The rapid growth of Uber and analogous platform companies has led to considerable scholarly interest in the phenomenon of platform labor. Scholars have taken two main approaches to explaining outcomes for platform work—precarity, which focuses on employment classification and insecure labor, and technological control via algorithms. Both predict that workers will have relatively common experiences. On the basis of 112 in-depth interviews with workers on seven platforms (Airbnb, TaskRabbit, Turo, Uber, Lyft, Postmates, and Favor) we find heterogeneity of experiences across (...) and within platforms. We argue that because platform labor is weakly institutionalized, worker satisfaction, autonomy, and earnings vary significantly across and within platforms, suggesting dominant interpretations are insufficient. We find that the extent to which workers are dependent on platform income to pay basic expenses rather than working for supplemental income explains the variation in outcomes, with supplemental earners being more satisfied and higher-earning. This suggests platforms are free-riding on conventional employers. We also find that platforms are hierarchically ordered, in terms of what providers can earn, conditions of work, and their ability to produce satisfied workers. Our findings suggest the need for a new analytic approach to platforms, which emphasizes labor force diversity, connections to conventional labor markets, and worker dependence. (shrink)

In this comprehensive collection of essays, most of which appear for the first time, eminent scholars from many disciplines—philosophy, economics, sociology, political science, demography, theology, history, and social psychology—examine the causes, nature, and consequences of present-day consumption patterns in the United States and throughout the world.

It is now well recognized that the United States is a consumer-driven society. Private consumption comprises a rising fraction of GDP, advertising is proliferating, and consumerism, as an ideology and set of values, is widespread. Not surprisingly, those developments are not confined to adults; they also characterize what some have called “the commercialization of childhood.” Children are more involved than ever in media, celebrity, shopping, brand names, and other consumer practices. At the core of this change is children's growing role (...) as independent consumers. In recent years, children's access to income has risen markedly, and they have gone from being purchasers of cheap plastic goods and a few select food items to being a major market for a diverse set of goods and services, including foodstuffs. Unofficial estimates suggest that children aged four to twelve spent a reported $6.1 billion in purchases from their own money in 1989, $23.4 billion in 1997, and $30 billion in 2002, for a total increase of four hundred percent. (shrink)

Taking Parenting Public makes a compelling case that parenting has become dangerously undervalued in America today. It calls for a new investment—both personal and public—into the work of raising children and argues that we are all "stockholders" in the next generation. With a foreword by Sylvia Ann Hewlett and Cornel West, Taking Parenting Public crosses boundaries to bring together thinkers from diverse fields spanning the political spectrum. It features contributions from distinguished experts in economics, political science, public policy, child development, (...) public health, history, and the media. While recent books have focused on working mothers or absent fathers, Taking Parenting Public is the first volume to take a comprehensive look at the common struggles of parents. These essays go beyond the usual chest-beating about busy parents torn between work and family demands to suggest bold solutions. Instead of the typical call for "parent replacement"—more child care, more after school programs and more mentors—the contributors offer fresh strategies for "parent replenishment," ways to put mothers and fathers back into the lives of their children not only as economic providers, but also as emotional and moral providers. (shrink)