Barbara Ehrenreich’s research and book build upon/apply to the various anthropological concepts that we have covered in class in many ways. The main concept she did was fieldwork and ethnographic research. Ehrenreich wanted to see for herself, like many great anthropologists, how the world of minimum-waged work operated and how people who worked in minimum waged jobs survived. Instead of staying in her comfort zone and observing from afar or doing armchair anthology, like many late 19th century to early century anthropologists did, she literally got her hands dirty and decided to actually participate in her research and see for herself how things operated. She studied various types of people in various types of environments (in her case jobs/location).
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In chapter 1, once Ehrenreich started to conduct her research, she sought out to find a job. She looked at many ads and applied to Best Western, Econo Lodge, and HoJo’s and countless of other establishments. She got a few call backs and interviews but the majority of the places she applied to she never heard back from. She realized that the ads that are put out are very unreliable and not up to date; they don’t indicate the availability of a job at any given time which is non beneficial to those looking for a job. This was my problem as well. In high school, I wanted to find a job to make extra money for things I wanted to purchase, so I sought out places that were hiring. I looked at countless places: newspapers, numerous types of job websites and I even went to the mall to ask for direct applications. I applied to 30+ places and heard back from maybe 6 places, and out of those 6, I got 2 interviews and from those interviews, 1 job decided to hire me. Many places that I had applied to told me they had already filled their spots or they weren 't looking for any more employees, even though their ads were still running. I was so frustrated, I didn’t know if it was my age, race, availability or mode of transportation but I was angry. I spent many hours completing those questionnaire/personality tests that some applications require to not hear back from a job. Ehrenreich hit the nail on the head when she writes: “They are”, “the employers’ insurance policy against the relentless turnover of the low-wage workforce”.(page
In chapter 1, once Ehrenreich started to conduct her research, she sought out to find a job. She looked at many ads and applied to Best Western, Econo Lodge, and HoJo’s and countless of other establishments. She got a few call backs and interviews but the majority of the places she applied to she never heard back from. She realized that the ads that are put out are very unreliable and not up to date; they don’t indicate the availability of a job at any given time which is non beneficial to those looking for a job. This was my problem as well. In high school, I wanted to find a job to make extra money for things I wanted to purchase, so I sought out places that were hiring. I looked at countless places: newspapers, numerous types of job websites and I even went to the mall to ask for direct applications. I applied to 30+ places and heard back from maybe 6 places, and out of those 6, I got 2 interviews and from those interviews, 1 job decided to hire me. Many places that I had applied to told me they had already filled their spots or they weren 't looking for any more employees, even though their ads were still running. I was so frustrated, I didn’t know if it was my age, race, availability or mode of transportation but I was angry. I spent many hours completing those questionnaire/personality tests that some applications require to not hear back from a job. Ehrenreich hit the nail on the head when she writes: “They are”, “the employers’ insurance policy against the relentless turnover of the low-wage workforce”.(page