Associate Professor
Department of Sociology
University at Buffalo
404 Park Hall
Buffalo, NY 14260
(716) 645-8476
Erin Hatton, Ph.D.
I am an associate professor of sociology at the State University of New York at Buffalo. My research is centered in the sociology of work, while also extending into the fields of race and gender, social inequality, culture, labor, law, and social policy.
My first book, The Temp Economy: From Kelly Girls to Permatemps in Postwar America (Temple University Press, 2011), weaves together gender, race, class, and work in a cultural analysis of the temporary help industry and the rise of the new economy. The Temp Economy won an Honorable Mention for the Distinguished Scholarly Monograph Award from the American Sociological Association's Labor & Labor Movements Section.
My new book, Coerced: Work Under Threat of Punishment (UC Press, 2020), analyzes four very different--and unusual--groups of workers: incarcerated, workfare, college athlete, and graduate student workers. Drawing on more than 120 in-depth interviews across these four groups, in this book I uncover a new form of labor coercion and analyze its consequences for workers in America.
I am also editor of the forthcoming book Prison/Work: Labor in the Carceral State (UC Press, 2021). This interdisciplinary volume examines the multiple and multi-directional intersections between mass incarceration and labor and employment in the U.S. today.
RECENT & FORTHCOMING
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Listen to an interview with me about Coerced on the New Books Network podcast series.
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Coerced will be officially released in May, but it's already Amazon-official. :)
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Talking about Coerced at the University of Toronto (Feb. 28), virtually at UMass Amherst (April 8), and on the Punishment & Society digital lecture series (April 21).
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Keynote speaker at Welfare to Work in Contemporary European Welfare States in Amsterdam on Jan. 27.
THE TEMP ECONOMY
"This landmark study is essential for experts and laypersons seeking to understand the twentieth century's wide-scale transformation of work."
-Irene Padavic, author of Women and Men at Work
"This book is a must-read for students of organizations, occupations, and work; labor markets and unions; sex and gender; and economic sociology."
-Contemporary Sociology
"A detailed, lively, and convincing account. I appreciate this book not only for the content but also for the fine example of how to write qualitative analysis."
-Work and Occupations
"This interesting book is useful for scholars interested in gender, work and occupations, labor organizing, the economy, and research methods... The book is ideal for showing the explanatory power of content analyses."
-Gender & Society
