Working Alternatives explores economic life from a humanistic and multidisciplinary perspective, with a particular eye on religions’ implications in practices of work, management, supply, production, remuneration, and exchange. Its contributors draw upon historical, ethical, business, and theological conversations considering the sources of economic sustainability and justice. The essays in this book—from scholars of business, religious ethics, and history—offer readers practical understanding and analytical leverage over these pressing issues. Modern Catholic social teaching—a 125-year-old effort to apply Christian thinking about the implications of faith for social, political, and economic circumstances—provides the key springboard for these discussions. Contributors: Gerald J. Beyer, Alison Collis Greene, Kathleen Holscher, Michael Naughton, Michael Pirson, Nicholas Rademacher, Vincent Stanley, Sandra Sullivan-Dunbar, Kirsten Swinth, Sandra Waddock

Challenging dominant discourses in neoliberal marketized societies about working with disconnected young people, this book argues that alternative, radical approaches to formal and informal education are necessary to challenge repressive practices, and to help build a more equal, socially-just society.

Critically examining economic developments within the last sixty years, this book argues that a crisis in global social reproduction is altering existing understandings of work, labour and the economy. The author of this original volume, Hasmet M. Uluorta, contends that the crisis in the global economy is triggering a potential paradigm shift from one defined under the rubric of Employment to an alternative theorized as Work. Discussing the Employment paradigm that formed the dominant mode of development after the Second World War through to the 1970s, the author considers the economic and political forces that resulted in its eventual decline. Focusing on already existing practices of organizations and workers in Toronto, Canada, the book goes on to consider the shift to Work and the consequent rise in the social economy which has broken down conventional categories of work and leisure. The author concludes that the social economy presents fundamental challenges to understandings that underpinned the previous economic order. Building on insights from a range of disciplines, The Social Economy will be of interest to students and scholars of international political economy, international relations, labour studies, sociology, and globalization studies.

In this book, first published in 1975, the author critically examines the organisation of work, the systems of control, and the patterns of authority in British establishments. By bringing together detailed descriptions of alternative forms of work organisation and management from Norway, Sweden, Denmark and the USA, Paul Dickson provokes considerable thought as to the extent to which these models could be developed and applied in the UK. This title will be of interest to students of business studies and human resource management.

This book uses the concepts of vulnerability and resilience to analyze the situation of individuals and institutions in the context of the employment relationship. It is based on the premise that both employer and employee are vulnerable to various social, economic, and political forces, although differently so. It demonstrates how in responding to those complementary institutional relationships of employer and employee the state unequally and inequitably favors employers over employees. Several chapters included in this collection also consider how the state shapes, creates and maintains through law the social identities of employer and employee and how that legal regime operates as the allocation of power and privilege. This unique and fundamental role of the state in defining the employment relationship profoundly affects the respective abilities and degree of resiliency of actual employers and employees. Other chapters explore how attention to the respective vulnerability and resilience of those who do and those who direct work in assessing the employment relationship can raise fundamental questions of social justice and suggest new avenues for critical engagement with labor and employment law. Collectively, these pieces articulate a framework for imaging what would constitute an appropriately "Responsive State" in the employment context and how those interested in social justice might begin to use the concepts of vulnerability and resilience in their arguments.

Alternative ways of thinking, analysing and performing economic geographies have become ever more significant in recent years. The importance of such alternatives continues to be underlined by the recent global financial crisis, the ongoing social and political consequences of which have spread from Europe and the USA to economies and places throughout the world. Yet there is a real danger that the debate about alternatives simply becomes a way of fixing global capitalism in its present crisis-ridden form. Instead, the analysis of alternative economic spaces must continue to offer a critique of the very notion of capitalism as a universal, if variable, set of social relations. For geographers and other critical social scientists there is great excitement about the possibilities inherent in constructing alternative economic spaces and for exploiting alternative spaces of political engagement. This important book brings together critical analyses of alterity from across the social sciences and humanities, refining and advancing what alternative economies and polities are, how they are formed, what difficulties and problems they face, and how they might be sustained. A central theme running through the book is the need to examine critically both the material contexts and the conceptual categories deployed in the making of alternative economies. This rich and inspiring collection samples an exciting new scholarly tradition, one that draws upon and feeds into the social movements that are transforming economies worldwide. At once supportive and critical, Interrogating Alterity is a must-read for anyone interested in the 'other economies' currently taking shape on the ground.-J.K. Gibson-Graham, University of Massachusetts Amherst, USA and University of Western Sydney, Australia