“kick up a fuss”: Albert O. Hirschman, Exit, Voice, and Loyalty: Responses to Decline in Firms, Organizations, and States (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1970), 30.
“We urgently need more”: Quoted in Kate Conger and Daisuke Wakabayashi, “Google Employees Protest Secret Work on Censored Search Engine for China,” New York Times, Aug. 16, 2018.
“to empower employees”: Schmidt and Rosenberg, How Google Works, 65.
“There are serious worldwide”: Ryan Gallagher, “Senior Google Researcher Resigns over ‘Forfeiture of Our Values’ in China,” Intercept, Sept. 13, 2018, theintercept.com/2018/09/13/google-china-search-engine-employee-resigns/.
“We believe that Google should not be”: Quoted in Scott Shane and Daisuke Wakabayashi, “‘The Business of War’: Google Employees Protest Work for the Pentagon,” New York Times, Aug. 4, 2018, www.nytimes.com/2018/04/04/technology/google-letter-ceo-pentagon-project.html.
“attribute that is deeply discrediting”: Erving Goffman, Stigma: Notes on the Management of Spoiled Identity (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1963), 3.
“Like individuals, organizations”: Thomas Roulet, “What Good Is Wall Street?: Institutional Contradiction and the Diffusion of the Stigma over the Finance Industry,” Journal of Business Ethics 130 (Aug. 2015).
“We effectively, if often unthinkingly”: Goffman, Stigma, 5.
“the staff would not end up being a stigmatized group”: Bruce G. Link and Jo C. Phelan, “Conceptualizing Stigma,” Annual Review of Sociology, vol. 27 (2001): 376.
“to regard their success as their own doing”: Michael J. Sandel, The Tyranny of Merit: What’s Become of the Common Good? (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2020), 25.
“Google is using machine learning”: Brian Merchant, “How Google, Microsoft, and Big Tech Are Automating the Climate Crisis,” Gizmodo, Feb. 21, 2019, gizmodo.com/how-google-microsoft-and-big-tech-are-automating-the-1832790799.
“control the process of their own work”: Ursula M. Franklin, The Real World of Technology (Toronto: House of Anansi Press, 1990), 10.
“the authority and resources”: Annie Kelly, “Apple and Google Named in US Lawsuit over Congolese Child Cobalt Mining Deaths,” Guardian, Dec. 16, 2019, www.theguardian.com/global-development/2019/dec/16/apple-and-google-named-in-us-lawsuit-over-congolese-child-cobalt-mining-deaths.
“Virtually all the companies”: “See No Evil, Speak No Evil: Poorly Managed Corruption Risks in the Cobalt Supply Chain,” Resource Matters, 2019, 17.
Epilogue
“in treating one patient”: Jillian Mock, “Psychological Trauma Is the Next Crisis for Coronavirus Health Workers,” Scientific American, June 1, 2020, www.scientificamerican.com/article/psychological-trauma-is-the-next-crisis-for-coronavirus-health-workers1/.
“The collective soul”: Nivedita Lakhera, “As a Front-Line Doctor, I Can’t Let Another Doctor Suffer Trauma, Suicide,” USA Today, April 1, 2020, www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/voices/2020/04/01/coronavirus-doctor-colleagues-suffering-trauma-column/5098054002/.
Acknowledgments
I could not have written this book without the support of numerous foundations and fellowship programs. I am particularly grateful to the Dorothy and Lewis B. Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers at the New York Public Library, where I spent a year researching and writing the book. Special thanks to Jean Strouse, its former director; Salvatore Scibona, the current director; and deputy directors Lauren Goldenberg and Paul Delaverdac, whose support and geniality make the Cullman Center such an exceptional place.
I am equally grateful to the Carnegie Corporation of New York, which awarded me an Andrew Carnegie fellowship in 2018, and to Type Media Center, where I have been a Puffin Foundation Writing Fellow. Thanks in particular to Taya Kitman, who has been an invaluable supporter and loyal friend. I also want to thank the Russell Sage Foundation, where I spent several months as a visiting journalist, and in particular Sheldon Danzinger, RSF’s president, and Claire Gabriel, who helped me with research. Thanks as well to the New Orleans Center for the Gulf South, which awarded me a Monroe Fellowship to do some research in the Gulf, and to Rebecca Snedeker, its brilliant executive director.
I am immensely indebted to Sarah Chalfant of the Wylie Agency. Sarah is the best agent and advocate a writer could hope to have. Thanks as well to Luke Ingram and Rebecca Nagel for their assistance and encouragement.
No person shaped this book more than Eric Chinski, a brilliant editor who I feel very lucky to have worked with. Eric’s passion for ideas, his unerring judgment, and his deep commitment to his authors made me feel accompanied during the long, often lonely process that writing a book can be. Thanks also to Julia Ringo for her excellent editorial suggestions and to Janine Barlow for her expert fine-tuning.
I am grateful to Daniel Zalewski, a legendary editor at The New Yorker who encouraged me to investigate the abuses at the Dade Correctional Institution. Working with Daniel has taught me so much about how to craft and report a story. I’m also grateful to Sasha Weiss, with whom I had the pleasure to work on a story about the wounds that encumber drone warriors.
I owe a special debt to Eric Klinenberg, who, a decade ago, encouraged me to apply to the PhD program in sociology at NYU, and who later invited me to become a visiting scholar at the Institute for Public Knowledge. It was through the program that I came across the work of Everett Hughes. I am equally grateful to Steven Lukes, a mentor and intellectual inspiration whose feedback on an early draft was invaluable.
Many thanks to Andy Young for fact-checking the book with care and levity. Thanks also to Margot Olavarrio for helping with translation, and to Sara Feinstein for research assistance.
One thing that makes writing a book less lonely is the support and comradeship of fellow writers and friends. I am particularly grateful to Adam Shatz, Sasha Abramsky, Rowan Ricardo Phillips, Laura Secor, Scott Sherman, Gregory Pardlo, Mona El-Ghobashy, Ari Berman, Steven Dudley, Kirk Semple, Caitlin Zaloom, Chase Madar, Jennifer Turner, Nicole Fleetwood, Neil Gross, and Peter Yost, and to the wonderful group of fellows I got to know at the Cullman Center, in particular Ava Chin, Nellie Hermann, Joan Acocella, Sarah Bridger, Martin Puchner, Blake Gopnik, Hugh Eakin, and Barbara Weinstein.
My deepest debt of all goes to my family: my generous and loving parents, Carla and Shalom; my incredible mother-in-law, Graciela Sas-Abelin Rose, who read a draft of the book and offered valuable feedback; my sister, Sharon, for her love and support; and my brother- and sister-in-law, Laurent Abelin and Suzanne Ehlers, for making the time away from work so memorable and fun. Above all, I am grateful to my wife, Mireille Abelin, whose love enriches my life immeasurably and whose commitment to emotional and intellectual growth challenges and inspires me. She is also my most perceptive and discerning reader, and an amazing mother to our beautiful children, Milena and Octavio.
Index
The index that appeared in the print version of this title does not match the pages in your e-book. Please use the search function on your e-reading device to search for terms of interest. For your reference, the terms that appear in the print index are listed below.
Aaron, Christopher; in drone program
Abbott, Greg
Abramson, Marc
Abu Ghraib
Achilles
Achilles in Vietnam (Shay)
ACLU
Acosta, Alex
Afghanistan
AFL-CIO
African Americans; incarceration of; inequality and; as prison guards; as slaughterhouse workers
African Resources Watch
Agamemnon
Age of Surveillance Capitalism, The (Zuboff)
ag-gag laws
Air Force, U.S.
Airman Ministry Center
Ai Weiwei
Alexander, Michelle
al-Qaeda
Alston, Philip
Amazon
American colonies
American Energy, Imperiled Coast (Theriot)
&nb
sp; American exceptionalism
American Meat Institute
American Medical Association (AMA)
American Notes (Dickens)
American Psychiatric Association (APA)
Amnesty International
Anderson, Martin
Angelle, Scott
Anglos and Mexicans in the Making of Texas (Montejano)
Antal, Chris
Appelbaum, Kenneth
Apple
Araujo, Michael
Arctic National Wildlife Refuge
Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery
artificial intelligence (AI); Google’s principles for
Asian immigrants
assassinations; see also drone program
asylums
Asylums (Goffman)
AT&T
Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The
Attica Correctional Facility
At Work in the Iron Cage (Britton)
Auburn State Prison
Azar, Alex
Bacevich, Andrew
Backing Hitler (Gellately)
Bailey, Beth
Bakken Formation
banking industry
batteries, cobalt for
Bauman, Zygmunt
Beale Air Force Base
Beall, Pat
Beck, Roy
Beneze, Tom
Benko, Jessica
Berkowitz, Deborah
Biden, Joe
bin Laden, Osama
Black History Month
Black Lives Matter
Black people, see African Americans
Blackwell’s Island
“black world”
Blank Spots on the Map (Paglen)
Blee, Richard
Blomé, Toby
BMW
Bon Pasteur
Border Patrol agents; Cantú; Clinton administration and; Latinos as; morale among
Boudreau, Tyler
BP; Deepwater Horizon oil spill
Brandeis, Louis
Breach of Trust (Bacevich)
Brexit
Bright, Jeff
Brin, Sergey
Britton, Dana
Bronstein, Scott
Brown, Julie
Brown, Margaret
Bryan, Texas
Bureau of Correctional Health Services, New York
Bureau of Investigative Journalism
Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement (BSEE)
Burkeen, Aaron Dale
Burroughs, Hilary
Bush, George W.
Bush, Jeb
Butts, Lampkin
California: offshore drilling and; prisons in
Callamard, Agnes
Cambridge Analytica
Camus, Albert
Cantú, Francisco
Carnegie, Andrew
Cassidy, John
Castañeda, Dulce
Cato Institute
Cawley, Randi
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
Central America
Centro de Derechos Laborales (Center for Labor Rights)
Centurion of Florida
Chapman, Andre
Chappelle, Wayne
Charlotte Correctional Institution (CCI); Walker’s death at
Chengangu, Bienvenue
Chicago Defender
Chicago school of sociology
child labor
Chiles, Lawton
China; Google’s Dragonfly project in
chlorine
Christians, and moneylending
Church Committee
CIA
civilization
Civilization and Its Discontents (Freud)
civilized punishment
Civilizing Process, The (Elias)
Civil War
Clark, Donald
Clarke, Roland
climate change; Paris Agreement and
Clinical Psychology Review
Clinton, Bill
coal mining
cobalt mining
Cobb, Jonathan
Cockburn, Andrew
Cockrell, Mike
Code Pink
Cold War
colonial era
Columbia/HCA
Columbia Law School Human Rights Clinic
Community Mental Health Act
Congo, cobalt mining in
Congo Dongfang Mining International
conscience
Consequence (Fair)
Conservation and Reinvestment Act
Contract with America
Corizon
corporal punishment
Correctional Medical Authority
correctional psychology
corrections officers, see prison guards
Counterterrorism Airborne Analysis Center
COVID-19 pandemic; “essential workers” designation during; medical workers and; in New York City; oil industry and; OSHA and; prisons and; slaughterhouse workers and
Creech Air Force Base
crime; 1994 bill on; war on drugs and
criminal justice system: mentally ill in; sentencing laws in; shift from rehabilitative ideal to punitive approach in; see also prisons
Crosby, James V. “Jimmy”
Crusius, Patrick
Cummings, Jerry
Curtis, Bill
Dade Correctional Institution
Dade Correctional Institution, Transitional Care Unit (TCU) of; article on abuse of prisoners at; Corizon’s contract with; Cummings as warden at; empty meal trays at; filth and run-down conditions at; guards at; Hempstead at; Krzykowski at; lawsuit against Florida DOC for abuse at; Mair at; Mallinckrodt at; Morris as assistant warden at; Perez at; Rainey’s murder at; recreation yard access at; Richardson at; shower abuse at; solitary confinement at; Wexford’s contract with
data collection
Datta Khel
Dauphin Island
Dean, Jeff
Dean, Wendy
Deepwater Horizon; Horizon oil spill
Defense, U.S. Department of; Project Maven with Google
Defense Production Act
Deitch, Michele
Dell
democracy
democrats, passive
Desert Rock Airport
Desert Waters Correctional Outreach
Devereaux, Ryan
Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders
Dickens, Charles
dirt
Dirty Jobs
dirty work: automation of; essential features of; “good people” and; as hidden and isolated; Hughes’s essay on; inevitability of; invisible contract in; least resistant personalities and; passive democrats and; scandals and
dirty work, use of term: familiar meaning; by Hughes; in this book
dirty workers; moral burden of
disability benefits
Disability Rights Florida
Discipline and Punish (Foucault)
Dix, Dorothea
Dodd-Frank Act
Donahue, John
Donaldson, Kenneth
DoorDash
Douglas, Mary
draft
Dragonfly project
drone program; Aaron in; burnout rate in; as “civilized”; at Creech Air Force Base; diffusion of responsibility in; emotional effects of; Human Performance Team and; in Intelligence, Surveillance, and Reconnaissance Wing; lack of debate on; language used in; Linebaugh in; Living Under Drones report on; medal for operators in; moral injury to operators in; number of civilian deaths from; Obama and; Paglen’s photos of; peace demonstrations and; secrecy surrounding; tribal elders attacked in; Trump and; warrior ethic and
drugs, war on
DuPont
Eason, John
Eastern State Penitentiary
Eating Animals (Foer)
economic inequality
Eisenhower era
Eisnitz, Gail
Elias, Norbert
empathy
energy sector, see fossil fuel industry; oil industry
England
England, Lynndie
Environmental Integrity Project
Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
Environment Texas
ergonomics
Espinoza-Gala, Lillian
Essential Worker Immigration Coalition
Estelle v. Gamble
Evers, Greg
Every Twelve Seconds (Pachirat)
Evil Hours, The (Morris)
executions
“exit”
Exit, Voice, and Loyalty (Hirschman)
Exxon Valdez oil spill
Facebook
facial recognition software
Fair, Eric
Farmer, Rick
farmworkers
Fassin, Didier
FBI
Federal Trade Commission
Fellner, Jamie
Fernandez, Manny
financial crisis of 2008
financial industry
Financial Times
Fisher, James
Florida; mentally ill people in; murders in; prisons in; Republican Party in; Senate of
Florida City, Fla.
Florida Department of Corrections (DOC); Corizon and Wexford contracts of; lawsuit against
Floyd, George
Foer, Jonathan Safran
Food and Drug Administration (FDA)
Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act
Forgotten Majority
Forman, James
Fort Meade
Fortune
fossil fuel industry; coal mining; fracking in; government revenue from; see also oil industry
Foster, Damien
Foucault, Michel
fracking
France
Frankfurt
Franklin, Ursula
FreshDirect
Freud, Sigmund
Freudenburg, William
Friedman, Milton
Frumin, Eric
Gallagher, Ryan
Garland, David
Geiger, Daniel
Geiger, Debra
Gellately, Robert
Germany: Frankfurt; Nazi; slaughterhouses in
Gertler, Dan
Getting Away with Murder (Mallinckrodt)
Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher
gig workers
Gingrich, Newt
Gizmodo
Glencore
Global Justice Clinic
GlobalSantaFe
Global Witness