Call Centers and the Global Division of Labor

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Author :
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1135118671
Total Pages : 249 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (351 download)

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Book Synopsis Call Centers and the Global Division of Labor by : Andrew J.R. Stevens

Download or read book Call Centers and the Global Division of Labor written by Andrew J.R. Stevens and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-03-26 with total page 249 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Call centers have come, in the last three decades, to define the interaction between corporations, governments, and other institutions and their respective customers, citizens, and members. The offshoring and outsourcing of call center employment, part of the larger information technology and information-technology-enabled services sectors, continues to be a growing practice amongst governments and corporations in their attempts at controlling costs and providing new services. While incredible advances in technology have permitted the use of distant and "offshore" labor forces, the grander reshaping of an international political economy of communications has allowed for the acceleration of these processes. New and established labor unions have responded to these changes in the global regimes of work by seeking to organize call center workers. These efforts have been assisted by a range of forces, not least of which is the condition of work itself, but also attempts by global union federations to build a bridge between international unionism and local organizing campaigns in the Global South and Global North. Through an examination of trade union interventions in the call center industries located in Canada and India, this book contributes to research on post-industrial employment by using political economy as a juncture between development studies, the sociology of work, and labor studies.

Working at the Interface

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Author :
Publisher : Merlin Press
ISBN 13 : 9780850367003
Total Pages : 157 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (67 download)

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Book Synopsis Working at the Interface by : Ursula Huws

Download or read book Working at the Interface written by Ursula Huws and published by Merlin Press. This book was released on 2009 with total page 157 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Call centres illustrate the consequences of globalisation for labour perhaps more clearly than any other form of employment. Call-centre workers sit at the interface between the global and the local, having to transcend the limitations of local time zones, cultures and speech patterns. They are also at the interface between companies and their customers, having to absorb the impact of anger, incomprehension, confusion and racist abuse whilst still meeting exacting productivity targets and staying calm and friendly. Finally, they take the brunt of the conflict at the contested interface between production and consumption, having to deal in their personal lives with the conflicts between the demands of paid and unpaid work. Drawing, amongst others, on organisational theory, sociology, communications studies, industrial relations, economic geography, gender theory and political economy, this important collection brings together survey evidence from around the world with case studies and vivid first-hand accounts of life in call centres from Asia, North and South America, Western and Eastern Europe.In the process it reveals many similarities but also demonstrates that national industrial relations traditions and workers' ability to negotiate can make a significant difference to the quality of working life in call centres.

Feminist Global Political Economies of the Everyday

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Author :
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 135133607X
Total Pages : 148 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (513 download)

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Book Synopsis Feminist Global Political Economies of the Everyday by : Juanita Elias

Download or read book Feminist Global Political Economies of the Everyday written by Juanita Elias and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-12-07 with total page 148 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This collection interrogates the multifaceted ways in which global transformations are constituted by deeply gendered socio-economic practices at the level of the ‘everyday’. It brings feminist insights to bear on the emerging International Political Economy (IPE) debates about ‘the everyday’, showing how gender is key to understanding how political economy is enacted and performed at the local level, by non-elites, and via various cultural practices. Drawing on ‘everyday’ IPE and a longer-standing body of feminist scholarship that documents and theorizes the mutually constitutive nature of, on the one hand, global markets, and on the other, households, families, relations of social reproduction and gendered socio-economic practices, this collection charts the lived realities of people and communities across a wide range of sites and spaces of the global political economy. It considers how globalizing capitalism affects and is in turn affected by Argentine sex workers, Nepalese private security contractors, Canadian call centre workers, Southeast Asian domestic workers, workers and players in British bingo halls, working class households in the UK, and much more. It demonstrates, through detailed empirical research, that a gender lens is crucial for understanding how, and on what terms, individuals and households are becoming ever more enmeshed in capitalist social relations, and how they actively and creatively resist these processes. The chapters originally published as a special issue in Globalizations.

Language Put to Work

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Author :
Publisher : Springer
ISBN 13 : 1349952443
Total Pages : 306 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (499 download)

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Book Synopsis Language Put to Work by : Enda Brophy

Download or read book Language Put to Work written by Enda Brophy and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-08-11 with total page 306 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: WINNER of The Gertrude J. Robinson Book Prize, awarded by the Canadian Communication Association, and the Canadian Association of Work and Labour Studies, Book of the Year Award. This book examines the striking rise of call centres over the past quarter century through the lens of the resistance and collective organizing generated by workers along the digital assembly lines. Drawing on field research in Atlantic Canada, Ireland, Italy, and New Zealand, Enda Brophy investigates the contested making of the transnational call centre workforce and its integration into the circuits of global capitalism. Moving beyond depictions of call centre labour as either entirely liberated or utterly subordinated, Language Put to Work inquires into the forms of work refusal and insubordination provoked by the spread of these communicative workplaces, including informal strategies of quitting, slacking and sabotage, conventional trade union activity, tactical innovations at the margins of the labour movement, and forms of self-organization forged by workers outside of the established trade union movement. Weaving rich empirical evidence together with political-economic analysis and theories of resistance, this book argues that the submission of language to the production of value in the call centre is a process of proletarianization rather than professionalization, and that the new working class has widely opposed this transformation.

Salvadoran Imaginaries

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Publisher : Rutgers University Press
ISBN 13 : 0813571839
Total Pages : 202 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (135 download)

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Book Synopsis Salvadoran Imaginaries by : Cecilia M. Rivas

Download or read book Salvadoran Imaginaries written by Cecilia M. Rivas and published by Rutgers University Press. This book was released on 2014-03-31 with total page 202 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Ravaged by civil war throughout the 1980s and 1990s, El Salvador has now emerged as a study in contradictions. It is a country where urban call centers and shopping malls exist alongside rural poverty. It is a land now at peace but still grappling with a legacy of violence. It is a place marked by deep social divides, yet offering a surprising abundance of inclusive spaces. Above all, it is a nation without borders, as widespread emigration during the war has led Salvadorans to develop a truly transnational sense of identity. In Salvadoran Imaginaries, Cecilia M. Rivas takes us on a journey through twenty-first century El Salvador and to the diverse range of sites where the nation’s postwar identity is being forged. Combining field ethnography with media research, Rivas deftly toggles between the physical spaces where the new El Salvador is starting to emerge and the virtual spaces where Salvadoran identity is being imagined, including newspapers, literature, and digital media. This interdisciplinary approach enables her to explore the multitude of ways that Salvadorans negotiate between reality and representation, between local neighborhoods and transnational imagined communities, between present conditions and dreams for the future. Everyday life in El Salvador may seem like a simple matter, but Rivas digs deeper, across many different layers of society, revealing a wealth of complex feelings that the nation’s citizens have about power, opportunity, safety, migration, and community. Filled with first-hand interviews and unique archival research, Salvadoran Imaginaries offers a fresh take on an emerging nation and its people.

Job Quality in an Era of Flexibility

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Author :
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1351358529
Total Pages : 219 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (513 download)

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Book Synopsis Job Quality in an Era of Flexibility by : Tommy Isidorsson

Download or read book Job Quality in an Era of Flexibility written by Tommy Isidorsson and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-09-27 with total page 219 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the era of flexibility. Under constant pressure to be adaptable, organizations increasingly adopt employment practices such as zero-hours contracts, the casualization of the workforce and the use of temporary and agency labour. These flexible practices are central to debates about the changing nature of job quality and its causes, trends and consequences. Arguing that job quality is central to understanding contemporary work, this book explores the internal and external pressures for flexibility in workplaces, professions and sectors and how this pressure shapes workers’ experiences of job quality. By studying job quality dynamics via case studies from organizations and occupations in the UK, Poland, Belgium and Sweden, the volumes illustrates the diversity of practices and experiences, as well as market pressures and institutional arrangements which effect working lives. Finally, the editors propose a policy debate on the new concept "flexiquality" - a combination of flexibility and job quality that can be beneficial for both management and workers.

The Oxford Handbook of Feminist Theory

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Publisher : Oxford University Press
ISBN 13 : 0190623616
Total Pages : 1088 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (96 download)

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Book Synopsis The Oxford Handbook of Feminist Theory by : Lisa Disch

Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of Feminist Theory written by Lisa Disch and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2018-02-01 with total page 1088 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Oxford Handbook of Feminist Theory provides a rich overview of the analytical frameworks and theoretical concepts that feminist theorists have developed to analyze the known world. Featuring leading feminist theorists from diverse regions of the globe, this collection delves into forty-nine subject areas, demonstrating the complexity of feminist challenges to established knowledge, while also engaging areas of contestation within feminist theory. Demonstrating the interdisciplinary nature of feminist theory, the chapters offer innovative analyses of topics central to social and political science, cultural studies and humanities, discourses associated with medicine and science, and issues in contemporary critical theory that have been transformed through feminist theorization. The handbook identifies limitations of key epistemic assumptions that inform traditional scholarship and shows how theorizing from women's and men's lives has profound effects on the conceptualization of central categories, whether the field of analysis is aesthetics, biology, cultural studies, development, economics, film studies, health, history, literature, politics, religion, science studies, sexualities, violence, or war.

International Encyclopedia of Human Geography

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Publisher : Elsevier
ISBN 13 : 0081022964
Total Pages : 7278 pages
Book Rating : 4.0/5 (81 download)

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Book Synopsis International Encyclopedia of Human Geography by :

Download or read book International Encyclopedia of Human Geography written by and published by Elsevier. This book was released on 2019-11-29 with total page 7278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: International Encyclopedia of Human Geography, Second Edition, Fourteen Volume Set embraces diversity by design and captures the ways in which humans share places and view differences based on gender, race, nationality, location and other factors—in other words, the things that make people and places different. Questions of, for example, politics, economics, race relations and migration are introduced and discussed through a geographical lens. This updated edition will assist readers in their research by providing factual information, historical perspectives, theoretical approaches, reviews of literature, and provocative topical discussions that will stimulate creative thinking. Presents the most up-to-date and comprehensive coverage on the topic of human geography Contains extensive scope and depth of coverage Emphasizes how geographers interact with, understand and contribute to problem-solving in the contemporary world Places an emphasis on how geography is relevant in a social and interdisciplinary context

Developments in the Call Centre Industry

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Author :
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1134248822
Total Pages : 208 pages
Book Rating : 4.1/5 (342 download)

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Book Synopsis Developments in the Call Centre Industry by : Julia Connell

Download or read book Developments in the Call Centre Industry written by Julia Connell and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2006-09-27 with total page 208 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over the past ten years there has been a massive growth in call centres worldwide. These centres are said to represent the most dynamic growth area in white-collar employment internationally since the mid 1990s. Yet the footloose and global nature of the industry means that jobs will always be susceptible to outsourced operations, ICT developments, public sector subsidization of business restructuring and re-location, and cheaper operations elsewhere. This book conducts a thorough analysis of this modern phenomenon.

The New Division of Labor

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Author :
Publisher : Princeton University Press
ISBN 13 : 1400845920
Total Pages : 187 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (8 download)

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Book Synopsis The New Division of Labor by : Frank Levy

Download or read book The New Division of Labor written by Frank Levy and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2012-11-26 with total page 187 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: As the current recession ends, many workers will not be returning to the jobs they once held--those jobs are gone. In The New Division of Labor, Frank Levy and Richard Murnane show how computers are changing the employment landscape and how the right kinds of education can ease the transition to the new job market. The book tells stories of people at work--a high-end financial advisor, a customer service representative, a pair of successful chefs, a cardiologist, an automotive mechanic, the author Victor Hugo, floor traders in a London financial exchange. The authors merge these stories with insights from cognitive science, computer science, and economics to show how computers are enhancing productivity in many jobs even as they eliminate other jobs--both directly and by sending work offshore. At greatest risk are jobs that can be expressed in programmable rules--blue collar, clerical, and similar work that requires moderate skills and used to pay middle-class wages. The loss of these jobs leaves a growing division between those who can and cannot earn a good living in the computerized economy. Left unchecked, the division threatens the nation's democratic institutions. The nation's challenge is to recognize this division and to prepare the population for the high-wage/high-skilled jobs that are rapidly growing in number--jobs involving extensive problem solving and interpersonal communication. Using detailed examples--a second grade classroom, an IBM managerial training program, Cisco Networking Academies--the authors describe how these skills can be taught and how our adjustment to the computerized workplace can begin in earnest.

Global Perspectives on Gender and Work

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Publisher : Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
ISBN 13 : 1461636809
Total Pages : 618 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (616 download)

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Book Synopsis Global Perspectives on Gender and Work by : Jacqueline Goodman

Download or read book Global Perspectives on Gender and Work written by Jacqueline Goodman and published by Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. This book was released on 2000-04-16 with total page 618 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Central to all our lives, work affects our status in the state, the family, and the economy. This comprehensive reader examines the myriad ways in which work—whether it is well-paid, unpaid, or underpaid—profoundly influences our roles in both the public and private spheres. Jacqueline Goodman has selected a key set of essays that examine influential arguments on such central themes as (1) the origins of the gendered division of labor; (2) historical trends and economic transformations that affect and are affected by women's position in market and non-market work; (3) the effects of occupational and job segregation by sex on status, pay, and promotion; (4) the ways in which formal and informal organizational culture shape and in turn are shaped by gender in professional and managerial positions; (5) class consciousness among wage-earning men and women; (6) the different forms of gender discrimination that women and men face in the workplace; (7) the problems working parents face and the ways in which different societies, subcultures, and genders cope; and (8) alternative approaches to improving the lives of working women and their families in the global economy. With its rich interdisciplinary perspective, this text is ideal for courses in sociology, political science, anthropology, and women's and gender studies. Contributions by: Amel Adib, Kevin Bales, Dorothy Sue Cobble, Sharon M. Collins, Ruth Schwartz Cowan, Susan Eisenberg, Ashley English, Yen Le Espiritu, Anne Fausto-Sterling, Nancy Folbre, Carla Freeman, Michele Ruth Gamburd, Jacqueline Goodman, Janet C. Gornick, Yvonne Guerrier, Luigi Guiso, Shannon Harper, Heidi Hartmann, Ariane Hegewisch, Arlie Russell Hochschild, Pierrette Hondagneu-Sotelo, Jacqueline Jones, Rosabeth Moss Kanter, Ivy Kennelly, Alice Kessler-Harris, Michael Kimmel, Eleanor Leacock, Judith Lorber, Susan E. Martin, Marcia K.Meyers, Ferdinando Monte, Martha C. Nussbaum, Jennifer Pierce, Pun Ngai, Barbara Reskin, Tracey Reynolds, Leslie Salzinger, Paola Sapienza, Joan W. Scott, Tyson Smith, Margaret Talbot, Louise A. Tilly, Christine L. Williams, Muhammad Yunus, and Luigi Zingales. , , ,

The Local Impact of Globalization in South and Southeast Asia

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Author :
Publisher : Routledge
ISBN 13 : 1317679431
Total Pages : 239 pages
Book Rating : 4.3/5 (176 download)

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Book Synopsis The Local Impact of Globalization in South and Southeast Asia by : Bart Lambregts

Download or read book The Local Impact of Globalization in South and Southeast Asia written by Bart Lambregts and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2015-08-27 with total page 239 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the past two decades, several millions of IT-enabled services jobs have been relocated or ‘offshored’ from the US and Europe to, in particular, low cost economies around the world. Most of these jobs so far have landed in South and South-East Asia, with India and the Philippines receiving the bulk of them. This has caused profound changes in the international division of labour, and has had correspondingly wide social and economic effects. This book examines how this ‘next wave in globalization’ affects people and places in South and South-East Asia. It brings together twelve case studies from India, the Philippines, China, Hong Kong and Thailand, and explores how and for whom services offshoring creates opportunities, triggers local economic transformations and produces challenges. This book in addition compares how different countries take part in this ‘second global shift’, investigates service-sector driven economic development from a historical perspective, and engages with the question whether and to what extent services offer a new promising avenue of sustained economic growth for developing countries. It argues that service-led development in developing countries is not easy for all the workers involved, or a guaranteed path to sustained economic development and prosperity. This volume stands out from other books in the field in its exploration of the social and economic outcomes in the cities and countries where services have been located. Based on cutting edge empirical research and original data, the volume offers a state-of-the-art contribution to this growing debate. The book provides valuable insights for students, scholars and professionals interested in services offshoring, socio-economic development and contemporary transformations in South and South-East Asia.

The Anthropology of the State

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Author :
Publisher : John Wiley & Sons
ISBN 13 : 1405155353
Total Pages : 424 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (51 download)

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Book Synopsis The Anthropology of the State by : Aradhana Sharma

Download or read book The Anthropology of the State written by Aradhana Sharma and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2009-02-09 with total page 424 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This innovative reader brings together classic theoretical textsand cutting-edge ethnographic analyses of specific stateinstitutions, practices, and processes and outlines ananthropological framework for rethinking future study of “thestate”. Focuses on the institutions, spaces, ideas, practices, andrepresentations that constitute the “state”. Promotes cultural and transnational approaches to thesubject. Helps readers to make anthropological sense of the state as acultural artifact, in the context of a neoliberalizing,transnational world.

Women at Work in Twenty-First-Century European Cinema

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Author :
Publisher : University of Illinois Press
ISBN 13 : 0252050967
Total Pages : 272 pages
Book Rating : 4.2/5 (52 download)

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Book Synopsis Women at Work in Twenty-First-Century European Cinema by : Barbara Mennel

Download or read book Women at Work in Twenty-First-Century European Cinema written by Barbara Mennel and published by University of Illinois Press. This book was released on 2019-01-30 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From hairdressers and caregivers to reproductive workers and power-suited executives, images of women's labor have powered a fascinating new movement within twenty-first century European cinema. Social realist dramas capture precarious working conditions. Comedies exaggerate the habits of the global managerial class. Stories from countries battered by the global financial crisis emphasize the patriarchal family, debt, and unemployment. Barbara Mennel delves into the ways these films about female labor capture the tension between feminist advances and their appropriation by capitalism in a time of ongoing transformation. Looking at independent and genre films from a cross-section of European nations, Mennel sees a focus on economics and work adapted to the continent's varied kinds of capitalism and influenced by concepts in second-wave feminism. More than ever, narratives of work put female characters front and center--and female directors behind the camera. Yet her analysis shows that each film remains a complex mix of progressive and retrogressive dynamics as it addresses the changing nature of work in Europe.

Labor in the Global Digital Economy

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Author :
Publisher : NYU Press
ISBN 13 : 1583674640
Total Pages : 209 pages
Book Rating : 4.5/5 (836 download)

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Book Synopsis Labor in the Global Digital Economy by : Ursula Huws

Download or read book Labor in the Global Digital Economy written by Ursula Huws and published by NYU Press. This book was released on 2014-12-05 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: For every person who reads this text on the printed page, many more will read it on a computer screen or mobile device. It’s a situation that we increasingly take for granted in our digital era, and while it is indicative of the novelty of twenty-first-century capitalism, it is also the key to understanding its driving force: the relentless impulse to commodify our lives in every aspect. Ursula Huws ties together disparate economic, cultural, and political phenomena of the last few decades to form a provocative narrative about the shape of the global capitalist economy at present. She examines the way that advanced information and communications technology has opened up new fields of capital accumulation: in culture and the arts, in the privatization of public services, and in the commodification of human sociality by way of mobile devices and social networking. These trends are in turn accompanied by the dramatic restructuring of work arrangements, opening the way for new contradictions and new forms of labor solidarity and struggle around the planet. Labor in the Global Digital Economy is a forceful critique of our dizzying contemporary moment, one that goes beyond notions of mere connectedness or free-flowing information to illuminate the entrenched mechanisms of exploitation and control at the core of capitalism.

A Nation on the Line

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Author :
Publisher : Duke University Press
ISBN 13 : 0822371987
Total Pages : 248 pages
Book Rating : 4.8/5 (223 download)

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Book Synopsis A Nation on the Line by : Jan M. Padios

Download or read book A Nation on the Line written by Jan M. Padios and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2018-03-23 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 2011 the Philippines surpassed India to become what the New York Times referred to as "the world's capital of call centers." By the end of 2015 the Philippine call center industry employed over one million people and generated twenty-two billion dollars in revenue. In A Nation on the Line Jan M. Padios examines this massive industry in the context of globalization, race, gender, transnationalism, and postcolonialism, outlining how it has become a significant site of efforts to redefine Filipino identity and culture, the Philippine nation-state, and the value of Filipino labor. She also chronicles the many contradictory effects of call center work on Filipino identity, family, consumer culture, and sexual politics. As Padios demonstrates, the critical question of call centers does not merely expose the logic of transnational capitalism and the legacies of colonialism; it also problematizes the process of nation-building and peoplehood in the early twenty-first century.

Handbook of Career Development

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Author :
Publisher : Springer Science & Business Media
ISBN 13 : 1461494605
Total Pages : 771 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (614 download)

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Book Synopsis Handbook of Career Development by : Gideon Arulmani

Download or read book Handbook of Career Development written by Gideon Arulmani and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2014-02-08 with total page 771 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book is focused on work, occupation and career development: themes that are fundamental to a wide range of human activities and relevant across all cultures. Yet theorizing and model building about this most ubiquitous of human activities from international perspectives have not been vigorous. An examination of the literature pertaining to career development, counseling and guidance that has developed over the last fifty years reveals theorizing and model building have been largely dominated by Western epistemologies, some of the largest workforces in the world are in the developing world. Career guidance is rapidly emerging as a strongly felt need in these contexts. If more relevant models are to be developed, frameworks from other cultures and economies must be recognized as providing constructs that would offer a deeper understanding of career development. This does not mean that existing ideas are to be discarded. Instead, an integrative approach that blends universal principles with particular needs could offer a framework for theorizing, research and practice that has wider relevance. The central objective of this handbook is to draw the wisdom and experiences of different cultures together to consider both universal and specific principles for career guidance and counseling that are socially and economically relevant to contemporary challenges and issues. This book is focused on extending existing concepts to broader contexts as well as introducing new concepts relevant to the discipline of career guidance and counseling.