Professor
Mark Ellis, Smith 406C
Office
Hours: Tuesday 3:45-4:45pm and by appointment.
Phone:
206 616 6207
Email:
ellism@u.washington.edu
Course
Web Page: http://courses.washington.edu/geog439/
This
class focuses on work for men and women of different racial and ethnic
backgrounds in American cities. It
examines various explanations for differences in employment outcomes between
groups, emphasizing the importance of the spatial divisions of labor, and the
spatial impact of economic restructuring in these explanations. Several topics are covered in detail. The course
begins by overviewing trends in work, both paid and unpaid, and their relation
to the development of American industrial capitalism and urbanization. It then turns to the geography of employment
and residence in American cities focusing in particular on the impact of gender
relations on commuting; the spatial mismatch hypothesis--or the impact of the
suburbanization of employment on minority groups. The course finishes with an examination of immigration’s impact
on the employment opportunities of the native-born. Throughout the course students will learn the critical role that
space plays in structuring employment opportunity and difference, especially by
gender and race.
Text:
Course Reader--weekly readings assigned below. Available at RAMS 4144 University Way.
Exam
1: 35% On
February 11
Exam
2: 35% On March 13
Review
Essay: 30% Due March 4
Exams:
The exams will be two essay questions. I will give you at least five questions
a few days before each exam from which I will select two for the exam.
Review
essay :I will assign an essay question based on a
series of papers by week 4. The intent
of this essay is for you to review and synthesize the material in the papers
and reach a conclusion that addresses the question. I will explain more about the review essay as the term
progresses. The essay must be typed
(double-spaced) and about 10 pages long (no more than 12 pages, no less than
9. Late work will be judged harshly).
1. What is Work?
Tilly
C and Tilly C. 1998. Work Under Capitalism. Boulder: Westview.
Chapter 2: Worlds of Work.
Blau,
F.D. and Ferber, M.A. 1992. The Economics of Women, Men and Work.
Englewood Cliffs NJ: Prentice Hall. 2nd Edition. Chapter 4: The Allocation of Time Between
the Household and the Labor Market.
2. How Has Work Changed Over Time?
Tilly
C and Tilly C. 1998. Work Under Capitalism. Boulder: Westview.
Chapter 7: How Work has Changed, How Work Changes.
Schor,
J.B. 1992. The Overworked
American. Chapter 4: Overwork in the
Household.
3. Who Works at Home? Historical Trends and Geographical Variation in the Labor Force
Participation of Men and Women
Spain,
D and S M Bianchi 1997. Balancing Act; Motherhood, Marriage and Employment
Among American Women, New York: Russell Sage. Chapter 4: Labor Force Participation and Occupational
Attainment
Odland,
J. and Ellis M. 1998. Variation in the Labor Force Experience of Women Across
Large Metropolitan Areas in the United States.
Regional Studies 32:4, pp 333-347.
4. How Have the Social and Spatial Divisions
of Labor in American Cities Changed Over Time?
Walker
R. 1981. A Theory of
Suburbanization. In Dear and Scott
(eds) Urbanization and Urban Planning in Capitalist Society,
Methuen. pp 385-405
Gordon,
DM. 1978. Capitalist Development and
the History of American Cities. In Tabb
and Sawers (eds) Marxism and the Metropolis. Oxford University Press,
pp25-63.
5.
What are Local Labor Markets?
Scott,
A.J. 1988. Metropolis. Chapter 7: Local Labor Markets in the
Metropolis, pp 119-140.
Scott,
A.J. 1988. Metropolis. Chapter 8: Territorial Reproduction and
Transformation in a Local Labor Market: The Animated Film Workers of Los
Angeles, pp141-159.
Scott,
A.J. 1993. Technopolis. Chapter 9: Electronics Assembly Workers in
Southern California, pp179-200.
6. How
Do People Get Jobs?
Mark
Granovetter, 1995, Getting a Job, Chicago: Chicago University Press,
Chapters 1 and 2.
Tilly
C and Tilly C. 1998. Work Under Capitalism. Boulder: Westview.
Chapter 9: Inequality at Work:
Hiring
Falcon
L and Melendez E. 2001 Racial and
Ethnic Differences in Job Searching in Urban Centers. In O’Connor, Tilly and Bobo (eds.) Urban Inequality: Evidence
from Four Cities. Russell Sage.
7. What Jobs Do People Do? How Much Do People Earn?
Reskin,
B and I Padavic 1994. Women and Men at Work, Pine Forge Press. Chapter
4: Sex Segregation in the Workplace.
King,
M.C. 1992. Occupational Segregation by Race and Sex, 1940-88. Monthly Labor
Review. 115: 30-37.
Spain, D and S M Bianchi 1997. Balancing
Act; Motherhood, Marriage and Employment Among American Women, New York:
Russell Sage Chapter 5: Earnings.
Hecker, D.E. 1998. Earnings of College
Graduates: Women Compared with Men. Monthly
Labor Review. 121(3): 62-71.
8.
Space and Gender: The Spatial Entrapment of Women?
Hanson, S and G. Pratt. 1991. Job
Search and the Occupational Segregation of Women, , Annals of the
Association of American Geographers, 81: 229-253.
Nelson,
K. 1986. Labor Demand, Labor Supply, and the Suburbanization of Low Wage Office
Work, In Production Work and Territory, A.J. Scott and M. Storper (eds),
Boston: Allen and Unwin, 149-171.
9.
Space and Race: A Spatial Mismatch?
Kain,
JF. 1968. Housing segregation, Negro employment,
and metropolitan decentralization. Quarterly
Journal of Economics, 82: 175-197.
Fernandez,
R.M. Race, Space, and Job Accessibility: Evidence from a Plant Relocation. Economic Geography 70: 390-416.
Tilly
C, Moss P, Kirschenman J, and Kennelly I. 2001. Space as a Signal: How Employers Perceive Neighborhoods in Four
Metropolitan Labor Markets. In
O’Connor, Tilly and Bobo (eds.) Urban Inequality: Evidence from Four Cities.
Russell Sage.
10. Immigration and the Ethnic Division of
Labor: Do Immigrants Adversely Impact
the Labor Market Outcomes of the Native-Born?
Borjas, G. 1990. Friends or Strangers, New York: Basic Books. Chapter 5:
The Impact of Immigrants on Native Earnings and Employment.
Ellis,
M and Wright R. 1999.“The industrial division of labor among immigrants and
migrants to the Los Angeles Economy” International Migration Review 33:
26-54.