Relational Inequalities

An Organizational Approach

Donald Tomaskovic-Devey and Dustin Avent-Holt

Provides a new theory of inequality stressing the role of intersectional relationships in their organizational and institutional contexts
Emphasizes the variation across organizations in inequality regimes, and provides a comparative organizational design methodology to study inequalities
Rejects individual models of inequality to provide the first fully developed economic sociology of inequality
Provides a series of cross-national and historical case studies based on both qualitative and quantitative methodologies
Ideal for use in a range of courses on inequality and stratification; race, class, and gender; organizations; and work

Relational Inequalities

An Organizational Approach

Donald Tomaskovic-Devey and Dustin Avent-Holt

Description

Organizations are the dominant social invention for generating resources and distributing them. Relational Inequalities develops a general sociological and organizational analysis of inequality, exploring the processes that generate inequalities in access to respect, resources, and rewards. Framing their analysis through a relational account of social and economic life, Donald Tomaskovic-Devey and Dustin Avent-Holt explain how resources are generated and distributed both within and between organizations. They show that inequalities are produced through generic processes that occur in all social relationships: categorization and their resulting status hierarchies, organizational resource pooling, exploitation, social closure, and claims-making. Drawing on a wide range of case studies, Tomaskovic-Devey and Avent-Holt focus on the workplace as the primary organization for generating inequality and provide a series of global goals to advance both a comparative organizational research model and to challenge troubling inequalities.

Relational Inequalities

An Organizational Approach

Donald Tomaskovic-Devey and Dustin Avent-Holt

Chapter 1. Generating Inequalities
Relational Inequality Theory
How Else Do Social Scientists Think About Inequality?
Status Attainment and Human Capital Theories
Conventional Economics
Heterodox Economics
Institutional Political Economy
Thinking Relationally
Plan of the Book

Chapter 2. Observing Inequalities
From There to Here?
Comparative Organizational Research Exemplars
Class Inequality Regimes in Institutional Context
Inequality Regimes in Interactional Context
Comparisons of Ethnographic Cases

Chapter 3. Relational Inequality Theory
Building Blocks of Relational Inequality
Categorization
Organizations
Generic Inequality Generating Processes
Exploitation and Social Closure
Claims-Making
Contextual Variation in Generic Processes
Organizational Resources
Institutional Variation

Chapter 4. Organizational Inequality Regimes
The Ubiquity of Regime Variation
Gender Wage Gaps in Japan and the U.S.
Immigrant Status and Skill Distinction in Sweden
Education, Gender and Immigrant Status and German Wage Gaps
Elements of Inequality Regimes
Resource Levels
National Institutions
Organizational Rules and Practices
Local Organizational Cultures
Intersectionality

Chapter 5. Exploitation
Conceptualizing Exploitation
Observing Exploitation
Comparing Firm Productivity to Wages Paid and Profits Extracted
Rising Income Inequality
Exploitation across Categorical Distinctions in Linked Employer-Employee Analyses
How does Exploitation Happen?
Exploitation on the Shop Floor and in the Office Corridor
Total Exploitation
Exploitation in Institutional Context

Chapter 6. Social Closure
Conceptualizing Social Closure
Observing Closure Processes
Organizational Data Matched to Employees
Ethnographic accounts of closure processes
Integrating Science and Engineering Fields
Gender and Engineering in the Age of Affirmative Action

Chapter 7. Relational Claims Making
Conceptualizing Claims Making
Legitimacy and Claims-Making
Observing Claims Making
Claims Making and the Labor Process
Negotiating Work-Family Relationships
Claims Making and Wages
Claims Making and Dignity
Neoliberalism and the Legitimacy of Claims
Organized Labor
Financialization
Mobilizing Claims in Cultural Context

Chapter 8. Organizational Surplus and Rising Inequalities
Market Power
Closure, Exploitation, and Power in Markets
Relationality and Market Closure in Biotech Innovation
Institutionalizing Airline Monopolies
Embedded Exchange and the Limits of Exploitation
Linking Organizational Inequality and Resource Pooling
Financialization and Shifting Claims
Reconfiguring Organizational Boundaries to Monopolize Surplus

Chapter 9. Expanding the Moral Circle
Implications for Social Science
RIT and the Politics of Egalitarianism
From Tribalism to Universalism
From Hierarchy to Organizational Citizenship
From Markets to Dignity
Institutional and Organizational Politics
Destabilize Status Hierarchies
Increase the Bargaining Power of the Least Powerful
Reduce Organizational Resource Inequalities

Relational Inequalities

An Organizational Approach

Donald Tomaskovic-Devey and Dustin Avent-Holt

Author Information

Donald Tomaskovic-Devey is a Professor of Sociology at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He has been a leading proponent of organizational approaches to inequality. His work major works include examinations of the birth of what we now call neoliberalism, the financialization of the US economy, and workplace racial and gender desegregation since the 1964 US Civil Rights Act. Currently he is developing general theory around inequality as well as deepening scholarly and public access to organizational data on inequalities.

Dustin Avent-Holt is an Associate Professor of Sociology at Augusta University. He focuses on the causes and consequences of social inequalities, particularly as they intersect with organizations and markets. His empirical work has primarily examined the various processes through which social relations within workplaces produce income inequalities.

Relational Inequalities

An Organizational Approach

Donald Tomaskovic-Devey and Dustin Avent-Holt

Reviews and Awards

Winner of the American Sociological Association Section on Inequality, Poverty, and Mobility Outstanding Book Award
2019 CHOICE Outstanding Academic Title

"Brilliant book." -- Simon Cramp, simoncramp's Blog