Why Do Unemployed Americans Blame Themselves While Israelis Blame the System?
This article provides a new account of American job seekers' individualized understandings of their labor-market difficulties, and more broadly, of how structural conditions shape subjective responses. Unemployed white-collar workers in the U.S. tend to interpret their labor market difficulties as r...
| Published in: | Social Forces Vol. 91; no. 4; pp. 1429 - 1451 |
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| Format: | Article |
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Oxford University Press / USA
Jun2013
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| Online Access: | View this record in EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=ssf&AN=87826740&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: ssf uiTerm: 87826740 longDbName: Social Sciences Full Text (H.W. Wilson) uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: jinfo: jid: 00377732 SFR jtl: Social Forces issn: 00377732 maglogo: N pubinfo: dt: Jun2013 vid: 91 iid: 4 pid: 622 pub: Oxford University Press / USA artinfo: ui: 87826740 10.1093/sf/sot050 ppf: 1429 ppct: 22 formats: fmt: @attributes: type: P size: 343KB tig: atl: Why Do Unemployed Americans Blame Themselves While Israelis Blame the System? aug: au: Sharone, Ofer affil: Massachusetts Institute of Technology su: Unemployed people Americans Employment Psychology Israelis sug: subj: Unemployed people Americans Employment Psychology Israelis ab: This article provides a new account of American job seekers' individualized understandings of their labor-market difficulties, and more broadly, of how structural conditions shape subjective responses. Unemployed white-collar workers in the U.S. tend to interpret their labor market difficulties as reflecting flaws in themselves, while Israelis tend to perceive flaws in the hiring system. These different responses have profound individual and societal implications. Drawing on in-depth interviews with unemployed job seekers and participant observations at support groups in the U.S. and Israel, this article shows how different labor market institutions give rise to distinct job search games, which I call the chemistry game in the U.S. and the specs game in Israel. Challenging the broad cultural explanations of the unemployment experience in the existing literature, this article shows how subjective responses to unemployment are generated by the search experiences associated with institutionally rooted job search games. pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: Article src: R language: English refInfo: copyright: @attributes: flag: N holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
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