Ithaca College

 Stephen Sweet (Associate Professor of Sociology) and co-author Peter Meiksins (Professor of Sociology at Cleveland State University) have the second edition of their book Changing Contours of Work: Jobs and Opportunities in the New Economy accepted for publication.  This book is part of Sage Publication's Sociology for a New Century Series. 

 Changing Contours of Work considers shifts in job opportunities resulting from long term changes in markets, technologies, organizational designs, and the bonds that link individuals to work.  The revised edition extends analysis of these shifts through the current economic downturn, showing how it has continued and even accelerated trends such as increased income inequality, the expansion of risk, and racial and ethnic conflict in labor markets.  The book argues the new economy is not a complete departure from the industrial economy of the past; it contains elements both of the old and of the new.  Like the old industrial economy, it is divided on many levels.  The divides - sometimes persistent, and sometimes expanding - separate the affluent from the disadvantaged, women from men, racial minorities from whites, secure workers from the insecure, and the time-strapped from the under-employed. 
  
However, this is not a pessimistic book.  Although persistent problems remain, the second edition details the advancement and promise of legislation to regulate the terms of employment, as well as the ways that individuals, activist groups, organized labor, employers, and governments can work together to build an economy that better serves the interests of working families. 
  
Among the new features in the second edition is a new chapter on changes in products and ways of working, a new chapter on economic divides, and expanded discussions of flexible work arrangements.   The second edition also explores, throughout, the ways in which the 2008 economic downturn grew out of, and magnified, the changes already under way in previous decades.   Completely updated statistical reference points, as well as summaries of recent research and legislation (concerning work-related issues such as immigration, health care reform, and public sector unionization) are included.  The information presented reveals how much work and opportunity have changed in the past three to four decades, and how much is likely to change in the foreseeable future.