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...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | en_US |
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Oxford University Press
2014
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| Online Access: | http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/90830 |
| _version_ | 1826199684577755136 |
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| author | Sharone, Ofer |
| author2 | Sloan School of Management |
| author_facet | Sloan School of Management Sharone, Ofer |
| author_sort | Sharone, Ofer |
| collection | MIT |
| description | 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. |
| first_indexed | 2024-09-23T11:24:23Z |
| format | Article |
| id | mit-1721.1/90830 |
| institution | Massachusetts Institute of Technology |
| language | en_US |
| last_indexed | 2024-09-23T11:24:23Z |
| publishDate | 2014 |
| publisher | Oxford University Press |
| record_format | dspace |
| spelling | mit-1721.1/908302022-10-01T03:22:18Z Why Do Unemployed Americans Blame Themselves While Israelis Blame the System? Sharone, Ofer Sloan School of Management Sharone, Ofer 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. Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation (Schusterman Israel Scholar Award) 2014-10-09T16:33:43Z 2014-10-09T16:33:43Z 2013-05 Article http://purl.org/eprint/type/JournalArticle 0037-7732 1534-7605 http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/90830 Sharone, Ofer. “Why Do Unemployed Americans Blame Themselves While Israelis Blame the System?” Social Forces 91, no. 4 (May 2, 2013): 1429–1450. en_US http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/sf/sot050 Social Forces Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/ application/pdf Oxford University Press Prof. Sharone via Alex Caracuzzo |
| spellingShingle | Sharone, Ofer Why Do Unemployed Americans Blame Themselves While Israelis Blame the System? |
| title | Why Do Unemployed Americans Blame Themselves While Israelis Blame the System? |
| title_full | Why Do Unemployed Americans Blame Themselves While Israelis Blame the System? |
| title_fullStr | Why Do Unemployed Americans Blame Themselves While Israelis Blame the System? |
| title_full_unstemmed | Why Do Unemployed Americans Blame Themselves While Israelis Blame the System? |
| title_short | Why Do Unemployed Americans Blame Themselves While Israelis Blame the System? |
| title_sort | why do unemployed americans blame themselves while israelis blame the system |
| url | http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/90830 |
| work_keys_str_mv | AT sharoneofer whydounemployedamericansblamethemselveswhileisraelisblamethesystem |