Under Construction: Work and Alienation in the Building Trades (SUNY series in the Sociology of Work and Organizations)

Under Construction offers a unique examination of organization and work in the construction industry. Synthesizing organizational and labor relations orientations, it develops a comprehensive sociological perspective on work relations in construction. Silver examines the effects of local market conditions, employers' demands, and trade union activities on the daily lives of workers—skilled as well as unskilled. The book also challenges popular myths about construction work and the building trades with analyses of construction sites, hiring practices, and workers' reactions to the conditions of their work. Under Construction powerfully demonstrates the need for new industrial approaches by concluding with a series of practical alternatives to current practices in the industry's housing sector. Females, Males, and Sexuality examines the differences and similarities between males and females in their sexual attitudes, fantasies, and behaviors. Long a controversial subject, the differences between the sexes remains a source of unanswered questions and provocative debates. The views of eight behavioral scientists are combined in this volume to provide biological, social, and socio-biological perspectives on gender and sexuality. Sex variations in attitudes and behaviors are integrated in the introductory chapter. It provides a theoretical framework for describing current findings presented in subsequent chapters, as well as predicting the likelihood of sex differences in future studies. In other chapters, research on the premenstrual syndrome, hormones, and sexual expectations are analyzed. In chapters on attitudes about contraception, female contraceptive behavior serves as a model for organizing predictions about such behavior in males. Marc L. Silver. Includes Indexes. Bibliography: P. 229-242.