Sorting Letters, Sorting Lives

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A01=Linda B. Benbow
Anthropology
Author_Linda B. Benbow
Category=JBSL
Category=JHBL
Category=KNT
culture and change
eq_bestseller
eq_business-finance-law
eq_isMigrated=1
eq_isMigrated=2
eq_nobargain
eq_non-fiction
eq_society-politics
Social and Cultural Anthropology
sociology
U.S. Postal Service

Product details

  • ISBN 9780739134740
  • Weight: 551g
  • Dimensions: 162 x 239mm
  • Publication Date: 29 Dec 2010
  • Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing Plc
  • Publication City/Country: US
  • Product Form: Hardback
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Sorting Letters, Sorting Lives offers an examination of a workplace that for many years has employed an extraordinarily diverse workforce: the United States Postal Service. In the post-civil rights era, the Postal Service took a leading role in managing a diverse workforce, seeking to acknowledge and honor the different groups and cultures represented among its workforce. The USPS has constantly been looking for ways to motivate its employees, to create a sense of fairness and belonging, and to minimize interpersonal and inter-group conflicts. Linda Benbow examines the organizational culture and levels of diversity found in an urban United States Postal Service mail processing facility. She shows how employee perceptions of social differences and their interactions with coworkers contribute to their identity and work life within the organization.

Painting detailed portraits of race, social class, and gender in a mail processing facility, Benbow looks at ways employees of diverse backgrounds relate to one another, identifying the issues and occasions that provoke conflict, the ways that participants view one another, and the forces and strategies that mitigate and conciliate conflicts. This richly detailed account of a historically diverse urban post office provides a fascinating look at the dynamics of race and gender in the workplace.

Linda B. Benbow is an adjunct lecturer in social sciences for the New School for SocialResources at the College of New Rochelle.

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