Back Too Soon? Perceptions of Paid Parental Leave‐Taking and Variations by Gender and Family Structure” by Richard J. Petts, Reilly Kincaid, Trenton D. Mize & Gayle Kaufman

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Petts, Richard J., Reilly Kincaid, Trenton D. Mize, and Gayle Kaufman. 2025. “Gone Too Long or Back Too Soon? Perceptions of Paid Parental Leave‐Taking and Variations by Gender and Family Structure.” Journal of Marriage and Family.

Abstract

Background: Previous research largely focuses on the consequences associated with leave-taking, particularly highlighting workplace penalties associated with leave-taking. There has also been limited attention to workers with diverse family forms. We seek to better understand the culture surrounding paid parental leave in the U.S. by focusing on evaluations of leave-taking itself and whether such evaluations may reduce or exacerbate inequalities by gender, sexual orientation, and marital status.

Method: We use data on 2964 U.S. respondents from a survey experiment in which employer-offered paid parental leave-taking, parent gender, sexual orientation, and marital status were randomly assigned. We use OLS models to assess perceptions of paid leave-taking and the causal effects of parent gender, sexual orientation, and marital status on these perceptions.

Results: We find that respondents view 11 weeks of paid parental leave as the right amount of leave, on average. We also find variations in perceptions of leave-taking by parent gender, sexual orientation, and marital status; mothers with husbands and single parents are viewed more favorably for taking longer leaves than fathers with wives, mothers with wives, and fathers with husbands.

Conclusion: There is increasing support for paid leave within the U.S., but support for parents’ leave-taking largely reflects gendered stereotypes and may reinforce broader patterns of gender inequality.

New Publication: “From Accountability to Algorithms: Interorganizational Learning and the Transformation of Quantification in Education” by Jose Eos Trinidad

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Trinidad, Jose Eos. 2025. “From Accountability to Algorithms: Interorganizational Learning and the Transformation of Quantification in Education.” Qualitative Sociology (online first).

Abstract: While studies often explore the intended and unintended consequences of technologies, few have theorized how and why they change. One crucial transformation in quantitative technologies is the shift from evaluative accountability to predictive algorithms, such as in schools that use dropout prediction systems. Using the case of ninth-grade early warning indicators, I argue that the transformation of quantification resulted from interorganizational learning, or the acquisition of new knowledge through the interaction of different organizations. In particular, I show how technology changes gradually from organization-level evaluation to individual-based prediction to systems-focused improvement. Pivotal to such changes were new forms of knowledge that emerged (1) as “instructing” organizations directed changes and “receiving” organizations resisted them; (2) as organizations in various fields reciprocally collaborated; and (3) as similar organizations practiced networked learning. Although studies have traditionally highlighted the “discipline” of technologies, I illustrate the power of organizational agents to resist, adapt, and change them—with implications for the study of quantification, work, institutional change, and education.

New Publication: “Subtle Webs: How Local Organizations Shape US Education” by Jose Eos Trinidad

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Trinidad, Jose Eos. 2025. Subtle Webs: How Local Organizations Shape US Education. Oxford University Press.

(30% off with code: AUFLY30)

Abstract: In Subtle Webs, Jose Eos Trinidad reveals how organizations outside schools have created an invisible infrastructure not only to affect local school districts but also to shape US education. He illustrates this by providing a behind-the-scenes look at how local organizations in Chicago, Philadelphia, and New York City have transformed data and worked with high schools to address the problem of students dropping out. The book argues that changes in a decentralized system happen less through top-down policy mandates or bottom-up social movements and more through “outside-in” initiatives of networked organizations spread across various local systems. By detailing change across multiple levels and across multiple locations, Trinidad uncovers new ways to think about educational transformation, policy reform, and organizational change.