Thomas Janoski

Providing a fresh approach to thinking about the big questions around political economy, culture, and power, this book offers a synthetic view of political economic and cultural explanations of how institutions, organizations, and groups operate, cohere, and influence each other, as well as how power works within and across these networks. The New Political Sociology rethinks the ways societies are built and function in two parts. After delineating a theory of the bargaining process, the first part undertakes a reconstruction of the state, the inordinate influence of business, the weakened position of labor, the variable role of social movements, and the active role of the media. The second part delineates how exploitation and humiliation lead to social movements that reverse values and create new social forces, and the author uses empire in global theory to delineate how globalization affects politics within the now multi-nation-state. Both parts involve structures of power through class (business and labor) and status (race, gender, and religion), and each section discusses how new alternatives emerge for each bargaining group. Connecting sociology and sociological theory to issues of social and democratic movements, this book shows how political economy and culture need each other as the opposite sides of the same coin. The New Political Sociology redirects theoretical approaches of researchers in political sociology and provides teachers with a classroom resource on theories and practices in political sociology, cultural sociology, social movements, and the media.

Providing a fresh approach to thinking about the big questions around political economy, culture, and power, this book offers a synthetic view of political economic and cultural explanations of how institutions, organizations, and groups operate, cohere, and influence each other, as well as how power works within and across these networks. The New Political Sociology rethinks the ways societies are built and function in two parts. After delineating a theory of the bargaining process, the first part undertakes a reconstruction of the state, the inordinate influence of business, the weakened position of labor, the variable role of social movements, and the active role of the media. The second part delineates how exploitation and humiliation lead to social movements that reverse values and create new social forces, and the author uses empire in global theory to delineate how globalization affects politics within the now multi-nation-state. Both parts involve structures of power through class (business and labor) and status (race, gender, and religion), and each section discusses how new alternatives emerge for each bargaining group. Connecting sociology and sociological theory to issues of social and democratic movements, this book shows how political economy and culture need each other as the opposite sides of the same coin. The New Political Sociology redirects theoretical approaches of researchers in political sociology and provides teachers with a classroom resource on theories and practices in political sociology, cultural sociology, social movements, and the media.

This discerning book critically analyzes the key principles of symbolic interactionism, outlining their strengths and examining current weaknesses. Thomas Janoski provides novel insights into the theory, rethinking some of its foundations while adhering to its basic symbolic principles of the self. Chapters cover new perspectives on humans’ relationship with their society, emphasizing the generalized other as the central factor in symbolic interactionism. Janoski delves into underexplored applications of the framework within social mobility, organizations, elites, charisma, and the unconscious. He stresses the importance of conflict and power in strategic interaction in addition to empathetic sociation. He integrates the micro and macro aspects of sociology with interactionist and structuration theory, highlighting the need for symbolic interactionists to use multiple methodologies in their work including interviews, participant observation, surveys, and experimental research. Providing a thought-provoking approach to reconsidering current paradigms, Rethinking Symbolic Interactionism is a vital read for scholars and students of sociology, social psychology, and political theory. It is also of great benefit to researchers seeking to understand new developments in symbolic interaction theory.

This comprehensive and instructive study examines the relative success or failure of government policies in preventing and alleviating unemployment. Choosing two contrasting cases—West Germany and the United States—Thomas Janoski probes the causes and consequences of two very different orientations toward labor market policy. In West Germany, labor, employers, and government cooperate in the running of a powerful and effective employment service. In the United States, by contrast, one finds little state involvement, organizational confusion, a long history of poor funding, and legislative resistance to intervention in the labor market. In the author's mind, these inadequate policies have had deleterious consequences for the American labor force. Whereas a skilled and flexible labor force exists in West Germany, Americans are poorly trained and barely assisted in finding jobs and training. To remedy this situation Janoski puts forth bold and useful policy recommendations, including the creation of a new organization to operate in national labor markets, the development of technical training programs in high schools, and the creation of a youth service to prevent teenage crime. The Political Economy of Unemployment offers a trenchant examination of how modern industrialized nations deal with the vicissitudes of the economy and how they might develop and implement more effective labor market policies. Meticulously researched, it is an important contribution that policymakers and social scientists will find provocative and useful. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1990.

This book examines the dominance and significance of lean organizing in the international economy. Scholars from each discipline see lean production as positive or negative; the book blends theory with practice by sorting out these different academic views and revealing how lean is implemented in different ways. The first part synthesizes academic research from a range of disciplines—including, engineering, sociology, and management—to present the reader with an integrated understanding of the benefits and drawbacks of lean management. The second part links this theory to practice, with a set of case studies from companies like Apple, Google, Nike, Toyota, and Walmart that demonstrate how lean is implemented in a variety of settings. The book concludes with three models, explaining how Toyotism, Nikefication with offshoring, and Waltonism provide full or less complete models of lean production. It clearly presents the positive and negative aspects of lean and insights into the culture of lean organizations. With its rich interdisciplinary approach, Framing and Managing Lean Organizations in the New Economy will benefit researchers and students across a range of classes from management, sociology, and public policy to engineering.

This book examines the dominance and significance of lean organizing in the international economy. Scholars from each discipline see lean production as positive or negative; the book blends theory with practice by sorting out these different academic views and revealing how lean is implemented in different ways. The first part synthesizes academic research from a range of disciplines—including, engineering, sociology, and management—to present the reader with an integrated understanding of the benefits and drawbacks of lean management. The second part links this theory to practice, with a set of case studies from companies like Apple, Google, Nike, Toyota, and Walmart that demonstrate how lean is implemented in a variety of settings. The book concludes with three models, explaining how Toyotism, Nikefication with offshoring, and Waltonism provide full or less complete models of lean production. It clearly presents the positive and negative aspects of lean and insights into the culture of lean organizations. With its rich interdisciplinary approach, Framing and Managing Lean Organizations in the New Economy will benefit researchers and students across a range of classes from management, sociology, and public policy to engineering.

This comprehensive and instructive study examines the relative success or failure of government policies in preventing and alleviating unemployment. Choosing two contrasting cases—West Germany and the United States—Thomas Janoski probes the causes and consequences of two very different orientations toward labor market policy. In West Germany, labor, employers, and government cooperate in the running of a powerful and effective employment service. In the United States, by contrast, one finds little state involvement, organizational confusion, a long history of poor funding, and legislative resistance to intervention in the labor market. In the author's mind, these inadequate policies have had deleterious consequences for the American labor force. Whereas a skilled and flexible labor force exists in West Germany, Americans are poorly trained and barely assisted in finding jobs and training. To remedy this situation Janoski puts forth bold and useful policy recommendations, including the creation of a new organization to operate in national labor markets, the development of technical training programs in high schools, and the creation of a youth service to prevent teenage crime. The Political Economy of Unemployment offers a trenchant examination of how modern industrialized nations deal with the vicissitudes of the economy and how they might develop and implement more effective labor market policies. Meticulously researched, it is an important contribution that policymakers and social scientists will find provocative and useful. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1990.

How can African Americans and Afro-Caribbeans from the former British colonies be so different in their approaches toward social mobility? Chrystal Y. Grey and Thomas Janoski state that this is because native blacks grow up as “strangers” in their own country and immigrants from the English-speaking Caribbean are conversely part of “the dominant group.” Unlike previous research that compares highly educated Afro-Caribbeans to the broad range of African-Americans, this study holds social-class constant by looking only at successful blacks in the upper-middle-class from both groups. This book finds that African-Americans pursue overachievement strategies of working much harder than others do, while Afro-Caribbeans follow an optimistic job strategy expecting promotions and success. However, African-Americans are more likely to use confrontational strategies if their mobility is blocked. The main cause of these differences is that Afro-Caribbeans grow up in a system where they have many examples of black politicians and business leaders (35–90% of their countries are black) and African-Americans have fewer role models (12–14% of the United States are black). Further, the schooling system in Afro-Caribbean countries does not label blacks as underachievers because the schools are almost entirely black. A further problem that African-Americans face is the resentment of a small but significant number of blacks who have little social mobility. They accuse socially mobile African Americans of “acting white,” which is a phenomenon that Afro-Caribbeans almost never face and they call it “an African-American thing.” To demonstrate this difference, Strategies for Success among African-Americans and Afro-Caribbeans does a historical-comparative analysis of the differences between the black experience after slavery in the United States and Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, Guyana, and St. Kitts-Nevis. The authors interview fifty-seven black people and find consistent differences between the US and Caribbean black citizens. Using theories of symbolic interaction and ressentiment, this work challenges previous studies that either claim that Afro-Caribbeans are more motivated than African-Americans, or studies that show that controlling for class, each group is more or less the same.

There is a specter haunting advanced industrial countries: structural unemployment. Recent years have seen growing concern over declining jobs, and though corporate profits have picked up after the Great Recession of 2008, jobs have not. It is possible that “jobless recoveries” could become a permanent feature of Western economies. This illuminating book focuses on the employment futures of advanced industrial countries, providing readers with the sociological imagination to appreciate the bigger picture of where workers fit in the new international division of labor. The authors piece together a puzzle that reveals deep structural forces underlying unemployment: skills mismatches caused by a shift from manufacturing to service jobs; increased offshoring in search of lower wages; the rise of advanced communication and automated technologies; and the growing financialization of the global economy that aggravates all of these factors. Weaving together varied literatures and data, the authors also consider what actions and policy initiatives societies might take to alleviate these threats. Addressing a problem that should be front and center for political economists and policymakers, this book will be illuminating reading for students of the sociology of work, labor studies, inequality, and economic sociology.

There is a specter haunting advanced industrial countries: structural unemployment. Recent years have seen growing concern over declining jobs, and though corporate profits have picked up after the Great Recession of 2008, jobs have not. It is possible that “jobless recoveries” could become a permanent feature of Western economies. This illuminating book focuses on the employment futures of advanced industrial countries, providing readers with the sociological imagination to appreciate the bigger picture of where workers fit in the new international division of labor. The authors piece together a puzzle that reveals deep structural forces underlying unemployment: skills mismatches caused by a shift from manufacturing to service jobs; increased offshoring in search of lower wages; the rise of advanced communication and automated technologies; and the growing financialization of the global economy that aggravates all of these factors. Weaving together varied literatures and data, the authors also consider what actions and policy initiatives societies might take to alleviate these threats. Addressing a problem that should be front and center for political economists and policymakers, this book will be illuminating reading for students of the sociology of work, labor studies, inequality, and economic sociology.

This book reveals the dynamics of gender, race and age as American workers at a Japanese auto factory actually experience it for themselves. This methodical case study exposes the rhetoric of diversity to the realities and pressures of lean production in a blue collar environment.

Corporations pour billions of dollars into diversity training without taking the time to research what diversity actually means for the people on the shop-floor. This book reveals the dynamics of gender, race and age as workers experience it for themselves. This methodical case study exposes the rhetoric of diversity to the realities and pressures of lean production in a blue collar environment. Diversity at Kaizen Motors brings the Japanese encounter with American diversity into focus by explaining how a major Japanese auto factory has tried to implement and manage diversity. The case study also evaluates how diverse Americans - women and men, white and non-white, older and younger workers - work together in lean production teams at a Fortune 500 automobile assembly plant. This systematic qualitative study contains close to 150 interviews with workers from a wide variety of teams. Diversity at Kaizen Motors reveals invaluable information and yields surprising results, which ultimately leads to a greater understanding of Japanese auto factories and lean production organizations overall.

Explanations of naturalization and jus soli citizenship have relied on cultural, convergence, racialization, or capture theories, and they tend to be strongly affected by the literature on immigration. This study of naturalization breaks with the usual immigration theories and proposes an approach over centuries and decades toward explaining naturalization rates. First, it provides consistent evidence to support the long-term existence of colonizer, settler, non-colonizer, and Nordic nationality regime types that frame naturalization over centuries. Second it shows how left and green parties, along with an index of nationality laws, explain the lion's share of variation in naturalization rates. The text makes these theoretical claims believable by using the most extensive data set to date on naturalization rates that include jus soli births. It analyzes this data with a combination of carefully designed case studies comparing two to four countries within and between regime types.

Rights and obligations are confusing. When people really want or need something they call it a right. Can they simply attach this word to anything they want? Can people disregard obligations with impunity? This book argues that they cannot. One must understand those relationships in specific ways to really know what can or can not be done with rights and obligations in public discourse and politics. They must create a web of interaction between citizens so that more long-term social investments may be made. Professor Janoski shows that individual rights protecting privacy, free speech, and legal access are more highly developed in social democratic countries than in liberal countries. On the other hand, obligations in those same social democratic countries are higher. On the whole, rights and obligations are in balance; or, you get what rights you pay for in terms of fulfilling obligations to the state and society.

Rights and obligations are confusing. When people really want or need something they call it a right. Can they simply attach this word to anything they want? Can people disregard obligations with impunity? This book argues that they cannot. One must understand those relationships in specific ways to really know what can or can not be done with rights and obligations in public discourse and politics. They must create a web of interaction between citizens so that more long-term social investments may be made. Professor Janoski shows that individual rights protecting privacy, free speech, and legal access are more highly developed in social democratic countries than in liberal countries. On the other hand, obligations in those same social democratic countries are higher. On the whole, rights and obligations are in balance; or, you get what rights you pay for in terms of fulfilling obligations to the state and society.

Comparative research is exploding with alternative methodological and theoretical approaches. In this book, experts in each one of these methods provide a comprehensive explanation and application of time-series, pooled, event history and Boolean methods to substantive problems of the welfare state. Each section of the book focuses on a different method with a general introduction to the methods and then two papers using the method to deal with analysis concerning welfare state problems in a political economy perspective. Scholars concerned with methodology in this area cannot afford to overlook this book because it will help them keep up on proliferating methodologies. Graduate students in political science and sociology will find this book extremely useful in their careers.

Comparative research is exploding with new methodological and theoretical approaches. In this book, experts in each one of these methods provide the first comprehensive explanation and application of time-series, pooled, event history and Boolean methods to substantive problems of the welfare state. Each section of the book focuses on a new method with a general introduction to the methods and then two papers using the method to deal with analysis concerning welfare state problems in a political economy perspective. Scholars concerned with methodology in this area cannot afford to overlook this book because it will help them keep up on proliferating methodologies. Graduate students in political science and sociology will find this book extremely useful in their careers.