Carrie Lane, Ph.D. 

Professor of American Studies

Carrie Lane

 

Dr. Carrie Lane studies the changing nature of work in the United States. Her current research concerns the professional organizing industry, in which organizers are hired to help people manage their belongings, homes, and workspaces. Professor Lane teaches about work, community, gender, disability, and interdisciplinary research methods. She co-leads the American Studies Internship Program, has led study abroad trips to South Africa, Denmark, and Bali. As CSUF's first Scholarly Publication Faculty Fellow, she helps other faculty revise and publish their work.  

Contact

clane@fullerton.edu

Voice: 657-278-7359

Dept: 657-278-2441

Office: Gordon Hall (GH) 410

 

Address

Cal State University, Fullerton
American Studies 
800 N. State College Blvd. GH-313
Fullerton, CA. 92831

 

Current Course Schedule

AMST 350: Theories & Methods of American Studies (MW 10-11:15am)

AMST 390: Disability & American Culture (MW 11:30am-12:45pm)

AMST 499 (independent study)

AMST 599 (independent study)

HONR 497 (senior honors project)

Office Hours

Mondays 1:00-3:00pm, Wednesdays 9:00-10:00am, & other times by appointment (in person and Zoom)

MA Exam Reading Lists

Work and Class

Institutions and Ideals

The National and the Global

Consumption and Leisure

Gender and Sexuality

Publications

Books

More Than Pretty Boxes: How the Rise of Professional Organizing Shows Us the Way We Work Isn't Working. Chicago, IL: Chicago University Press, 2024.

A Company of One: Insecurity, Independence, and the New World of White-Collar Unemployment. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press,

2011. (Winner of the 2012 Society for the Anthropology of Work Book Award; Finalist for the 2012 Book Award of the Society for Economic Anthropology)

Edited Volume

Co-Editor with Jong Bum Kwon, Anthropologies of Unemployment: The Changing Study of Work and Its Absence. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2016.

Journal Articles

Co-authored with Adam Golub, “Zombie Companies and Corporate Survivors,” PDF File  Anthropology NOW 7.2 (2015): 47-54.   

“‘If The Shoe Ain’t Your Size, It Ain’t Gonna Fit’: Ideologies of Professional and Marital Instability among US White-Collar Workers,”PDF File  Iowa Journal of Cultural Studies 12/13 (2010): 37-54.

“Man Enough to Let My Wife Support Me: How Changing Models of Career and Gender Are Reshaping the Experience of Unemployment,”PDF File  American Ethnologist 36.4 (2009): 681-692.

“Like Exporting Baseball to Japan: U.S. Tech Workers Respond to Offshoring,” Anthropology of Work Review 25.3-4 (November 2005): 18-26.

Book Chapters

“Unemployed Tech Workers’ Ambivalent Embrace of the Flexible Ideal,” Beyond the Cubicle: Insecurity Culture and the Flexible Self, Allison Pugh, ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 2016.

“The Limits of Liminality: Anthropological Approaches to Unemployment in the United States,” Anthropologies of Unemployment: The Changing Study of Work and Its Absence, Jong Bum Kwon and Carrie Lane, eds. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2016.

Co-authored with Jong Bum Kwon, “Introduction,” Anthropologies of Unemployment: The Changing Study of Work and Its Absence, Jong Bum Kwon and Carrie Lane, eds. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2016.

“Man Enough to Let My Wife Support Me: Gender and Unemployment among Middle-Class U.S. Tech Workers,” The Gender, Culture, and Power Reader, edited by Dorothy Hodgson, 333-341. New York: Oxford University Press, 2015.

"How To Be a Professional Organizer in the United States," A World of Work: Imagined Manuals for Real Jobs, edited by Ilana Gershon, 129-145. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2015.

Solicited Articles

“The Jobs We’ve Had: An Introduction,” Exertions (June 2023). 

“The Work of Getting Organized,”Opens in new window Anthropology News (March/April, 2022). 

"The Work of Care, Caring at Work: An Introduction," Anthropology of Work Review 38.1 (July 2017): 3-7.

“Gig Work Doesn’t Have to Be Isolating and Unstable,” Harvard Business Review (May 4, 2017). 

“The Self-Assembled Career,” The Hedgehog Review 18.1 (Spring 2016): 88-95.

"Dueling Interpretations of Professional Organizers," PDF File  Contexts 14.4: 62-64.

"What I've Learned from Professional Organizers."PDF File  Orange County Register, CSU Fullerton Section, Living Textbook Series (September 11, 2013): 2. 

"Finding the Fit in Organizing." PDF File  Orange County Register, CSU Fullerton Section, Living Textbook Series (September 4, 2013): 3. 

"What's Driving the Demand for Professional Organizers?"PDF File  Orange County Register, CSU Fullerton Section, Living Textbook Series (August 28, 2013): 3. 

“Work and Unemployment in the Global Labor Market,” Anthropology News 46.3 (March 2005): 21.

“Teaching Work to Workers,” Anthropology News 46.9 (December 2005): 59.

Book Reviews

The End of Burnout: Why Work Drains Us and How to Build Better Lives by Jonathan Malesic, American Studies Journal (forthcoming 2023)

My Life with Things: The Consumer Diaries by Elizabeth Chin, American Ethnologist 45.1 (February 2018): 129-130.

Good Jobs America: Making Work Better for EveryonePDF File  by Paul Osterman and Beth Shulman, Contemporary Sociology 42.3 (2013): 410-11.

Counter Culture: The American Coffee Shop Waitress by Candacy Taylor, Anthropology of Work Review (2012): 49-51.    

The Managed Hand: Race, Gender, and the Body in Beauty Service Work by Miliann Kang, American Ethnologist 39.2 (2012): 462-3.

Headhunters: Matchmaking in the Labor Market by William Finlay and James E. Coverdill, Anthropology of Work Review24.1-2 (2003): 35-36

Minding the Store and Quest for the Best by Stanley Marcus, Journal of South Texas 16.1 (2003): 119-121.

Temps: The Many Faces of the Changing Workplace by Jackie Krasas Rogers, Anthropology of Work Review 22.2 (2001): 32-33.

Current Research Project

Professor Lane is completing a book on the growing field of professional organizing, in which organizers help clients organize their spaces, belongings, and schedules. Lane interviewed organizers and their clients in cities across the country (but especially in Los Angeles and Orange County), worked alongside organizers as an unpaid assistant, and attending professional meetings, industry conferences, and organizing workshops. This study considers what this fascinating and fast-growing industry can tell us about the changing nature of work and life in the contemporary United States. 

Carrie M. Lane, PhD

Professor of American Studies

RECENT NEWS

* I'm working on a new book, Not about the Stuff: Organizing Better Jobs and Better Lives in Uncertain Times.  You can read about that project in the article "KonMari Organizing Craze Sparks Questions about Modern Life" as well as in my pieces for  ContextsPDF File and The Hedgehog Review

* Check out my interviews with authors about their new books on the New Books in American Studies podcast, part of the New Books Network

DEGREES

2005, Ph.D, American Studies, Yale University

1997, BA, Cultural Anthropology, Princeton University

Curriculum Vitae (pdf)PDF File Opens in new window

RESEARCH AREAS

Changing Nature of Work and Careers in the United States; Anthropology of the United States; Ethnographic Research, Writing, and Ethics; American Communities; U.S. Business, Labor, and Women's History; Theories and Methods of American Studies. 

Publications

Book

A Company of One: Insecurity, Independence, and the New World of White-Collar Unemployment. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2011. (Winner of the 2012 Society for the Anthropology of Work Book Award; Finalist for the 2012 Book Award of the Society for Economic Anthropology)

 

Edited Volume

Co-Editor with Jong Bum Kwon, Anthropologies of Unemployment: The Changing Study of Work and Its Absence. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2016.

 

Journal Articles

Co-authored with Adam Golub, “Zombie Companies and Corporate Survivors,”PDF File Anthropology NOW 7.2 (2015): 47-54.   

“‘If The Shoe Ain’t Your Size, It Ain’t Gonna Fit’: Ideologies of Professional and Marital Instability among US White-Collar Workers,”PDF File Iowa Journal of Cultural Studies 12/13 (2010): 37-54.

“Man Enough to Let My Wife Support Me: How Changing Models of Career and Gender Are Reshaping the Experience of Unemployment,”PDF File American Ethnologist 36.4 (2009): 681-692.

“Like Exporting Baseball to Japan: U.S. Tech Workers Respond to Offshoring,” Anthropology of Work Review 25.3-4 (November 2005): 18-26.

 

Book Chapters

“Unemployed Tech Workers’ Ambivalent Embrace of the Flexible Ideal,” Beyond the Cubicle: Insecurity Culture and the Flexible Self , Allison Pugh, ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 2016.

“The Limits of Liminality: Anthropological Approaches to Unemployment in the United States,” Anthropologies of Unemployment: The Changing Study of Work and Its Absence, Jong Bum Kwon and Carrie Lane, eds. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2016.

Co-authored with Jong Bum Kwon, “Introduction,” Anthropologies of Unemployment: The Changing Study of Work and Its Absence, Jong Bum Kwon and Carrie Lane, eds. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2016.

“Man Enough to Let My Wife Support Me: Gender and Unemployment among Middle-Class U.S. Tech Workers,” The Gender, Culture, and Power Reader, edited by Dorothy Hodgson, 333-341. New York: Oxford University Press, 2015.

"How To Be a Professional Organizer in the United States," A World of Work: Imagined Manuals for Real Jobs, edited by Ilana Gershon, 129-145. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2015.

 

Solicited Articles

"The Work of Care, Caring at Work: An Introduction," Anthropology of Work Review 38.1 (July 2017): 3-7.

“Gig Work Doesn’t Have to Be Isolating and Unstable,” Harvard Business Review (May 4, 2017). 

“The Self-Assembled Career,” The Hedgehog Review 18.1 (Spring 2016): 88-95.

"Dueling Interpretations of Professional Organizers,"PDF File Contexts 14.4: 62-64.

"What I've Learned from Professional Organizers."PDF File Orange County Register, CSU Fullerton Section, Living Textbook Series (September 11, 2013): 2. 

"Finding the Fit in Organizing."PDF File Orange County Register, CSU Fullerton Section, Living Textbook Series (September 4, 2013): 3. 

"What's Driving the Demand for Professional Organizers?"PDF File Orange County Register, CSU Fullerton Section, Living Textbook Series (August 28, 2013): 3. 

“Work and Unemployment in the Global Labor Market,” Anthropology News 46.3 (March 2005): 21.

“Teaching Work to Workers,” Anthropology News 46.9 (December 2005): 59.

 

Book Reviews

My Life with Things: The Consumer Diaries by Elizabeth Chin, American Ethnologist 45.1 (February 2018): 129-130.

Good Jobs America: Making Work Better for EveryonePDF File by Paul Osterman and Beth Shulman, Contemporary Sociology 42.3 (2013): 410-11.

Counter Culture: The American Coffee Shop Waitress by Candacy Taylor, Anthropology of Work Review (2012): 49-51.    

The Managed Hand: Race, Gender, and the Body in Beauty Service Work by Miliann Kang, American Ethnologist 39.2 (2012): 462-3.

Headhunters: Matchmaking in the Labor Market by William Finlay and James E. Coverdill, Anthropology of Work Review24.1-2 (2003): 35-36

Minding the Store and Quest for the Best by Stanley Marcus, Journal of South Texas 16.1 (2003): 119-121.

Temps: The Many Faces of the Changing Workplace by Jackie Krasas Rogers, Anthropology of Work Review 22.2 (2001): 32-33.

 

Other Scholarly Work

Current research project: Professor Lane is currently writing a book on the growing field of professional organizing, in which organizers help clients organize their spaces, belongings, and schedules. Lane interviewed organizers and their clients in cities across the country (but especially in Los Angeles and Orange County), worked alongside organizers as an unpaid assistant, and attending professional meetings, industry conferences, and organizing workshops. This study considers what this fascinating and fast-growing industry can tell us about the changing nature of work and life in the contemporary United States.