Recent PhDs in Socio-Economics: New Research Paths
Emerging scholars—including graduate students, post-doctoral researchers, and junior faculty—are vitally important members of the SASE community, building on existing theories and identifying the subjects that will shape the field in years to come. We asked some recent graduates to share summaries of their dissertation work with SASE readers. The topics are diverse, ranging from public employment bureaucracies and insurance evaluation to the working lives of Native fathers, covering the vast range of issues confronting scholars of socio-economics today.
Dealing with Uncertainty: A Historical Sociology of Evaluation Practices in U.K. Life Insurance, 1971-Present
Arjen van der Heide, the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies, PhD (2019) from the University of Edinburgh
The emergence of a new transatlantic financial order since the 1970s, characterized by unprecedented financial market volatility, posed significant challenges for U.K. life insurers. Whereas life insurers were historically at the forefront of quantifying forms of “diversifiable risk,” such as mortality risk, the quantification of non-diversifiable risks, such as financial market risk, required novel methods borrowed first from mathematical risk theory and later from modern financial economics. The appropriation of new methods was accompanied by concomitant changes in the design of insurance products—a process that fundamentally changed what insurance companies are and what they are for, leading some to suggest that contemporary life insurers are facing an “identity crisis.”
Based on 44 oral-history interviews, supplemented by documents, I investigate how life insurers evaluate the economic worth and risks of insurance contracts and how these practices coevolved with broader changes in the industry. I combine insights from economic sociology with sociological research on professions, insurance, and scientific knowledge to argue that the evolution of insurance as a mechanism for managing financial uncertainty can only be understood in conjunction with the evolution of the methods that insurers use to evaluate the economic worth and risk embedded in insurance contracts.
On the one hand, I find that developments in the market field may create new opportunities and challenges in the epistemic field of actuarial science. Although modern financial economics was long rejected by the actuarial profession, the changing structure of governance in the market field gave proponents of modern finance theory the upper hand in the epistemic field, too. On the other hand, I argue that changes in life insurers’ epistemic machinery shaped what life insurance is and does. With the institutionalization of modern finance theory in contemporary life insurance arrangements, risk is increasingly perceived as a commodity to be managed not through mechanisms of solidarity but rather charged for explicitly and hedged in financial markets. In this context, seemingly technical issues such as discounting acquire significant political salience. The evolution of U.K. life insurance can be understood only by considering tensions and conflicts in the epistemic field of actuarial science, attempts to influence the “rules of the game” in the market field, and the interrelations between the two.
Multinational Corporations in Local Politics: Actors, Relations and Corporate Political Actions (Argentina, 2003-2015)
Alejandro Dulitzky, PhD (2018) from National University of Buenos Aires
Despite the economic relevance of multinational corporations, especially for developing countries, their involvement in politics has received little attention. This thesis draws from the sociology of organizations, economics, the sociology of elites, and studies on political action to study how, when, and why multinational corporations participate in local politics, using both qualitative and quantitative analysis.
I examine Argentina during the Kirchner’s government (2003-2015). Foreign capital has always played a central role in Argentina’s economy but, during this period of what has been called a “left turn” in Latin American politics, the government showed a marked tendency toward state intervention, a low commitment to international relations, and a preference for local over foreign capital. Although it is possible to identify a small decrease in the role played by multinational corporations, there was no decline, but rather an increase in aggregate FDI during the period, suggesting that the retreat of multinational corporations had more to do with local political dynamics than with a shift in global capital movements. I ask: to what extent did the economic policies deployed by the Kirchners condition the political strategies of multinational corporations—and at the same time, what role did foreign corporations have in the decisions made by the government?
I analyze the relationship between corporations and local politics through four lenses: their collective organization, the makeup of their leadership, their relationships with the government during the period, and their political actions. My research is based on primary and secondary sources, including in-depth interviews, public documents, and newspaper articles, among others. These data are used to create a sample focused on 73 corporations from 2003 to 2015, including 86 national business associations, 158 track records of company leaders, 78 public policies put in place by the governments with direct impact on these companies, 1,667 public hearings involving public officials and business representatives, and 491 statements in the press by corporate leaders.
I use this data to elucidate the relationship between multinational corporations and local politics. First, foreign companies give a central role to collective organization in their political strategies. Second, chief managers are chosen with the global needs and interests of the corporation in mind, disregarding the particularities of the local scenario. Finally, I find no indication that the political actions of multinational corporations are substantially different from those of other big private corporations such as local multinational, national, or mixed companies.
Tribal Lands, Tribal Men, and Tribal Responsibilities: World Renewal Fathers with Criminal Records and Their Perceptions of Work and Fatherhood On and Off-Reservation
Blythe George, Postdoctoral Researcher at University of California, Berkeley, PhD (2019) in Sociology from Harvard University
The spatial concentration of inequality is one of the most enduring findings in the social sciences, yet these theories do not encompass the experience of rural tribal reservations. Reservations are home to deeply intransigent forms of poverty and unemployment, and have been for generations, underscoring the need to expand existing theories of marginalized labor force attachment to include tribal reservations. Comparing the experiences of men who live on and off the Yurok and Hoopa Valley tribal reservations in northwestern California, this dissertation answers the question: How do tribal fathers with criminal records conceive of work and fatherhood?
Using over 130 hours of in-depth interviews with 35 individuals, buttressed by two years of participant observation and administrative record review, I find that this population is distinguished by their “world renewal worldview.” This cultural tool-kit fosters strong labor force attachment, especially for jobs in the natural resource industries that resonate with tribal fathers’ conceptions of world renewal masculinity, including the expectation to provide for their families through stewardship of the area’s natural resources. Their commitment to work is in tension with a post-decline local economy and frequent co-occurring substance dependencies and experiences of trauma, particularly on-reservation. Nonetheless, tribal fathers secure work using individual initiative and the generosity of social networks, exemplifying the process of “survivance.” While fathers differed in employment status, most described active and intense involvement with their families, including children and domestic partners.
With this investigation, I provide a new lens to studies of concentrated disadvantage by describing how the “reservation” represents both a physical space and a social institution that shapes contemporary inequality. Additionally, I provide nuance to existing theorizations of how structural and cultural forces influence labor force attachment, social networks, and fatherhood in marginalized communities.
Aux Guichets du Temps Partiel: Transactions Temporelles dans le Service Public D’emploi Allemand et Français [The Bureaucratic Structures of Part-Time Employment: Time Exchanges in French and German Public Employment Service]
Hadrien Clouet, post-doctoral researcher at Centre de Sociologie des Organisations (CNRS – Sciences Po), PhD (2019) from Sciences Po
An overwhelming majority of French and German jobseekers request full-time jobs when they register with the public employment service (PES), yet many end up with a part-time job, despite the fact that part-time employment is not explicitly favored by either French or German PES. My thesis explores this paradox, finding that the reasons for the prevalence of part-time employment lie in the labor organization of the agencies and in the programming of matching software, which lead caseworkers to promote part-time job offers. I use three sources of empirical material: archival records (national, municipal, and administrative archives); eight months of ethnographic research inside two German and two French employment agencies; and data analysis on a bank of job offers.
The first part of the dissertation traces the public regulation of jobseekers’ working time. After the invention of “unemployment,” German and French reformers fought from 1918 to 1939 for casual workers to be classified as unemployed, leading to the creation of a “cumulative scheme” in which unemployed people may work for a short time and keep both their unemployment benefits and a certain amount of income. During the 1960s, part-time work gradually replaced casual work in this system. The “cumulative scheme” shifted from an instrument of support to an instrument of incentive. Yet the concept of financial incentives for nonstandard jobs is unpopular even today, for both unemployed people and their caseworkers.
The second part of the dissertation explains the bargaining that takes place over jobseekers’ working time. If few caseworkers use the official benefits system, how and why do they discuss their clients’ working time? I show that they invite jobseekers to reduce the working-time sought when they belong to social groups that are overexposed to part-time employment, especially in Germany, thus reproducing inequalities, particularly gender inequality. They also promote part-time employment when it suits the quantified activity monitoring. This is notably the case in the German agencies for long-term unemployed.
The third part of the dissertation focuses on the political dimension of software used to match job offers with people. It highlights elective affinities between matching criteria and employment forms. Criteria differ in Germany (users can only choose between “part-time” and “full-time”) and in France (users choose weekly hours, e.g., “25-35 hours”). Thus, German users are not able to reject job offers under a certain hourly floor. Moreover, each system involves but masks relations between working time and other employment characteristics, like wages or contracts.
Across these chapters, the dissertation reveals pervasive working-time conflicts within unemployment agencies, explaining why some caseworkers promote part-time employment and how the internal organization of public employment services directly regulates labor markets.
Negotiating Insecurity? A Comparative Study of Collective Bargaining in Retail Food in Canada, Germany, Sweden and the United States
Sean O’Brady, Assistant Professor at DeGroote School of Business (McMaster University), PhD (2018) from Université de Montréal
This thesis examines the effects of collective bargaining strategies on economic risk in low-skilled service work. I examined how unions and managers confronted pressures driving wage instability, scheduling uncertainty, and the erosion of traditional employee benefits in food retail internationally. The research is based on qualitative case studies of collective bargaining dynamics in eight supermarket chains across four countries—Canada, Germany, Sweden, and the United States—over time (1980-2016). Nearly 100 interviews were carried out and complemented by an assessment of collective agreements and other documents.
The first contribution is a conception of risk. I highlight how risks unfold through trends in generosity (levels of resources), individualization (shifts away from models where risks are borne by employers or the state), and segmentation (the extent to which risks are relegated to certain types of workers). I show how institutional and organizational pressures affect these dimensions in different ways. The second key contribution pertains to the effect of collective bargaining strategies on risk. Union mobilization was most effective at resisting the pressures that drive risk. This is especially true where union mobilization can enforce common labor standards across firms through sectorial or pattern bargaining. I also show that management strategies are embedded in contexts shaped by institutions and power, and that collective bargaining can nudge managers toward high-road strategies with respect to risk. The thesis concludes by insisting that unions, employers, and the state should rethink their approach to issues that matter to risk, such as the lack of support for sectorial bargaining in North America.
Nations as Destinations: Analyzing Tourist Source-Markets as Local Fields of Global Circulation
Tim Rosenkranz, PhD (2019) in Sociology from the New School for Social Research
This dissertation examines national imagination—the ongoing cultural production of the nation—as an economic activity of national development that takes place in global markets outside of the nation-state’s territorial borders. Based on 16 months of field research, this study analyzes the practices and relations of such expanded national imagination through a global ethnography of national destination marketing in tourism in India and the United States. I show how national destination marketing constitutes a global commodification process that transforms the nation into an object of the work of the national marketing agencies, the evaluations of extra-national professional intermediaries, and the demands of potential consumers in global markets.
In an accelerating global circulation of mobile resources, from capital and labor to consumers such as tourists, the production of an attractive image has become an economic asset for nation-states. To manage their image production, nation-states have instituted official marketing organizations, called National Tourism Offices (NTOs). The German NTO, for example, has marketing offices in New Delhi for the Indian market and in New York for the U.S. market. These NTO-marketing branches cooperate with the local travel industry to manage, produce, and circulate desirable national narratives meant to attract potential tourists. I have analyzed the marketing activities of 45 different nation-states in India and the U.S.
This case study establishes a link between the commodification and the cultural intermediation of national imagination within global markets. It contributes to current global approaches to the nation that show how the expectations of global consumers frame national policies of development and produce or amplify social inequalities. Instead of conceptualizing such perceptions as externalized global market forces, my research focuses on how these expectations are professionally managed and produced through extra-national cultural intermediaries and local experts with their own economic interests. Advancing the socio-economic understanding of commodification and commodity production, I theorize that the nation as tourist destination presents an imagined commodity: Although it never manifests as actual property for exchange in global markets, the nation nonetheless becomes the object of complex, contingent, and continuous social relationships of imagination and evaluation in a global process of production and consumption.
Multinational Corporations in Local Politics: Actors, Relations and Corporate Political Actions (Argentina, 2003-2015)
Alejandro Dulitzky, Centro de Investigación para los Trabajadores-Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas (CITRA-CONICET), PhD (2018) from National University of Buenos Aires
Despite the economic relevance of multinational corporations, especially for developing countries, their involvement in politics has received little attention. This thesis draws from the sociology of organizations, economics, the sociology of elites, and studies on political action to study how, when, and why multinational corporations participate in local politics, using both qualitative and quantitative analysis.
I examine Argentina during the Kirchner’s government (2003-2015). Foreign capital has always played a central role in Argentina’s economy but, during this period of what has been called a “left turn” in Latin American politics, the government showed a marked tendency toward state intervention, a low commitment to international relations, and a preference for local over foreign capital. Although it is possible to identify a small decrease in the role played by multinational corporations, there was no decline, but rather an increase in aggregate FDI during the period, suggesting that the retreat of multinational corporations had more to do with local political dynamics than with a shift in global capital movements. I ask: to what extent did the economic policies deployed by the Kirchners condition the political strategies of multinational corporations—and at the same time, what role did foreign corporations have in the decisions made by the government?
I analyze the relationship between corporations and local politics through four lenses: their collective organization, the makeup of their leaderships, their relationships with the government during the period, and their political actions. My research is based on primary and secondary sources, including in-depth interviews, public documents, and newspaper articles, among others. These data are used to create a sample focused on 73 corporations from 2003 to 2015, including 86 national business associations, 158 track records of company leaders, 78 public policies put in place by the governments with direct impact on these companies, 1,667 public hearings involving public officials and business representatives, and 491 statements in the press by corporate leaders.
I use this data to elucidate the relationship between multinational corporations and local politics. First, foreign companies give a central role to collective organization in their political strategies. Second, chief managers are chosen with the global needs and interests of the corporation in mind, disregarding the particularities of the local scenario. Finally, I find no indication that the political actions of multinational corporations are substantially different from those of other big private corporations such as local multinational, national, or mixed companies.
Have you finished your PhD project? Is the end in sight? Do you want the world to know about your research? The SASE newsletter is looking for presentations of finished, or nearly finished, PhD projects on socio-economic topics. Let us know about the theoretical insights and empirical results that have resulted from those years of hard work. Wherever you come from or whatever your topic, as long as it is related to socio-economics, we would love to hear from you. Send us an abstract of approximately 400 words sketching the research and results, and we will feature it in the newsletter (space permitting).
Send submissions to saseexecutive@sase.org