A State’s Gendered Response to Political Instability: Gendering Labor Policy in Semi-Authoritarian El Salvador (1944-1972)

Unlike much of the gender and welfare literature, this study examines why a regime that constrains pressure from below would adopt gendered social policies. The Salvadoran case (1944-1972) suggests that political instability rather than societal pressures may prompt semi-authoritarian regimes to adopt gendered labor reforms. We extend the motivations for adopting gendered labor reforms to include co-opting labor by examining gendered labor reforms in the context of El Salvador’s historically contingent labor strategy. This gendered analysis helps explain how a semi-authoritarian regime secured political stability and reveals the special appeal gendered labor reforms may have to semi-authoritarian regimes

A Cartographical Exploration of Collaborative Inquiry as a Professional Development Model for Art Educators

This dissertation draws on a number of cartographical processes to explore the particularities and circumstances of eight visual art teachers engaged in a yearlong collaborative inquiry within a formal, federally funded professional development program for arts educators. Art educators, many of whom lack content area colleagues within their schools, often work separated by geographical distance and may not have opportunities to regularly engage in professional development opportunities that are simultaneously content-specific, collaborative, and related to their working contexts. By examining the ways in which collaborative inquiry might provide such an opportunity, this study presents a number of challenges that emerged for the participants in this study, including: 1) Participants' socio-cultural norms and a desire to belong to a group that could offer the collegial support absent in many of their schools led participants to downplay their differences and suppress conflict for the sake of inclusion in the group; 2) Teachers' participation in a collaborative inquiry group operating within a funded professional development program provided them with professional opportunities and technological equipment, yet offered little support as they attempted to integrate the technology into their classrooms and to negotiate their sudden visibility within their teaching contexts; and 3) The researcher, acting as a participant facilitator within the group, unintentionally assumed a neutral stance in an effort to negotiate her competing desire for a close relationship with participants with her desire to disrupt assumptions and trouble practices for the sake of professional learning and growth. A number of "openings" may allow art educators to continue to engage in, create, and advocate for arts-based collaborative inquiry opportunities in a current socio-political climate that threatens such opportunities. For instance, art educators' need for collegial support and the existence of online networks and free internet-based software provides both a motive and means for geographically separated art educators to connect. Future research that more specifically addresses the challenges of providing art educators with collaborative professional development opportunities can build on the particular description and identification of challenges this study offers

Theorizing business power in the semiperiphery: Mexico 1970-2000

This study explains why the power of neoliberal business over the Mexican state increased during the last three decades of the 20th century. It identifies three sources of increased neoliberal business power that occurred in conjunction with neoliberal reforms: (1) active mobilization by neoliberal business, (2) increased access to the state by neoliberal business, and (3) increased economic power of neoliberal business. It thereby contributes additional evidence that counters the view of Mexico’s state neoliberalizers as acting autonomously from business. It further outlines two conditions that were instrumental in bringing about the increased power of neoliberal business: the onset of economic crisis in the 1970s, and a shift in foreign capital preferences in Mexico. The analysis demonstrates how Mexico’s sources and conditions of business power differed from those in advanced industrial societies, and outlines why the Mexican case may be a good starting point for devising a historically-contingent theory of business power in the semiperiphery

The Strategic Uses of Gender in Household Negotiations: Women Workers on Mexico’s Northern Border

The study illustrates the potential of the ‘doing gender’ perspective to explain why employment helps women win some negotiations at home but not others. Eighteen in-depth interviews with women maquiladora workers in Mexico suggest that employment may help women gain new rights and extend the limits of respect accorded them by male companions and parents. Women were more successful when they used negotiating strategies that conformed to their gender identity, such as making offers, than when they used negotiating strategies that challenged traditional gender norms, such as withdrawing services or making threats

Populism: A Puzzle Without (and for) World-Systems Analysis

This essay shows how world-systems analysis provides a more rigorous explanation for the recent rise of disparate populisms, countering negative stereotypes of mainstream accounts that obscure how formative populist leaders emerged from authentic progressive movements which challenged capitalists. Existing analyses have also failed to specify the varied economic projects of populists, their likely social bases and their relationships to world markets. The essay recommends relational comparisons of populists to unravel populism’s puzzles and advance world-systems analysis

Experimental Evaluation of New Generation Aggregate Image Measurement System

The performance of hot mix asphalt, Portland cement concrete, unbound base, and subbase layers in a pavement are significantly affected by aggregate shape characteristics. Classification of coarse and fine aggregate shape properties such as shape (form), angularity, and texture, are important in predicting the performance of pavements. Consequently, there is a need to implement a system that can characterize aggregates without the limitations of the current aggregate classification standards. The Aggregate Image Measurement System (AIMS) was developed as a comprehensive and capable means of measuring aggregate shape properties. A new design of AIMS will be introduced with several modifications to improve the operational and physical components. The sensitivity, repeatability, and reproducibility are analyzed to evaluate the quality of AIMS measurements. The sensitivity of AIMS is evaluated and found to be good for several operational and aggregate parameters. Important operational and environmental factors that could affect the AIMS results are identified and appropriate limits are recommended. AIMS is able to control normal variations in the system without affecting the results. A comprehensive analysis is conducted to determine the repeatability and reproducibility of AIMS for multiple users and laboratories. Single-operator and multi-laboratory precision statements are developed for the test method in order to be implemented into test standards

Colonels and Industrial Workers in El Salvador, 1944-1972: Seeking Societal Support through Gendered Labor Reforms

[Excerpt] How do military regimes seek support or legitimacy from society? What strategies, besides violent repression, do military leaders use to remain in power? In other words, how do military leaders try to achieve hegemony? El Salvador’s long period of military rule (1931-1979) gives researchers ample opportunity to investigate the mechanisms whereby military regimes try to gain societal support. Erik Ching’s chapter shows that General Martinez’s regime sought support through locally based patron-client relationships. Some analysts of El Salvador’s subsequent military regimes find that these regimes pursued a political alliance with urban industrial workers in order to gain support. Nevertheless, the alliance between the state and urban industrial workers during the 1950s and 1960s remains overgeneralized in the literature. Even those who specify Salvadoran governmental policy during this period as “repression with reforms” do not fully elaborate the mechanisms whereby military leaders formed an alliance with urban industrial workers. Moreover, research on these later military regimes has not explored the role that gendered labor reforms played in solidifying the alliance. As a result of this oversight, researchers may have underestimated the reformist tendency of Salvadoran military regimes from 1944 to 1972. Drawing on newspaper accounts and government publications, we show that adopting labor legislation designed to protect women workers was an element of a broader government strategy to ally with urban industrial workers. Examining how military regimes seek societal support is important because each strategy to secure regime legitimacy may have different social implications. For example, gendered labor legislation can have important social implications for industrial women workers. Research on other countries suggests that labor laws giving women special protections tend to make employers less willing to hire them and that special legal protections for women workers can depress women’s participation in the industrial labor force. Therefore, by illuminating the gendered nature of the reforms pursued by the Salvadoran military regimes, we hope to contribute to future research on the potential relationship between labor reforms and women’s industrial labor force participation in El Salvador

Worker Centers: Labor Policy as a Carrot, not a Stick

Worker centers empower communities of workers that are challenging for labor unions to organize. This includes immigrant workers and other vulnerable workers in high turnover jobs. These centers often organize workers that fall within the definition of “employee” under the Depression-era laws designed to protect some forms of collective worker activity from employer retaliation. Although employees associated with these centers can benefit from labor law’s carrot, worker centers are not “labor organizations” subject to labor law’s vast reporting requirements and restrictions on associational behavior (labor law’s stick). We use an original study of worker centers’ filings to the Internal Revenue Service to reveal that worker centers are more similar to nonprofits, than labor organizations. Both First Amendment and labor law principles affirm the characterization of worker centers as organizations that are not subject to labor law’s stick. Providing worker centers access to labor law’s carrot, but not its stick, is particularly compelling given that they are operating at a historical moment when income inequality parallels New Deal levels and hostility to worker organizations and workers’ rights is pervasive. Our carrot-but-not-a-stick approach has implications for the vitality of American labor policy. It opens up space for emerging worker centers to expand their efforts to amplify employee voice and improve the working lives of the growing low-wage workforce

Milking Outdated Laws: Alt-Labor as a Litigation Catalyst

Even though alt-labor does not have significant labor market power when compared to labor unions, its impacts are manifold. Alt-labor has given rise to novel state and local legislation improving wages and working conditions for low-wage workers across the country. It has fostered new collaborations with government enforcement agencies to improve the implementation of rights on the books—to “make rights real.” It has promoted new bargaining and worker organizing strategies, outside of traditional models. This article highlights another achievement of alt-labor. Alt-labor has served as a catalyst for creative litigation efforts that argue for application of existing workplace protections to non-traditional populations of workers and their organizing efforts. In this way, it has pushed to reinterpret, and thus to revitalize, what many perceive to be outdated labor and employment laws. We focus on initiatives that reimagine the interpretation of these laws in light of new organizing strategies and new global economic realities, all the while staying true to the existing laws on the books. Along with raising questions, and proposing new interpretations of New Deal and civil rights era gains, sometimes alt-labor’s litigation efforts are successful and lead to case law “wins.” To build its approach, the article draws from literature on litigation as a social movement strategy and provides an in-depth analysis of the ways courageous dairy workers in upstate New York have inspired innovative litigation theories and successes. Alt-labor’s achievements as a litigation catalyst are laudable—given the challenge of enacting federal legislation to address income inequality and the decline of labor union power—in the current era