The Global Sociology Blog

What do these two items tell us about the future of work?

First item:

The end of the office… and the future of work – The Boston Globe via kwout

This is an interesting article, notwithstanding the “the new economy is so cool” overall tone of the piece. Before I go further, let’s look at the second item:

Danes show the way to get young people into work | Society | The Guardian via kwout

My first reaction to reading these two pieces was irritation because Richard Sennett wrote about these same developments in the late 1990s but apparently, new technologies have made precarization and destructuration of work life hip and cool. We are all freelancers and private consultants now. The world described in the first piece is that of Cory Doctorow’s Makers where the typical worker is an educated and creative engineer with no attachments whatsoever (partners or children) who lives fully connected and does not have a career but build a job portfolio of all the gigs he has had. He is the perfect flexible, mobile and individualized worker. And with the freelance and consulting fees he makes, he pays for his own health insurance, retirement plan, etc..

Needless to say, this is a view of labor with very narrow blinders. It is only because of the super-exploited labor of others that this individualized worker can live the life of the free agent, skillfully navigating the new economy (which is never in recession in this view). It is a liberating experience not only for the worker but also for the businesses (can we still talk of employers?) who can retain skilled workers for a few hours and crowdsource projects.

What the second piece shows is that this should be the era of big government: who will educate this mobile workforce if not mass higher education which can only be public? Who will assist these free agents as the building of a portfolio is not as easy and liberating as it seems? And this is definitely the era where the government should provide single payer health care and national retirement plans as these are absolutely necessary in the era of precarization and career destructuration. As the example from Denmark shows, this gig economy can only work with extensive social programs.

Any social structure that is still based on the idea of life-long employment with one employer or family structures based on the brief social stability of the 1950s is obsolete and social movement organizations (especially on the conservative side) blaming people for failing to still function according to the outdated template show themselves to be poor analysts of society at best, and dishonest (especially when such destructuring of work life, leading to the destructuring of family life is the product of conservative economic policies) at worst. After all, individualization is the ultimate form of privatization.

Ironically, both pieces emphasize the need for strong unions as guilds that could provide benefits to their members, such as social insurance of various types, instead of collective bargaining (which does not make much sense in an individualized environment, except maybe in the sense of French “collective conventions”).

And as always, both pieces behave as if everyone was equal on the labor market, as if there were no racism or sexism, as if everyone had access to a good education (primary, secondary and higher), a dubious proposition especially in the US. In other words, the gig economy is assumed to be  this imaginary (and illusory) meritocracy where everyone is a member of good standing of the creative class and where we can maintain the illusion that this class is not standing on the shoulders of the global poor manufacturing the tools of the gig economy.

This is all about exploitation except that the raw exploitation of long hours in the factory at exhausting pace has to remain hidden from view and the soft exploitation of the destructured and completely precarized labor has to be reframed as hip and cool.

Remember this?

Food Stamp Usage Across the Country – Interactive Map – NYTimes.com via kwout

Understanding food stamps means understanding the food networks that the poor have to resort to in order to feed themselves. And those are not pretty.

AlterNet: Dollar Stores: The Last, and Not So Healthy Eating Choice, Before the Food Lines via kwout

Needless to say, in the current contexts, these stores are expanding:

AlterNet: Dollar Stores: The Last, and Not So Healthy Eating Choice, Before the Food Lines via kwout

But in typically American fashion, it is easier to have the First Lady engage in an anti-obesity campaign focused on individual behavior rather than examine the structure of food production, distribution and consumption in the US. Focusing on individual behavior leaves the Food Inc system unquestioned.

Over at Sociology and Criminology at Keele, Mark Featherstone applies Virilio’s theory of catastrophe to Haiti’s recent earthquake. First he summarizes Virilio’s theory in a clear fashion:

Sociology and Criminology at Keele University: Haiti, Catastrophic Society via kwout

How does this apply to a natural disaster like the earthquake?

Sociology and Criminology at Keele University: Haiti, Catastrophic Society via kwout

This resonates with Pierre Le Hir’s article in Le Monde:

Catastrophes et pauvreté, la double peine, par Pierre Le Hir – LeMonde.fr via kwout

It all goes back to SHiP (Structure / History / Power). Natural disasters are what they are but they differentially affect societies based on their history (in Haiti, slavery, revolution and then constant neo-colonial interventionism), social structure (corruption and largely non-functioning government, mass poverty) and power (omnipresence of gangs, corrupt police, unfavorable regime of global governance).

And as studies show (based on research on known earthquakes since 1900), the number of victims of earthquakes is not correlated to the severity of of seismic activity nor to the density of the population in the affected area but to the level of poverty or wealth.

This holds true for any natural disaster. In the past twenty years, 98% of the two million victims of such disasters were in poor areas. At the same time, the economic losses to developing countries due to natural disasters were twenty times what they are for developed countries. It is a double penalty. And it shows no signs of going away.

The study of natural disasters is the study of global inequalities.

So, while I am debunking a bunch of commonly accepted, yet false ideas, let’s look at the impact of immigration on wages, thanks to the Economic Policy Institute:

As Anna Turner explains,

Immigration helps boost relative wages of U.S.-born workers at all levels of education via kwout

This is interesting (and cited everywhere already):

Economist’s View: Inequality and “Guard Labor” via kwout

I would argue that in the context of the surveillance society, this notion needs to be broadened beyond protecting private wealth to other forms of power preservation.

And nice debunking of the functionalist view of inequalities. Actually, the idea of imposing discipline is a nice illustration of the role of the neo-liberal state provided by Wacquant in Punishing The Poor.

Also, the idea that inequalities are actually detrimental to society as a whole, including the wealthiest segments is thoroughly explained in The Spirit Level.

Furthermore:

Economist’s View: Inequality and “Guard Labor” via kwout

Take a look at this neat graph from Baseline Scenario:

Conclusion: it’s a lot more complicated than “tax cuts = growth” (I know, it is going to be obvious to a lot of people but this view still dominates socially acceptable economic discourse, so, it’s nice to see some clear debunking).

The post also has another graph that demonstrates that there is no correlation between tax rate and unemployment rate among OECD countries.

One can also refer to Lane Kenworthy’s Egalitarian Capitalism for more on that subject.

Anyone teaching sociology must watch this series on CBS and make students watch as well:

It’s all there: the organizational, gender and class disconnect between the company’s layers. How the gender of workers is assumed when rules are made up (male is default). How treating workers like human beings improves morale and productivity more than dumb clock rules as well the embedding of labor into other parts of the social structure.

At the same time, the usual frustration is present: it’s as if changes can only come from individuals and keeps the system untouched. Yes, this company might operate better, but ultimately, it is to the benefit of the company (as well as SOME individuals), but the system is not questioned.

Factoid 1: a long time ago, my sister and I (both French) commented on how shopping in American stores can be annoying because the sales people are obsequiously all over you. Thank goodness for online shopping.

Factoid 2: I am currently reading Rachel Sherman’s Class Acts and a very interesting section of the book deals with the way luxury hotel workers negotiate their required subservience to the guests in ways that preserve their selves, reconstructed as skillful, expert, etc.

Factoid 3: what a difference culture makes when it comes to negotiating the subservience inherent to a service economy:

BBC News – In Paris, the customer is not always right via kwout

But isn’t it just Parisian and French rudeness? Not so…

BBC News – In Paris, the customer is not always right via kwout

The culture of equality in France is stronger than it is in individualistic United States. Interestingly, the strategies hotel workers use in Class Acts, tend to individualize them rather than rely on equality or class solidarity. In France, equalizing strategies prevail.

This, of course, reminded me of course, of Brooke Harrington’s post on German capitalism and the non-universal nature of American capitalism (Hello, Neil Fliegstein). I already blogged about it but here is a refresher:

Economic Sociology » The Social Underpinnings of Money and Markets via kwout

This is matter of cultural embeddedness. As Jeff Hass puts it,

“We are constrained by categories through which we interpret the world, assumptions about how the social world normally operates, and knowledge of social action. This is ‘cultural embeddedness’: categories, assumptions, and rituals from contexts of our social lives shape our decisions and actions. This may seem commonsense, but economic theory ignores culture. Economists tend to believe that the rest of the world thinks as they do and that only hard economic rationality is important. But culture is a powerful force in economic behavior and organization.” (Economic Sociology – An Introduction, 14)

Darn it, how did I miss this smart and clever animated film?

I wish the ending had been different but I completely agree with Roger Ebert’s review:

9 :: rogerebert.com :: Reviews via kwout

The visuals are indeed stunning but they do not substitute for the story. And I am a sucker for post-apocalyptic stories and this one is way better than Terminator. It feels like what would have happened to the society of Brazil (the movie) if the machines had decided to exterminate the humans. This supposed futuristic society, as in Brazil, has a Baudrillardian nostalgic feel to it, with a very 1940s look, complete with a Hitler-like dictator and a Nazi aesthetic (I would argue that Brazil is a futuristic extension of Nazism).

As noted in the post,

Who Uses the Most Energy per Capita? – GOOD Blog – GOOD via kwout

A good representation of global stratification indeed.

What a horrible story:

Turkish girl, 16, buried alive for talking to boys | World news | guardian.co.uk via kwout

And lest one thinks this is a sad but unusual case:

Turkish girl, 16, buried alive for talking to boys | World news | guardian.co.uk via kwout

I wish Virgil Hawkins would post more often because he always has some great visuals to share on conflict coverage. Take this, for instance:

The Australian newspaper and conflict « via kwout

If you’re not too detail-oriented, it looks like each of these conflicts is receiving the same amount of media attention in Australia. But if you do pay attention to details, then, a very different picture emerges:

The Australian newspaper and conflict « via kwout

The Israeli Palestinian conflict is a perfect example of a chosen conflict whereas the DRC is still relegated to the status of stealth conflict.

Dear online students,

when something does not seem to work for you, just assume you are the ones screwing up, it will save us all a lot of time.

Specifically, you will spare us all lengthy – and ultimately pointless – email exchanges regarding,

• the correspondence between exams and specific textbook chapters (they DO match)
• Blackboard’s performance
• My competence as instructor and course designer

Instead, please consider (before emailing me messages containing multiple “!!!” or “ASAP” (referring to something I should do))

• You did not read the instructions as I told you to do
• You bought the wrong textbook (regardless of the fact that you were given detailed references)
• You’re not Internet-savvy enough to know not to use IE
• Taking an online class requires more autonomy than your helicopter parents have given you, now is the time to learn.
• It might be an interesting experience for you to try to save a problem with logic rather than expecting me to serve as IT support.

Net generation, my sociological a$$.

Love,

SocProf

A while back, I read this regarding the rise of Brazil as emerging power in a multipolar world:

South America’s Gentle Giant: Brazil Flexes Muscles over Honduras Crisis – SPIEGEL ONLINE – News – International via kwout

So, it was especially interesting to read this in Immanuel Wallerstein column:

The United States Misreads Brazil’s World Policy | Immanuel Wallerstein via kwout

Wallerstein’s point, which he has been making for years now, is that the rise of multipolar regime of global governance comes at the expenses of US hegemony, no matter how big a military budget the US can muster… actually that ginourmous military budget is an indicator of decline more than anything else. The state of constant panic that neoconservatives insist on inflicting upon the US is also a part of this realization.

There are a lot of really great sociologists on Twitter, on a great variety of topics. Thanks to the WeFollow feature, they are now easy to find. Click on the link for the entire list, and yes, even dead sociologists are on Twitter:

Sociology Twitter Users : WeFollow via kwout