Interrogating the New Economy: Restructuring Work in the 21st Century

Interrogating the New Economy is a collection of original essays investigating the New Economy and how changes ascribed to it have impacted labour relations, access to work, and, more generally, the social and cultural experiences of work in Canada. Based on years of participatory research, sector-specific studies, and quantitative and qualitative data collection, the work accounts for the ways in which the contemporary workplace has changed but also the extent to which older forms of work organization still remain.

The collection begins with an overview of the key social and economic transformations that define the New Economy. It then illustrates these transformations through examples, including essays on wine tourism, the regeneration of mining communities, the place of student workers, and changes in the public service workplace. It also addresses unions and their responses to the restructuring of work, as well as other forms of resistance.

Norene J. Pupo is Director of the Centre for Research on Work and Society (CRWS) at York University. She is the author of many books on the sociology of work, including The Part-Time Paradox (McClelland & Stewart, 1992) and Few Choices: Women, Work and Family (Garamond, 1989).

Mark P. Thomas is Associate Professor of Sociology at York University. He is the author of Regulating Flexibility: The Political Economy of Employment Standards (McGill-Queen's, 2009).