Inside Toyland: Working, Shopping, and Social Inequality (Paperback)

by Christine L. Williams (Author) "I got my first job working in a toy store when I was forty-one years old..." (more)
Key Phrases: giant toy stores, retail work, shopping floor, Toy Warehouse, Diamond Toys, African American (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
Williams, the editor of the journal Gender & Society and author of Still a Man's World, takes the Nickle and Dimed approach to toy retailing by working as a cashier in a high-end and a big box toy store for six weeks each, turning the scrutinizing eye of a sociologist onto the sandbox. Other than the fact- and statistic-filled chapter on the history of shopping in America, Williams's presentation is a mix of anecdotes and the sort of observations only a sociologist could make: a male co-worker acting flamboyant while selling Barbies is making "his temporary assignment seem more palatable and less inconsistent with his masculinity"; male Asian-American clerks prefer to work in the electronics section, because "Asian masculinity is often defined through technical expertise." However, because her field work provided her with such a small sampling of material, it's a tough sell that the conditions she observed in two stores can prognosticate industry- or culture-wide conditions, but her sympathy for the low-wage retail clerk's plight, rendered in oddly touching clinical prose, is reason enough to pick this up.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist
Williams, a sociology professor at the University of Texas who specializes in gender and sexuality studies, spent part of her sabbatical working as a clerk at two toy stores. Her goal was to discover if and how toy shopping is implicated in reproducing gender, race, and class inequalities. She delves into the "McJobs" phenomenon, whereby those holding retail jobs have experienced loss of job security and benefits, their unions have lost power, and the value of the minimum wage has decreased. In both stores where she worked, the hierarchy of jobs was obviously affected by race and gender. In addition, white employees were treated with more respect by customers than minorities, and white customers were more often seen by management as potential spenders, minorities as potential shoplifters. Williams' scholarly essay concludes with a call for legislation mandating living wages, health care, and equal opportunity for workers, brought about by "citizen consumers" who would decide where to shop based on employee working conditions--what she calls "consumer-worker alliances," in which each of us could take part. Deborah Donovan
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 264 pages
• Publisher: University of California Press; 1 edition (January 9, 2006)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0520247175
• ISBN-13: 978-0520247178
• Product Dimensions: 8.1 x 5.4 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.4 out of 5 stars See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #525,796 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Those Evil Toys!!!, June 15, 2006

By	criticalthinker68 - See all my reviews

`Inside Toyland' tells the fascinating but exposing story how some children's toy stores in the United States seem to directly show the other-side of American society. Shopping for toys can sometimes reproduce social inequality in the most obvious way. Firstly, the shoppers who are mostly white women feel privileged and always except notions of `entitlements'. Secondly, many of the workers in the stores (who were minorities/ 10% African Americans/12% Hispanic), already over-worked and paid between 7-8 dollars hourly, had to face hostility and disrespect from predominantly white customers. Thirdly, the direct effect that the money-hungry toy-industry has on children, its implication for nurturing early consumer habits and transcendence of future values that reproduce-- identity, race, class, and gender. So what was the author trying to prove? How could a well-respected democracy--like the United States--suddenly still in the year 2006 still contain, structures of Jim-Crow, bigotry and discriminatory values against people that are simple different?

Prof. Christine Williams, a Sociology Professor at the University of Texas at Austin, finds much of the answer(s) in the behavior of white costumers and social organization in toy stores. The `Participant Observations' seemed to have given her an edge in finding the many silent secrets mostly still covered-up in American society. Spending some 6-weeks infiltrating two toy-stores -- she observed first-hand-- how the toy business works as a capitalist organization and also works in dominating its workforce. In particular, Williams investigated two different toy stores: firstly, Diamond Toy stores, which she describes as being constructed for members of the upper and leisure class (almost made for the quasi-bourgeois costumer). Then, Toy Warehouse was a "big-box" retailer that was more interested in advertising in order to bring in those masses. Although, much of her real identity (Sociology Professor) was kept secret, she was able to spy on the internal/external organization and expose vital information. From the Marxian perspective, she also looks into the labor history that has been very troubling, as she came to the most sensible conclusion:
"Union membership in the United States is at its lowest point in a hundred years, a reflection not only of the conservative political climate in America at the start of the twenty-first century but also of the interests of the big box retailers, who have unprecedented political and economic power... "(10).

From the feminist school, Williams takes the critical-view in which ways toy shopping directly contributes to popular gender stereotyping that continues to be controlled and manipulated by sexist male-executives who run those toy-stores. The core of much of this manipulation of children lies in the manner in which capitalist advertising manipulates children. Readers interested in feminist theory might wish the author had devoted more space to the failure of feminist movements outside the university and how these might be reframed to fit the public sphere. Surprisingly, Williams does not think that simple state censorship could solve or aid this problem. Rather, she sees an opportunity to reframe many of these messages into products of `promoting health' and `social responsibility'. Here I think, Williams gives into industrial demands. It is important to voice opposition on such matters in manner of public protest. Still, I agree with Williams that one of the most fruitful ways to solve this problems - is to buy less or no toys at all. I don't think that just one-day of no shopping will shake up many of these corporations. However, feminists, like Williams, might adopt some of the ideas taken from the anti-neo-liberal globalization movements. The possibility of an entire week of no toy-shopping could give warning signals to the producers and capitalists that consumers still control the means of consumption!

Most readers of 'Inside Toyland' will find it absorbing reading and will not be disappointed. Some of the author's arguments, however, are insufficiently worked out. This however is made up in the detailed chapters that are easy to follow and insightful to read. I would definitely recommend this book for the open-minded reader.

Cheers, Michael Buhl
[e-mail]

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Marx R Us, April 16, 2006

By	Timothy Horrigan "Tim Horrigan" (Durham, NH United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This is almost like two books mashed up into one. The bulk of it is a Marxian feminist analysis of class, gender, and economic dynamics of the retail industry (especially Big Box retailing.) But the more memorable part of this book is her trenchant field notes of her own experiences as a retail clerk.

William's experience echoes those of Barbara Ehrenreich's in "Nickel and Dimed" and "Bait and Switch." Williams didn't have to go as far underground as Ehrenreich did: she just went ahead and stated that she was a college teacher who found herself in need of a McJob. (The stores didn't look very deeply into her background anyway: in fact, both the places which hired her sent her to an employee orientation session the next day.) The two stores she worked at were described under the pseudonyms, "Toy Warehouse" and the more pretentious "Diamond Toys." Toy Warehouse is a very thinly designed Toys R Us (where I myself worked a few Christmases ago): aside from the pseudonym, the only detail she changed was the color of her smock (orange in the book, red in real life.) I am not sure what the other store was: it fits the general profile of both FAO Schwarz and the Discovery Zone.

For the general reader, the academic part of the book is a little offputting, albeit of considerable interest. However, the academic stuff will make this an ideal academic text for classes in a wide variety of subject areas: not just sociology, but also women's studies and even business administration.

1.0 out of 5 stars This book is not well written., March 30, 2009

By	mark g (New York, NY) - See all my reviews

I am reading the book for one of my classes, she complains about things that happen in any job. Any one of the people working in a toy store can easily move to a chicken or beef factory. If you want to talk about real inequality read about packing plants. She talks about angry customers and rude people, but that happens anywhere you go, and in most jobs. Would not recommend the book.