Where jobs in the casino industry once paid well, market saturation is making it harder for workers to make it on their salaries. Through examining this shift, the contributors discuss how this could reflect similar changes for workers in different industries.
This Palgrave Pivot presents a series of political economy short stories of collective agency, weaving together the history of a progressive change with a discussion of the role of institutions to effect change. These stories highlight sustained activism around valuing caring, ending discrimination, protecting the environment, improving worker well-being, and reimagining ways to encourage local economic development by restoring public-private social balance. Ultimately, these stories demonstrate that challenges to the neoliberal economy are possible. Neoliberalism can be viewed as a value structure that is undermining sustainable human development by elevating the level of risk experienced in daily economic life. Its hallmarks are globalization, market liberalization, deregulation, financialization, cutbacks in social provisioning through the public sector, and restructuring of labor markets in ways that increase instability. Social movements have responded, agitating for change. The stories here provide examples of how social actors engage in collective behavior to advance the objectives of economic justice, democratic participation in economic life, and human development.
This reader is designed for use as a primary or supplementary text for courses on women's role in the economy. Both interdisciplinary and heterodox in its approach, it showcases feminist economic analyses that utilize insights from institutionalism as well as neoclassical economics. Including both classic and newer selections from a broad range of areas, each section includes an introduction with background material, as well as discussion questions, exercises, and lists of key terms an further readings.