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4415 - The Sociology of Worker Ownership: New Data Sets and Research Approaches

Tue, August 11, 2:30 to 4:10pm PDT (2:30 to 4:10pm PDT), Hilton San Francisco Union Square, Floor: Ballroom Level, Continental 1

Session Submission Type: Workshop

Description

Inspired by the annual meeting theme “Power, Inequality, and Resistance at Work,” this workshop will explore data sets and research approaches for studying worker-owned workplaces from a variety of sociological perspectives.
Through a combination of lecture, dialogue and small group discussion, participants will be introduced to five unique data sets that each, in different ways, illuminate worker ownership in economic organizations and its relationship to worker empowerment, racial and gender equity, political engagement, economic security, and other outcomes of sociological interest.
Presenters, who themselves built or work with these data, will highlight the features, strengths and limitations of each data set and share their own methodological strategies, providing useful guidance for current and future researchers alike. Following presentations, participants will form small groups for deeper discussion.
The study of worker ownership cuts across sociological literatures in organizations, occupations and work; inequality, poverty and mobility; and labor movements. It intersects with several key debates, from envisioning real utopias (Wright 2010), to democracy and inequality (Blasi, Freeman, and Kruse 2013) to the solidarity economy (Borowiak 2019), to questions of precarity (Butler 2004, Standing 2011).
A growing empirical literature has documented the role worker ownership may already serve as a tool of racial and gender equity (Boguslaw et al. 2019) and a source of meaningful financial benefits for workers and communities (Wiefek 2017). Other research points to the emancipatory potential of worker cooperatives to transform and democratize the capitalist employment relationship (Meyers and Vallas 2016).
In the context of the rapidly changing structure of work and the polarization of wealth in advanced capitalism, these “alternative,” more equitable structures for organizing and rewarding work merit increased sociological attention.
Workshop participants will gain familiarity with five unique data sets, most publicly available, for researching these alternative economic forms and their impact.

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