Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Many writings emphasize repressive aspects of authoritarian regimes and resistance against them from society. Paying attention to long-standing stability of the Park Chung Hee regime (1961-1979), this paper attempts to investigate one way in which repressive regimes generate political legitimacy and examines class politics as a ruling strategy of the regime and its reactions. In the 1960s, both working class and middle class were the beneficiaries of a rapid economic developmental project and pseudo-hegemony was formed corresponding to the expansion of the total economic scale. However, the social base for popular support attenuated in the 1970s as income disparity deepened and political repression grew severe. At times when anti-regime worker mobilization intensified, the urban middle class opted for the status quo aligning themselves with state ideology. In short, working class exclusion and middle class inclusion constituted the central mechanism for the generation of regime legitimacy and the necessary political coalition between the working and middle classes for wide opposition and democratization was blocked.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Work is a ubiquitous feature of life in modern American society. It structures people’s time in a way paralleled by little else. Yet, despite the universality of work, there are stark differences in work experiences across segments of the American populace. Specifically, race plays a defining role in structuring how people relate to work. Almost every imaginable indicator points to the distinctive experiences of African-Americans, Asian Americans and Latinos in the workplace. Job satisfaction, job authority, wages and much more vary along lines of race, generally to the disadvantage of people of color. What are the political implications of the differential ways racialized populations experience the workplace, its benefits and its disadvantages? In this paper, I use survey data and in-depth interview data to detail the association between work and politics. I focus on the perceptions and experiences of racially and economically marginalized people in the workplace and the consequences thereof for their political attitudes and actions. While previous research has explored the relationship between work and politics, none of it has done so with an eye toward the unique experiences of marginalized people.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This study applies the concept of intersectionality to Black women’s entrepreneurial activity. Specifically, I address the ways in which race, gender, and class intersect to inform working-class Black women’s decisions and experiences as hair salon owners. By placing Black women at the center of analysis, I explore business ownership from the perspective of a group that has frequently been overlooked in sociology of entrepreneurship research. My findings indicate that race, gender, and class create a very different picture of entrepreneurship for Black women than that which is revealed through existing research and scholarship.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This paper aims to investigate how family, labor market and the state policies diversely shape working class women's work experiences in Mexico City, Mexico and Istanbul, Turkey. While Mexico and Turkey show similarities in terms of their economic structures and economic policies since the 1980s, working class women have different working experiences. Working class women's diverse work experiences can be understood with a holistic approach taking into consideration the interconnections between multiple institutions. Social institutions such as the family, the work and the state are organized according to the unwritten and written rules of gender ideology. Working class women face different patriarchal practices embedded in these institutions of Mexico as well as Turkey. While labor market dynamics that working class women encounter are similar in Mexico and Turkey, divergences in the family structures and state policies are the main factors behind their women's different work experiences. While the importance of mahrem (privacy) and namus (honor), the strict private/public domain distinction, intensive flow of women's labor towards family members and the lack of women-friendly policies discourage women's labor force participation in Turkey, different definition of masculinity and family structure, intergenerational female support system, women's relatively higher mobility (rural-to-urban and in the urban areas) and certain policies in Mexico are more likely to encourage women to work in Mexico. Analysis and arguments of this paper are based on in-depth interviews I conducted with 40 working class women, both within and outside the labor force in Mexico City, Mexico and Istanbul, Turkey.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: The placement of the middle class above the working class in conceptions of the social class hierarchy does not reflect a working class viewpoint. Interviews with blue-collar men working in construction or in factories revealed a consensus that blue-collar work is preferred over white-collar work for a number of reasons. These men all agreed that accepting white-collar jobs would mean giving up meaningful, intrinsically rewarding work that is a source of pride. Informants recognize that the general standing that their job has, using the words of the NORC survey upon which occupational prestige rankings are based, is low relative to white-collar work, but they disagree with that determination. Middle class disdain for blue-collar work, they argue, is based in ignorance. The design of this research allowed for the inclusion of a variety of job categories across two vastly different occupations, it allowed workmen to describe their occupational experience in their own words to an interviewer that shared their class identity, and it did not assume blue-collar work to be positive or negative. These qualities are reflected in conclusions that are not consistent with dominant conceptions of the social order.