{"resolved":true,"match_type":"uuid","source_type":"original_book","book_id":"10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3","title":"Time for Things Labor, Leisure, and the Rise of Mass Consumption","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"9780674250529","requested_by":"printed_page","book":{"source_type":"original_book","book_id":"10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3","id":"10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3","uuid":"10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3","title":"Time for Things Labor, Leisure, and the Rise of Mass Consumption","normalized_title":"timeforthingslaborleisureandtheriseofmassconsumption","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"9780674250529","isbns":["9780674250529","9780674250536","9780674979512"],"parsed":true,"ai_readable":true,"document_type":"book","page_count":355,"navigation_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3","title_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/title/Time%20for%20Things%20Labor%2C%20Leisure%2C%20and%20the%20Rise%20of%20Mass%20Consumption","fixed_page_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3/page/{printed_page}","path_api_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/book/10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3/page/{printed_page}","read_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/read/10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3","page_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3/page","search_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/10f0f318-a2eb-4ea9-8798-d4fb0304f8c3/search"},"page":{"printed_page":62,"pdf_page":70,"physical_index":70,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"cc4d4ceeb422496d27f258c5ebf43b25236f52d38b7eb355afac7b178ac93032"},"chapter":"FOR","content":"In a very diferent vein, the failure of work time to diminish could be seen as a consequence of the widespread influence of what social psychologists would describe as an unpopular norm. One of the factors identified by Hochschild, and also by Schor, as responsible for long workdays is the valorization of work efort and the corresponding implicit stigma attached to choosing to work less. Employees feel they must put in more time on the job for fear of being labeled a “shirker” or as “work-shy.” Arguably this is an example of an unpopular norm, upheld not because the majority agrees with it but, more subtly, because each individual thinks that everyone else positively supports the norm. William Macy and his collaborators, in their discussion of this type of norm, illustrate the idea by way of the story of the emperor’s new clothes (Centola, Willer, and Macy 2005; Willer, Kuwabara, and Macy 2009). Each member of the crowd sees that the emperor has no clothes but, because everyone else is behaving as if the emperor is clad in fine garments, opts to behave as if what everyone else seems to be seeing is true so as to fit in with the crowd. For a community to abandon an unpopular norm, it must overcome the challenge of coordinating the communication of true preferences—or, more precisely, of “dis-coordinating” behavioral signals that misrepresent true preferences and normative commitments. If working long hours is a result of an unpopular norm of this sort, then the solution would be for every member of a community to reveal her true preferences at more or less the same time. But concerted collective action of that sort is dificult to coordinate, so once entrenched, unpopular norms can be hard to dislodge. However, while the unpopular norm explanation might give a good account of the dynamic that keeps the suboptimal work-hour norm in place once it has been established, it does not explain how or why the norm became entrenched in the first place. Nor does it account for why the organized collective efort to shift to an alternative norm—a shorter working week—that once animated large parts of American society ebbed significantly during the twentieth century.31\n\n62\n\nTime for Things","previous_page":61,"next_page":63}