Toward Fair Gainsharing and a Quality Workplace for Employees: How a Reconceived Compensation Committee Might Help Make Corporations More Responsible Employers and Restore Faith in American Capitalism

The Cambridge Handbook of US Labor Law for the Twenty-First Century decries federal labor law for forsaking American workers and undermining American unions. Its contributors seek a reformed labor law for the current century. In this review essay, I examine the handbook’s contention that federal labor law has failed. To assess the merits of the claim, we must test the foundations of its contributors’ assumptions—about the labor movement, about the place of the labor movement in the political economy of American capitalism envisaged by labor law, and, indeed, about law itself. To do so, I turn to earlier, critical research on the character of American labor laws, notably Joel Rogers’s seminal 1990 essay “Divide and Conquer,” and also to work of my own. To put it crudely, I ask how much labor law reform actually matters.

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Institutional Anomie Theory and Cybercrime—Cybercrime and the American Dream, Now Available Online

Journal of Contemporary Criminal Justice ◽

10.1177/10439862211001590 ◽

2021 ◽

pp. 104398622110015

Author(s):

Thomas E. Dearden ◽

Katalin Parti ◽

James Hawdon

Keyword(s):

American Dream ◽

Negative Binomial ◽

National Sample ◽

Dark Side ◽

Curvilinear Relationship ◽

Online Behavior ◽

Institutional Anomie Theory ◽

Anomie Theory ◽

American Capitalism ◽

Criminological Theories

As the world becomes increasingly connected and interdependent upon technology, crimes are moving online. Research on cybercrime is beginning to test the applicability of traditional criminological theories for understanding crime in this new medium. Using a national sample of 215 self-admitted cybercriminals, we examine Messner and Rosenfeld’s institutional anomie theory. Negative binomial regressions reveal that expressed levels of institutional anomie correlate with increased cybercrime activity. A curvilinear relationship was found, such that low and high levels of institutional anomie lead to higher levels of cybercrime. Our findings reveal how the dark side of the American Dream can lead to online criminality. Specifically, the penetration of, and accommodation to economic values dictated by American capitalism can lead individuals to adopt values such as the fetishism of money that, in turn, affects their online behavior and criminality.

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Amidst pandemic and racial upheaval: Where Asian Americans Fit

The Journal of Race Ethnicity and Politics ◽

10.1017/rep.2020.46 ◽

2020 ◽

pp. 1-17

Author(s):

Whitney Hua ◽

Jane Junn

Keyword(s):

United States ◽

Asian Americans ◽

Racial Inequality ◽

White Supremacy ◽

The United States ◽

Structural Racism ◽

Global Pandemic ◽

American Capitalism ◽

Racial History ◽

History Of

Abstract As racial tensions flare amidst a global pandemic and national social justice upheaval, the centrality of structural racism has renewed old questions and raised new ones about where Asian Americans fit in U.S. politics. This paper provides an overview of the unique racial history of Asians in the United States and analyzes the implications of dynamic racialization and status for Asian Americans. In particular, we examine the dynamism of Asian Americans' racial positionality relative to historical shifts in economic-based conceptions of their desirability as workers in American capitalism. Taking history, power, and institutions of white supremacy into account, we analyze where Asian Americans fit in contemporary U.S. politics, presenting a better understanding of the persistent structures underlying racial inequality and developing a foundation from which Asian Americans can work to enhance equality.

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