Freelancing Expertise - 9780801476563

"Freelancing Expertise is a detailed and nuanced description of important dimensions of contracting work today. Debra Osnowitz asks how contractors manage the risks that are entailed when they lack a steady employment contract. While analyzing the experiences of professional contractors in the fields of high technology and publishing, Osnowitz provides comparisons to people in similar occupations who are regular employees and people in similar temporary employment relations but in different occupations. Osnowitz's understanding of how an external labor market works is very original and cutting edge."---Vicki Smith, University of California, Davis, coauthor of the Good Temp

"Debra Osnowitz's Compelling analysis identifies the strategies contract workers use to chart careers, the rewards unique to contract work, and the substantial personal risk involved. By contextualizing contract work in a historical perspective and through evaluation of in-depth interviews, Freelancing Expertise reveals contract work to be an alternate to, and consequence of, the limited rewards obtained in traditional career jobs. This is a remarkable contribution to understandings of the new economy."---Stephen Sweet, Ithaca College, author of Changing Contours of Work: Jobs and Opportunities in the New Economy

"Freelancing Expertise is an innovative, accessible, and insightful sociological analysis of the dilemmas contract professionals face as they navigate risk and seize opportunities in the open labor market of the new economy. Based on in-depth interviews and close observation, Osnowitz empirically unpacks the multifaceted processes of social networking and occupational community-building that contract professionals deploy. She concludes with a compelling call for legal reforms that strengthen the safety net and social protections for freelance professionals."---Daniel B. Cornfield, Vanderbilt University, Editor of Work and Occupations

"Debra Osnowitz renders visible the invisible legions who toil for pay outside the employment relationship. Far from unstructured fluidity, her editors and programmers pursue professionalized, rule-bound, but still precarious careers. Freelancing Expertise is a must-read for those seeking to understand the new, flexible world of work."---Chris Tilly, UCLA