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The working lives of Deaf Americans from the mid-1850s to the post-World War II era depended upon strategies created by Deaf community leaders to win and keep jobs through periods of low national employment as well as high. Deaf people typically sought to de-emphasize their identity as sign language users to be better integrated into the workforce. But in his absorbing new book Illusions of Equality, Robert Buchanan shows that events during the next century would thwart these efforts.

       The residential schools for deaf students established in the 19th century favored a bilingual approach to education that stressed the use of American Sign Language while also recognizing the value of learning English. But the success of this system was disrupted by the rise of oralism, with its commitment to teaching deaf children speech and its ban of sign language. Buchanan depicts the subsequent ramifications in sobering terms: most deaf students left school with limited educations and abilities that qualified them for only marginal jobs. He also describes the insistence of the male hierarchy in the Deaf community on defending the tactics of individual responsibility through the end of World War II, a policy that continually failed to earn job security for Deaf workers. Illusions of Equality is an original, edifying work that will be appreciated by scholars and students for years to come.

Foreword by Cynthia Sturgis Landrum

The development of cultural competency skills and social awareness benefits LIS students, their future employers, and the library profession at large―not to mention library customers and society as a whole. Cooke's freshly updated text introduces readers to the contexts and situations that promote the development of empathy and build cultural competence. It marshals cutting edge research and relevant best practices to give readers a strong grasp of the political, social, economic, and technological divides among library patrons. It also covers outreach and library services to diverse populations, how to evaluate such services, and many other key topics. Complete with an updated syllabus, lesson plans, and exercises ready-made for course use, Cooke’s text

• demonstrates why social responsibility is a foundational value of librarianship;
• considers library services to members of marginalized racial or ethnic groups, older adults, people with mental health or physical disabilities, neurodiverse library users, refugees and immigrants, people experiencing homelessness or hunger, those growing up in or experiencing poverty, members of the LGBTQIA+ communities, and people who are incarcerated;
• features a myriad of testimonials drawn from a wide variety of settings that highlight the experiences of library and museum practitioners who are working with diverse populations;
• introduces a new model of cultural competence and cultural humility;
• authoritatively covers such essential concepts as intersectionality, privilege, marginalization, cultural competence, cultural humility, and counter-storytelling along with discussions of how they interplay in the communities that libraries serve;
• explores the impact of overwhelming whiteness of the library profession and what can be done to recruit, welcome, mentor, and retain racially and ethnically diverse library workers; and
• identifies potential employment and networking opportunities related to diversity and social justice in librarianship.

From the stone quarries of Sing Sing that supplied marble for early New York City landmarks, to twenty-first-century construction projects staffed by formerly incarcerated workers, Inside Jobs traces the relationship between prison work and the labor market over the past two hundred years. Sociologist Adam Reich demonstrates how prison labor has repeatedly been used to solve economic problems—disciplining workers, lowering labor costs, managing unemployment—revealing unexpected connections that challenge our assumptions about freedom, coercion, and labor itself.

Reich examines the history of work in prisons to understand how it has related to the free labor market. He finds that the organization of prison work, and debates over it, have changed dramatically over time. In the mid to late nineteenth century, prisons helped shape the emerging factory system as the apprentice-based labor market gave way to industrial production. Labor unions opposed prison labor as immoral, and in the early to mid-twentieth century, the moral character of the workforce became central to economic life within the prison and without. Therapeutic professionals worked in prisons to rehabilitate the incarcerated and determine what motivated them to work. Following prison uprisings in the late twentieth century, prison work became a tool of population control. Yet, paradoxically, work programs were remodeled to mirror the free labor market, requiring applications and hiring processes. 

Blending archival research, political economy, and sociological theory, Inside Jobs offers a powerful new framework for understanding mass incarceration and reentry today. Reich examines how the dynamics of mass incarceration have begun to shift. He explores how the "mark of a criminal record"—the stigma traditionally associated with felony convictions—has given way to a "market" for criminal records, as employers discover advantages in hiring disadvantaged, dependent, and disciplined workers recently released from prison. Looking toward the future, Reich focuses on promising efforts to transform this system.

Inside Jobs is an illuminating examination of prison work's history, its relationship to work outside prison walls, and how the criminal justice system disempowers workers both behind bars and beyond.