Wednesday 16:00-16:30 Laurie Taylor discusses the latest social science research.
17 January 2007
CLASS RELATIONS IN LUXURY HOTELS Rachel Sherman, Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at Yale University spent twelve months in two urban luxury hotels to find out how workers and guests negotiate the inequality between them. What techniques do staff use to maintain their status whilst performing subservient roles, and how do guests remain comfortable, when society brands the use of servants as unacceptable?
During her time in the hotels, Rachel worked in a variety of jobs; she was a receptionist, front desk worker, concierge, bell person, she also cleaned rooms and worked on the turn-down service. Rachel has published the results of her ethnographic study in a book entitled Class Acts: Service and Inequality in Luxury Hotels.
INTERNET POLITICS Politics has taken to the internet, in the last Presidential primaries in the states Howard Dean was propelled into the lead in the Democratic race by an internet campaign. But does the web world do democracy a service?
Laurie Taylor is joined by Dr Andrew Chadwick, Senior Lecturer in Political Science, Royal Holloway College in London and Will Davies, Visiting Fellow at the IPPR, for Digital Society, to debate whether the Internet is changing the way our democracy works?
Additional information:
Rachel Sherman, Assistant Professor in the Department of Sociology at Yale University
Class Acts: Service and Inequality in Luxury Hotels Publisher: University of California Press Language English ISBN-10: 0520247825 ISBN-13: 978-0520247826
Dr Andrew Chadwick, Senior Lecturer in Political Science, Head of Department of Politics & International Relations
Internet Politics, States, Citizens and New Communication Technologies Publisher: Oxford University Press Inc, USA ISBN-10: 0195177738 ISBN-13: 978-0195177732
William Davies, Visiting Fellow at the The Institute for Public Policy Research (ippr)
