Arne L. Kalleberg: Precarious Lives: Job Insecurity and Well-Being in Rich Democracies

Date: 

Monday, April 9, 2018, 12:15pm to 1:30pm

Location: 

Land Hall (Belfer 400)

Arne L. Kalleberg, Kenan Distinguished Professor of Sociology, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Arne L. KallebergSociologist Arne Kalleberg will be talking about his newest book, Precarious Lives: Job Insecurity and Well-Being in Rich Democracies, forthcoming from Polity Press, July 2018.

Abstract

Employment relations in advanced, post-industrial democracies have become increasingly insecure and uncertain as the risks associated with work are being shifted from employers and governments to workers.

Precarious Lives, by Arne L. KallebergThis book examines the impact of the liberalization of labor markets and welfare systems on the growth of precarious work and job insecurity for indicators of well-being such as economic insecurity, the transition to adulthood, family formation, and happiness, in six advanced capitalist democracies: the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, Japan, Spain, and Denmark. The cross-national analysis demonstrates how active labor market policies and generous social welfare systems can help to protect workers and give employers latitude as they seek to adapt to the rise of national and global competition and the rapidity of sweeping technological changes. Such policies thereby form elements of a new social contract that offers the potential for addressing many of the major challenges resulting from the rise of precarious work.


About the author

Arne L. Kalleberg is a Kenan Distinguished Professor of Sociology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He also holds adjunct professorships in the Kenan-Flagler Business School, the Department of Public Policy, and the Curriculum in Global Studies at UNC Chapel Hill.

Kalleberg served as the Secretary of the American Sociological Association in 2001-2004 and as its President in 2007-2008. He is currently the editor of Social Forces, an International Journal of Social Research.

Kalleberg is the author or editor of 14 books. His Good Jobs, Bad Jobs: The Rise of Polarized and Precarious Employment Systems in the United States, 1970s-2000s, published by the Russell Sage Foundation, won the Academy of Management's 2012 George R. Terry Award for “Outstanding Contribution to the Advancement of Management Knowledge" and the American Sociological Association’s Section on Inequality, Poverty and Mobility 2013 Best Book Award, 

He received his B.A. from Brooklyn College and his M.S. and Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin at Madison. He was previously a Professor of Sociology at Indiana University in Bloomington.

Read his Footnotes bio
By Peter V. Marsden, Harvard University
In early 1971, at the age of 22, Arne Kalleberg was mismatched. About to graduate from Brooklyn College, the first member of his immigrant family to earn a college degree, he experienced some difficulty entering the labor market for his “first real job.”  Read more »

Learn more about Arne L. Kalleberg's work
arnekalleberg.web.unc.edu

 

 

See also: Spring 2018