Max Weber Award for Distinguished Scholarship
COERCED:
WORK UNDER THREAT OF PUNISHMENT
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What do prison laborers, graduate students, welfare workers, and college athletes have in common? According to sociologist Erin Hatton, they are all part of a growing workforce of coerced laborers.
Coerced explores this world of coerced labor through an unexpected and compelling comparison of these four groups of workers, for whom a different definition of ‘employment’ reigns supreme—one where workplace protections do not apply and employers wield expansive punitive power, far beyond the ability to hire and fire. Because such arrangements are common across the economy, Hatton argues that coercion—as well as precarity—is a defining feature of work in America today.
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Theoretically forceful yet vivid and gripping to read, Coerced compels the reader to reevaluate contemporary dynamics of work, pushing beyond concepts like ‘career’ and ‘gig work.’ Through this bold analysis, Hatton offers a trenchant window into this world of work from the perspective of those who toil within it—and who are developing the tools needed to push back against it.
"Written with clarity and style, this is a book that offers the best of sociology."
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-Allison Pugh, author, The Tumbleweed Society: Working and Caring in an Age of Insecurity
"Brilliant and thought-provoking."
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-Heather Ann Thompson, Pulitzer Prize-winning author, Blood in the Water: The Attica Prison Uprising of 1971 and Its Legacy
"This is a major, major contribution."
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-Adia Harvey Wingfield, author, Flatlining: Race, Work, and Health Care in the New Economy
Artist Stacey Robinson developed this series of images based on Coerced. The words are from the workers I interviewed for the book and the images are Stacey's artistic interpretation of their words and experiences.
