To help prevent discrimination, particularly against women and ethnic minorities, policymakers in the United States (US) have written and passed civil rights laws that require employers to address hate or harassment at workplaces. Sometimes, however, the programs that corporate managers create do not actually give workers a full opportunity to resolve their complaints; the programs are, instead, symbolic attempts to comply with federal and state civil rights legislation. Moreover, judges have come to see the mere existence of these programs, inadequate as they are, as evidence that corporations protect workers' rights.

Lauren B. Edelman (1955–2023) and I have approached this problem of how workers achieve their rights by studying it in two very different contexts—Edelman in the US, and me in South Sudan. This essay honors Edelman's body of scholarship by describing what I learned about workers' rights in a context—a new nation emerging from civil war—radically different from the North American corporations and courts that Edelman studied. More personally, I also share what I learned from Edelman—as her student and, later, her professional colleague—about designing and executing a research project and writing up the results for an interdisciplinary audience.

为了帮助防止歧视，特别是针对妇女和少数民族的歧视，美国的政策制定者制定并通过了民权法，要求雇主解决工作场所的仇恨或骚扰问题。然而，有时，企业管理者制定的计划实际上并没有给员工提供充分的机会来解决他们的投诉；相反，这些计划是遵守联邦和州民权立法的象征性尝试。此外，法官们已经开始将这些计划的存在视为公司保护工人权利的证据，尽管它们本身并不充分。

劳伦·B·埃德尔曼（Lauren B. Edelman，1955-2023）和我通过在两个截然不同的背景下（埃德尔曼在美国，我在南苏丹）研究来解决工人如何实现权利的问题。这篇文章通过描述我在一个刚刚摆脱内战的新国家——与爱德曼研究的北美公司和法院截然不同的背景下对工人权利的了解，向爱德曼的学术体系致敬。更个人而言，我还分享了我从埃德尔曼（作为她的学生，后来成为她的专业同事）那里学到的关于设计和执行研究项目以及为跨学科受众撰写结果的知识。