Jerry A. Jacobs

Last updated

Jerry A. Jacobs (born February 7, 1955) is an American sociologist noted for his work on women, work, and family. [1] He is professor of sociology at the University of Pennsylvania, where he has taught since earning his Ph.D. in sociology at Harvard in 1983. [a] His webpage includes links to many of his published articles as well as an essay on growing up at his parents' hotel (The Delmar) in the Catskill Mountains.

Contents

At Penn, Jacobs has been affiliated with a number of departments and programs, including the Graduate School of Education, the Leonard Davis Institute for Health Economics, the Management Department at the Wharton School, the Population Studies Center, and the Women’s Studies Program.

Jacobs has served as the Editor of the American Sociological Review, [2] President of the Eastern Sociological Society, and Founding President of the Work and Family Researchers Network (WFRN). [3]

Professor Jacobs’ studies have addressed a number of aspects of women's employment, including authority, earnings, working conditions, part-time work and work-family conflict, and entry into male-dominated occupations.

Professor Jacobs has published six books, over 85 research papers, and 19 book reviews. His research has appeared in prominent academic journals, including the American Sociological Review, the American Journal of Sociology and the Annual Review of Sociology.

He has received 34 grants to support his research from diverse sources, including the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, the Atlantic Philanthropies, the Josiah Macy Jr. Foundation, the Spencer Foundation, the National Science Foundation, and the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation.

He is the recipient of the Max Weber award from the American Sociological Association. He has also received the Work-Life Legacy Award and the Rosabeth Moss Kanter Award for excellence in Work-Family Research. [4]

Jacobs’ earliest research focused on the gender segregation of occupations and college majors. Women’s concentration in fields that are occupied principally by other women is a major source of gender inequality. Jacobs’ research has tracked the long term persistence of this pattern, but he has also showed that there is more movement between male-dominated, gender-neutral and female-dominated fields than is generally recognized.

Jacobs has also focused considerable research attention on issues related to work and family. Jacobs, along with his co-author Kathleen Gerson, showed that challenges associated with over-work are common for dual-earner, middle-class families, but they also report that less affluent families often struggle to find enough paid work to support their families.

His most recent book, In Defense of Disciplines: Interdisciplinarity and Specialization in the Research University, was published in 2014 by the University of Chicago Press. In this study, Jacobs maintains that academic disciplines are an integral feature of the intellectual division of labor, that academic specialization is ubiquitous, and that there are many paradoxes associated with the effort to make US universities more interdisciplinary.

Jacobs’ current projects include an investigation of the representation of international topics and international authors in US-based social science journals, and an essay on the evolving interconnections between technology, work and family.

His major research focus is a multi-faceted exploration of the future of work. The main theme of this study is a critical reexamination of whether automation will displace large number of workers. A case study focuses on the role of automation in elder care.

Books

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Interdisciplinarity</span> Combination of two or more academic disciplines into one activity

Interdisciplinarity or interdisciplinary studies involves the combination of multiple academic disciplines into one activity. It draws knowledge from several other fields like sociology, anthropology, psychology, economics, etc. It is about creating something by thinking across boundaries. It is related to an interdiscipline or an interdisciplinary field, which is an organizational unit that crosses traditional boundaries between academic disciplines or schools of thought, as new needs and professions emerge. Large engineering teams are usually interdisciplinary, as a power station or mobile phone or other project requires the melding of several specialties. However, the term "interdisciplinary" is sometimes confined to academic settings.

Queer theory is a field of post-structuralist critical theory that emerged in the early 1990s out of queer studies and women's studies. The term "queer theory" can have various meanings depending upon its usage, but has been broadly associated with the study and theorization of gender and sexual practices that exist outside of heterosexuality, and which challenge the notion that heterosexual desire is "normal". Following social constructivist developments in sociology, queer theorists are often critical of what they consider essentialist views of sexuality and gender. Instead, they study those concepts as social and cultural phenomena, often through an analysis of the categories, binaries, and language in which they are said to be portrayed.

Fat fetishism or adipophilia is a sexual attraction directed towards overweight or obese people due primarily to their weight and size.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rosabeth Moss Kanter</span> American economist

Rosabeth Moss Kanter is an American economist who is a professor of business at Harvard Business School. She co-founded the Harvard University Advanced Leadership Initiative and served as Director and Founding Chair from 2008 to 2018. She was the top-ranking woman—No. 11 overall—in a 2002 study of Top Business Intellectuals by citation in several sources. She was named one of the "50 most powerful women in Boston" by Boston Magazine and named one of "125 women who changed our world" over the past 125 years by Good Housekeeping magazine in May 2010.

Men's studies is an interdisciplinary academic field devoted to topics concerning men, masculinity, gender, culture, politics and sexuality. It academically examines what it means to be a man in contemporary society.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">France Winddance Twine</span> Native American ethnographer

France Winddance Twine is a Black and Native American sociologist, ethnographer, visual artist, and documentary filmmaker. Twine has conducted field research in Brazil, the UK, and the United States on race, racism, and anti-racism. She has published 11 books and more than 100 articles, review essays, and books on these topics.

Occupational inequality is the unequal treatment of people based on gender, sexuality, age, disability, socioeconomic status, religion, height, weight, accent, or ethnicity in the workplace. When researchers study trends in occupational inequality they usually focus on distribution or allocation pattern of groups across occupations, for example, the distribution of men compared to women in a certain occupation. Secondly, they focus on the link between occupation and income, for example, comparing the income of whites with blacks in the same occupation.

An academic discipline or academic field is a subdivision of knowledge that is taught and researched at the college or university level. Disciplines are defined and recognized by the academic journals in which research is published, and the learned societies and academic departments or faculties within colleges and universities to which their practitioners belong. Academic disciplines are conventionally divided into the humanities, including language, art and cultural studies, and the scientific disciplines, such as physics, chemistry, and biology; the social sciences are sometimes considered a third category.

Evelyn Seiko Nakano Glenn is a professor at the University of California, Berkeley. In addition to her teaching and research responsibilities, she served as founding director of the university's Center for Race and Gender (CRG), a leading U.S. academic center for the study of intersectionality among gender, race and class social groups and institutions. In June 2008, Glenn was elected president of the 15,000-member American Sociological Association. She served as president-elect during the 2008–2009 academic year, assumed her presidency at the annual ASA national convention in San Francisco in August 2009, served as president of the association during the 2009–2010 year, and continued to serve on the ASA governing council as past-president until August 2011. Her presidential address, given at the 2010 meetings in Atlanta, was entitled "Constructing Citizenship: Exclusion, Subordination, and Resistance", and was printed as the lead article in the American Sociological Review.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Kathleen Gerson</span> American sociologist (born 1947)

Kathleen Gerson is an American sociologist. She is considered as an authority on such subjects as gender equality particularly within relationships and marriages, changing gender roles, family housework patterns, travel patterns, finances and how they affect household formation, and other aspects of changing family life. Her research is often based on qualitative interviews. She is a tenured professor at New York University.

Rosalind C. Barnett is an American research psychologist and author. She has hosted the annual Ann Richards Roundtable on Gender and the Media at Brandeis University. Barnett has been identified as one of the top 25 work-family researchers in the world.

For the American former baseball player, see Janet Jacobs.

Arne Lindeman Kalleberg is a Kenan Distinguished Professor of Sociology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a Faculty Fellow at the Carolina Population Center. He is also an adjunct professor in the Kenan-Flagler Business School, the Department of Public Policy, and the Curriculum in Global Studies. Kalleberg served as the secretary of the American Sociological Association from 2001 to 2004 and as its president from 2007 to 2008. He has been the editor-in-chief of Social Forces, an international journal of social research for over ten years.

Donald Tomaskovic-Devey is a professor of sociology at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

Kathleen E. Christensen is an American social scientist and author best known for her research on the changing nature of work, including remote and contingent work, as well as workplace flexibility. She currently directs the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation's Working Longer program designed to deepen scholarly and public understanding of aging Americans' work patterns.

Raka Ray is an American sociologist and academic. She is a full-time professor at the University of California, Berkeley in the departments of Sociology and Southeast Asian Studies. She became the Dean of Social Sciences at UC-Berkeley in January 2020. Ray's research interests include gender and feminist theory, postcolonial sociology, emerging middle classes, South Asia, inequality, qualitative research methods, and social movements. Her current project explores changes in the meanings and relations of servitude in India. Ray is also an editor of the publication Feminist Studies.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mary Romero</span> American sociologist

Mary Romero is an American sociologist. She is Professor of Justice Studies and Social Inquiry at Arizona State University, with affiliations in African and African American Studies, Women and Gender Studies, and Asian Pacific American Studies. Before her arrival at ASU in 1995, she taught at University of Oregon, San Francisco State University, and University of Wisconsin-Parkside. Professor Romero holds a bachelor's degree in sociology with a minor in Spanish from Regis College in Denver, Colorado. She holds a PhD in sociology from the University of Colorado. In 2019, she served as the 110th President of the American Sociological Association.

Verta Ann Taylor is a professor of sociology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, with focuses on gender, sexuality, social movements, and women's health.

Shelley Joyce Correll is an American sociologist. She is the Michelle Mercer and Bruce Golden Family Professor of Women’s Leadership Director at Stanford University.

Christine L. Williams is an American sociologist. She is a professor of Sociology and the Elsie and Stanley E. (Skinny) Adams Sr. Centennial Professor in Liberal Arts at the University of Texas at Austin. Her areas of specialization include gender, sexuality, and workplace inequality. Her research primarily involves gender discrimination at work.

References

  1. Women in Scientific Careers Unleashing the Potential: Unleashing the Potential. OECD Publishing. 2006. p. 95. ISBN   9789264025387 . Retrieved 9 October 2014.
  2. Gerson, Kathleen (2003). "Jerrry A. Jacobs is Appointed Incoming American Sociological Review Editor" (PDF). Footnotes. 31 (4): 4.
  3. Jacobs, Jerry A. (2013). "The Work and Family Researchers Network: An organizational and intellectual agenda". Community, Work, & Family. 16 (3): 226–238. doi:10.1080/13668803.2013.820090. S2CID   144205736.
  4. "Rosabeth Moss Kanter Awards for Excellence in Work-Family Research". Work and Family Researchers Network.

Notes

[a] - Jerry A. Jacobs’ publications are sometimes jumbled together with the books of another sociologist named Jerry Jacobs, a long-time member of the faculty at Syracuse University. The Library of Congress catalog is an easy place to find the complete set of books of this Syracuse-based scholar.