From Adam Smith’s pin factory to Henry Ford’s assembly line, specialization has long connoted a modern, efficient economy. Within this paradigm, workers’ jobs become repetitive but, ultimately, entail a narrow scope of tasks. So why, in today’s ultra-optimized economy, are so many supposedly specialized workers juggling so many wide and varied responsibilities?

Michelle Jackson is a sociologist at Stanford. In her latest book, The Division of Rationalized Labor, she chronicles how today’s workers became saddled with so many tasks. Her previous book, Manifesto for a Dream, made the scientific case for more radical policy interventions to address inequality. In this conversation with host Steven Durlauf, she discusses how scopes of work ballooned across the economy, how police officers became unlikely symbols of that change, and why reducing inequality may require rethinking the role of the family.

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