Rachel Sherman (sociologist)

Rachel Sherman (born June 7, 1970) is an associate professor of sociology at the New School for Social Research, and a well-known labor scholar whose work focuses on the revitalization of labor unions.

Education and career

Sherman obtained her bachelor's degree in Development Studies from Brown University. She obtained a master's degree in 1997 and a Ph.D. in 2003—both in sociology, and both from the University of California, Berkeley.

In 2003, she obtained a teaching position at Yale University.

In 2007, she obtained a faculty position at The New School for Social Research, the graduate division of The New School, in New York city.

Research

Sherman's research focuses on the nature of work, labor unions, class, social movements and culture.

Sherman's dissertation (as well as her book, Class Acts: Service and Inequality in Luxury Hotels) is a study in the sociology of work. Using the participant observer method, Sherman looked at how service laborers (hotel workers) engaged in the provision of luxury services justified their socio-economic status vis-a-vis their wealthy, powerful clients. Sherman found that workers develop context-dependent self-identities which depict themselves as privileged on a wide range of symbolic hierarchies (such as competence, authority, status, morality, intelligence, etc.). These workers and their wealthy clients negotiate these identities, and the fluid nature of the identities enables workers to justify the provision of the luxury good or service.

However, the majority of Sherman's work has focused on American labor unions. One of her earliest and most important publications, "Breaking the Iron Law of Oligarchy: Tactical Innovation and the Revitalization of the American Labor Movement," was co-authored with sociologist Kim Voss in 2000. Voss and Sherman studied local unions in northern California which were effectively organizing new members. Contrary to most research on what constitutes "good organizing practices," Voss and Sherman found that top-down pressure from national union leaders was the single most important factor in transforming the union from a servicing model to an organizing model. Successful organizing campaigns, the authors argue, are top-down, staff-intensive efforts, and the American labor movement must carefully re-think its emphasis on member activism. Their conclusions have subsequently been echoed in the work of Ruth Milkman, and are reminiscent of the institutionalist and Hegelian historicist perspective of older labor theorists such as Selig Perlman, Philip Taft and John R. Commons. Their findings also contradict to a significant degree the conclusions of other scholars such as Kate Bronfenbrenner and Tom Juravich, who find that greater levels of worker involvement in union organizing can be equated with a higher degree of union success. For labor activists, the Voss and Sherman article is controversial because it seems to suggest that union democracy is not an important factor in either union organizing success or in the revitalization of the labor movement.

In subsequent work, Sherman explored the limits that culture places on the transplantation of union organizing strategies and the role social movement unionism plays in effective union organizing.

Memberships and awards

Sherman is a member of the American Sociological Association (ASA). Sherman is an editorial board member of the ASA's "Rose Series," a program which publishes research monographs and books aimed at sociologists, social scientists and policy-makers on wide-ranging sociological questions or social policy issues. She is also the editor of the newsletter of the ASA Section on Labor and Labor Movements.

Sherman has twice been awarded a National Science Foundation dissertation grant, and received a number of fellowships from sources as diverse as the University of California Institute for Labor and Employment; the Institute of Industrial Relations at the University of California, Berkeley; and Brown University.

Sherman's article, "Breaking the Iron Law of Oligarchy: Tactical Innovation and the Revitalization of the American Labor Movement" (co-authored with Kim Voss) won the Distinguished Article Award of the Labor Studies Division of the Society for the Study of Social Problems in 2001.

Sherman is a reviewer for a number of professional and scholarly journals, including the American Journal of Sociology, Ethnography, Labor Studies Journal, Social Problems and Theory and Society.

Published works

Solely authored books

• Class Acts: Service and Inequality in Luxury Hotels. Berkeley, Calif.: University of California Press, 2007. ISBN 0-520-24781-7

Solely authored articles

• "From State Introversion to State Extension in Mexico: Modes of Emigrant Incorporation, 1900-1997." Theory and Society. 28:6 (December 1999).
• "Producing the Superior Self: Strategic Comparison and Symbolic Boundaries Among Luxury Hotel Workers." Ethnography. 6:2 (2005).

Co-authored articles

• Voss, Kim and Sherman, Rachel. "Breaking the Iron Law of Oligarchy: Tactical Innovation and the Revitalization of the American Labor Movement." American Journal of Sociology. 106:2 (September 2000).

Co-authored book chapters

• Carter, Bob; Fairbrother, Peter; Sherman, Rachel; and Voss, Kim. "Made in the USA, Imported into Britain: The Organizing Model and the Limits of Transferability." In Research in the Sociology of Work. Vol. 11: Labor Revitalization: Global Perspectives and New Initiatives. Dan Cornfield and Holly McCammon, eds. Kidlington, Oxford, U.K.: JAI Press, 2003. ISBN 0-7623-0882-6
• Sherman, Rachel and Voss, Kim. "Organize or Die: New Organizing Tactics and Immigrant Workers." In Organizing Immigrants: The Challenge for Unions in Contemporary California. Ruth Milkman, ed. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2000. ISBN 0-8014-3697-4
• Voss, Kim and Sherman, Rachel. "You Can't Just Do it Automatically: The Transition to Social Movement Unionism in the United States." In Trade Unions in Renewal: A Comparative Study. Peter Fairbrother and Charlotte A.B. Yates, eds. London: Continuum, 2003. ISBN 0-8264-5436-4

External links

• American Sociological Association's Rose Series
• Rachel Sherman, Dept. of Sociology, Yale University
• Rachel Sherman, New School