Carrie Lane, Ph.D.
Professor of American Studies
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
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
Courses Taught
AMST 201: Introduction to American Studies
AMST 320: Women in American Society 
AMST 350: Seminar in Theory and Method of American Studies
AMST 390: Disability and American Culture
AMST 401T: American Culture through Ethnography
AMST 410: The Office: White-Collar Work in American Culture
AMST 423: The Search for Community
AMST 495: American Studies Internship (undergraduate)
AMST 499: Independent Study (undergraduate)
AMST 501: American Studies Theory and Methods
AMST 502T: Ethnography and American Culture
AMST 595: American Studies Internship (graduate)
AMST 596: Teaching Tutorial
AMST 599: Independent Study (graduate)
HONR 306: Honors Women in American Society
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.
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,”
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,”
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,”
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,”
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,"
Contexts 14.4: 62-64.
"What I've Learned from Professional Organizers."
Orange County Register, CSU Fullerton Section, Living Textbook Series (September 11, 2013): 2.
"Finding the Fit in Organizing."
Orange County Register, CSU Fullerton Section, Living Textbook Series (September 4, 2013): 3.
"What's Driving the Demand for Professional Organizers?"
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 Everyone
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
Contexts
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
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.
COURSES REGULARLY TAUGHT
AMST 201: Introduction to American Studies
AMST 320: Women in American Society
AMST 350: Seminar in Theory and Method of American Studies
AMST 390: Disability and American Culture
AMST 401T: American Culture through Ethnography
AMST 410: The Office: White-Collar Work in American Culture
AMST 423: The Search for Community
AMST 495: American Studies Internship (undergraduate)
AMST 499: Independent Study (undergraduate)
AMST 501: American Studies Theory and Methods
AMST 502T: Ethnography and American Culture
AMST 595: American Studies Internship (graduate)
AMST 596: Teaching Tutorial
AMST 599: Independent Study (graduate)
HONR 306: Honors Women in American Society
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,”
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,”
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,”
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,"
Contexts 14.4: 62-64.
"What I've Learned from Professional Organizers."
Orange County Register, CSU Fullerton Section, Living Textbook Series (September 11, 2013): 2.
"Finding the Fit in Organizing."
Orange County Register, CSU Fullerton Section, Living Textbook Series (September 4, 2013): 3.
"What's Driving the Demand for Professional Organizers?"
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 Everyone
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.
