Homework: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives on Paid Labor at Home ed. by Eileen Boris, Cynthia R. Daniels

Abstract

434 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE A Celebration of Work is a major contribution to the lore of labor and work in America. It also stands as a remarkably incisive analysis of the relationship between technology and work in a wide variety of occupations. Above all, Best’s book is infused with a love of honest toil and of humanity that cannot but leave the reader with the firm conviction that the author succeeded in his effort to “celebrate” work in a truly meaningful sense of the term. Norman Lederer Dr. Lederer is dean of general and developmental education at Thaddeus Stevens State School of Technology in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. He was formerly director of education and training for the New Jersey Division of District 65 of the United Auto Workers. Homework: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives on Paid Labor at Home. Edited by Eileen Boris and Cynthia R. Daniels. Champaign: Uni­ versity of Illinois Press, 1989. Pp. x + 299; illustrations, tables, notes, index. $32.50 (cloth); $12.95 (paper). There has been a recent renewal of both general and scholarly interest in work at home for pay. This new interest has been based on the efforts begun by the Reagan administration to lift the remaining federal bans on homework in six specific industries and the growth of so-called “telecommuting,” in which homeworkers keep in touch with their offices using computers and modems. This volume is a collection of fourteen papers and a photo essay dealing with various aspects of homework. With the exception of parts of three of them, the papers are published here for the first time. The authors span a variety of disciplines including history, sociology, political science, education, and business. The papers are organized into four sections: “Historical Perspectives,” “The Persis­ tence of Homework,” “The New Clerical and Professional Home­ work,” and “The Politics of Homework.” Although the title of the book is broader, the editors make clear in the introduction that their focus is on those homeworkers, overwhelmingly women, who are paid by the piece (which today might be the completed insurance form rather than a decorated hat or embroidered blouse). The editors and most of the authors appear ultimately ambivalent about homework. They argue that homework historically has involved substantial elements of exploitation, often along lines of class and race as well as gender, and has worked to reinforce the marginal and contingent role of women in the paid labor force. On the other hand, they are not comfortable with the models invoked by many of the reform-minded opponents of homework, often men, which included a rigid division between the public and private parts of social life and the relegation of women’s work to the unpaid private realm. TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 435 The articles give a good feel for those types of homework on which the book is focused and should increase the reader’s sensitivity to the issues that structure the public policy debate over homework. It is clear that, especially when benefits or any imputed value for the work space provided by the homeworker are considered, homeworkers are paid less for the same work than office or factory workers. It is also clear that, although the need to take care of children is often given as a reason for wanting to do homework, very few homeworkers are actually able to work while doing so; the work is postponed until older children or husbands are home. There are also attempts to place the issue of homework into the larger contexts of the growth of the underground economy in this country and globalization of the economy generally (if sewing cannot be done cheaply enough in this country it will be done in Korea or somewhere else instead). However, because this is a collection of separate papers, most of which are in effect case studies of homework in a particular time and place, the discussions of these larger contexts are not as well developed as the case studies. The book does have a message for students of the relationship between technology and society, but it is a message that is delivered largely by lack of attention. There is surprisingly little direct discus...