Hard Sell

In Hard Sell, Peter Ikeler traces the low-wage, largely nonunion character of U.S. retail through the history and ultimate failure of twentieth-century retail unionism.

Peter Ikeler is Assistant Professor of Sociology at SUNY College at Old Westbury.

Ikeler's ethnography invites antrhopologists to critically engage anew with areas of work and labor not simply as places in which workers struggle to make a living, but places in which other political battles are underway and where the very identity of workers is being shaped.

Jamie McCallum, Middlebury College:

Though hardly Marx’s "Satanic mills," their cheery veneer hides more than a few dirty secrets. It is behind this veil that Peter Ikeler’s new book, Hard Sell, takes us, focusing specifically on the subjective positions and experiences of workers themselves. In so doing, he joins a handful of notable scholars who have sought to, once again, bring the study of work back into labor sociology.

Stuart Tannock, University College Londonco, author of Youth Rising? :

Offering insight into the world of low-wage retail labor in America, Peter Ikeler's book about the work experiences of New York City department store workers adds the concept of 'contingent control' to further our understanding of the social construction of job insecurity and precarity. Hard Sell demonstrates how retail employers' moves toward employing an increasingly stopgap workforce with limited job identity present significant challenges for traditional forms of labor organizing—and yet, at the same time, may open up new and unexpected possibilities for fostering renewed worker militancy and oppositional forms of working-class consciousness at the start of the twenty-first century.

Chris Rhomberg, Fordham University, author of The Broken Table:

I can't think of another recent book that looks at the actual work of retail selling with as much depth and detail as this one. Peter Ikeler returns to the workplace as a key site to search for the emergence (or not) of an oppositional class consciousness among workers. The focus on the retail sector is both theoretically valuable and practically relevant, as the news media report the increasing number of symbolic strikes and protests at Walmart and in the fast food industry. Hard Sell is not only timely in its subject but also offers original and concise analytic concepts that significantly advance our understanding in the field.

Immanuel Ness, Brooklyn College, author of Guest Workers and Resistance to U.S. Corporate Despotism:

Hard Sell provides an important contribution to understanding the constraints that chain store workers face when seeking to improve their wages and working conditions. Peter Ikeler's research among retail workers is top notch, comprehensive, and professional.