Confounded Subjectivities: the Psychological Prison in ‘Labour Process Theory’.
Paper Presented at the 29th International Labour Process Conference:
University of Leeds, 5th to 7th April 2011
Abstract
Much of the labour process debate in the 35 years following the publication of Labor and Monopoly... more
Abstract
Much of the labour process debate in the 35 years following the publication of Labor and Monopoly Capital has been preoccupied with its subjective dimension, an aspect deliberately neglected by Braverman since his priority was to clarify the objective situation of labour to which subjectivity might respond. In what is still the only volume carrying the title ‘Labour Process Theory’, David Knights and Hugh Willmott (both 1990) responded to this challenge by proposing a quasi-existential treatment of subjectivities which has proved of enduring influence, not only in the labour process debate itself but also in its offshoot sub-discipline of Critical Management Studies (Hassard, Hogan and Rowlinson, 2001). This paper argues that these interventions were not soundly based either in respect of the theoretical sources on which they drew or in the interpretations of empirical research which were adduced in their support. It is further argued that progress in understanding the subjective dimension of labour will depend not on the production of more sophisticated ‘externalising’ theories of subjectivity but on a reversion to an earlier tradition of industrial sociology which pays attention to, and respects, the interpretations of their own position in the social order by the workers themselves.
In essence both Knights and Willmott attribute an individualizing tendency to the capitalist social relations of production. This tendency, they maintain, sets in motion a quest for satisfactory and stable identities. In Knights’ version, this search in the case of ‘subordinate workers’ ends either in an a-political privatization or in a passive-aggressive machismo which, because of its inability to accept the legitimacy of ‘effeminate’ white collar and managerial work, is incapable either of an ‘attack’ on capitalism or of constructive co-operation within the labour process. For Willmott the individualizing tendencies of capitalism are held to react with an already-present ontological openness to produce an existential anxiety, the response to which is a ‘fetishism of identity’ founded on the illusions of psychological continuity and stability. In an attempt to shore up these illusions, individuals are said to seek out interpersonal and institutional setting which will confirm the identities in question. In the case of ‘subordinate workers’ the inadvertent result is to perpetuate the conditions of their own subordination.
The paper shows that this portrayal of the working class as locked in a psychic prison of its own making largely follows from certain choices of method rather than from anything in the matters to which these are applied. The first of these is a thoroughgoing methodological individualism, manifest in the dubious attribution of individualizing tendencies to capitalism and in the posit of an individualized response to the aforesaid openness of the human condition. The second is a radical social constructionism in which the subjective response to power is seen as somehow complicit in the constitution of power itself. The third is a persistent tendency to depict the possible responses to wage labour in terms of mutually exclusive alternatives: to suppose, for example, that pride in the identity of labourer is incompatible with a determination to challenge the conditions under which labour is performed.
The paper also examines the manner in which both authors have sought empirical support for these theorizations of subjectivity from some of the major ethnographic studies of the 20th century. Extending over several decades, these attempts, it is shown, feature misreadings of the case material and the straw-manning of the authors’ own interpretations of their data on a scale which entirely nullifies the claimed empirical confirmation.
The paper ends with the suggestion that a more constructive approach to the ‘missing subject’ of the labour process requires a return to - and updating of - an earlier and more reflexive tradition, in which workers are treated, not as the disoriented victims of some hypostasised individualization, but as industrial sociologists in their own right, with their own theories of the social order and of the potentials attached to their own place within it. These theories need to be treated not as static and individual ‘images of society’, but as culturally-produced framings which make sense of, and are modified by, the immediate experience of the labour process as it is acted upon by managers.
Download (.docx) Crise e processo de trabalho: em busca de relações teóricas
by Daniel BIN
DAL ROSSO, Sadi; BUENO, Fábio Marvulle; AZEVEDO, Aldo Antonio de; SOUZA, Perci Coelho de; PFEILSTICKER, Zilda Vieira de Souza; BIN, Daniel; GALETTI, Luiz Carlos; SILVA, Robson Santos Camara; MARTINS, Samuel Silveira. Crise e processo de trabalho: em busca de relações teóricas. XII Encontro da ABET: Cenários da crise e a organização do trabalho: permanências, mudanças e perspectivas, João Pessoa: Associação Brasileira de Estudos do Trabalho ABET. p. 74-97.
http://www.abet-trabalho.org.br/encabet.html
Com este trabalho tem-se o objetivo de contribuir para o preenchimento de uma importante lacuna teórica nas ciências... more Com este trabalho tem-se o objetivo de contribuir para o preenchimento de uma importante lacuna teórica nas ciências humanas, a saber, estabelecer relações teóricas entre crises do capitalismo e processo de trabalho. Recorrendo a autores que discutem o fenômeno da crise capitalista dentro de uma perspectiva teoria ampla (Keynes, Krugman, Mézáros, Kurz e Marx, Panitch and Gindin, Zizek, Shaikh and others) e a levantamento do debate sobre a atual crise econômica mundial iniciada em 2008 nos países do centro capitalista, propõem-se duas plausíveis relações: por um lado, a abordagem da trajetória da taxa média de lucro como possível ligação entre crise e organização do processo de trabalho; adicionalmente desenvolve-se a hipótese de que os sistemas de gestão dos processos de trabalho dificilmente atravessam crises estruturais sem modificações substantivas. Neste artigo, procuramos ainda destacar a perspectiva Centro e Periferia como importantes conceitos para análise da crise atual.
The Waitress -- on Affect, Method and (Re) Presentation
by Emma Dowling
Cultural Studies <=> Critical Methodologies 12 (2): 109-117
This article engages the embodied experiences of the waitress with the question of how to (re)present these in their... more This article engages the embodied experiences of the waitress with the question of how to (re)present these in their affective dimensions. In service work, the body needs to be able to combine conflicting capacities; to lure, entice and satisfy on the one hand and to be resilient, fast and astute on the other. If an attention to affect allows a shift from the question of what a phenomenon means or represents, to that of what a phenomenon does, then the ways affect is analyzed and narrated are necessarily bound up with questions of method and (re)presentation. This piece performs the waitress in an analysis of her affective and embodied labor in the process of how she experiences and makes sense of it.
Mapeamento De Indicadores de Qualificação e de Competência Profissional Num Sistema Complexo De Trabalho. O Caso Dos Serviços De Controlo De Tráfego Aéreo (Mapping of Qualification and Professional Competence Indicators in a Complex Work System: The Case of the Air Traffic Control Services)
Paper provided by University Library of Munich, Germany in its series MPRA Paper with number 6415.
With José João Sampaio
Flexibilisation and complexification of working places, due to the information technologies, requires an holistic... more Flexibilisation and complexification of working places, due to the information technologies, requires an holistic approach to the labour reality, in an integrative and wide perspective of different scenarios and operational contexts. Such new changes implies the development of new personal and professional features that are beyond the restrict frame of the autonomous, discrete and specialised work. The knowledge needed for the work in organisations can be searched in the working processes modelling. And that can be a constructive basis of a “knowledge map”. Thus, are described the activities of different working processes, and that induces the emergence of a group of informations (indicators) necessary to the construction of each competence that supports the execution of those processes. This action even allows the existence of possible gaps in the strategies of long-life education and training. They assume more and more a critical support to the need of updating and maintenance of professional competences. How to identify and operationalise the professional competences in a working complex system is one of the main issues in this paper. The case study presented in this paper is refered to the air traffic control and it presents the methodology used for the identification and validation of a group of structuring professional competencies that are evident in a complex working system.
Are societal changes new? Questions or trends and future perceptions on knowledge-based economy
Paper provided by Universidade Nova de Lisboa, IET-Research Center on Enterprise and Work Innovation, Faculty of Science and Technology in its series IET Working Papers Series with number 02/2009.
With Margarida Paulos
With the emergence of a global division of labour, the internationalisation of markets and cultures, the growing power... more With the emergence of a global division of labour, the internationalisation of markets and cultures, the growing power of supranational organisations and the spread of new information technologies to every field of life, it starts to appear a different kind of society, different from the industrial society, and called by many as ‘the knowledge-based economy’, emphasizing the importance of information and knowledge in many areas of work and organisation of societies. Despite the common trends of evolution, these transformations do not necessarily produce a convergence of national and regional social and economic structures, but a diversity of realities emerging from the relations between economic and political context on one hand and the companies and their strategies on the other. In this sense, which future can we expect to the knowledge economy? How can we measure it and why is it important? This paper will present some results from the European project WORKS – Work organisation and restructuring in the knowledge society (6th Framework Programme), focusing the future visions and possible future trends in different countries, sectors and industries, given empirical evidences of the case studies applied in several European countries, underling the importance of foresight exercises to design policies, prevent uncontrolled risks and anticipate alternatives, leading to different ‘knowledge economies’ and not to the ‘knowledge economy’.
Foresight methodologies to understand changes in the labour process. Experience from Portugal
António B. Moniz, 2006. "Foresight methodologies to understand changes in the labour process. Experience from Portugal," Enterprise and Work Innovation Studies, Universidade Nova de Lisboa, IET-Research Center on Enterprise and Work Innovation, Faculty of Science and Technology, vol. 2(2), pages 105-116
The foresight and scenario building methods can be an interesting reference for social sciences, especially in terms... more The foresight and scenario building methods can be an interesting reference for social sciences, especially in terms of innovative methods for labour process analysis. A scenario – as a central concept for the prospective analysis – can be considered as a rich and detailed portrait of a plausible future world. It can be a useful tool for policy-makers to grasp problems clearly and comprehensively, and to better pinpoint challenges as well as opportunities in an overall framework. The features of the foresight methods are being used in some labour policy making experiences. Case studies developed in Portugal will be presented, and some conclusions will be drawn in order to organise a set of principles for foresight analysis applied to the European project WORKS on the work organisation re-structuring in the knowledge society, and on the work design methods for new management structures of virtual organisations.
Der Arbeitskraftunternehmer. Eine neue Grundform der Ware Arbeitskraft
Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie. 50 (1), 1998, 131-158. Author together with Hans J. Pongratz
Diversity, Identities and Strategies of Women Trade Union Activists
by Fiona Colgan
co-authored with Sue Ledwith
Diversity among women trade union activists is explored with reference to feminism and the women's movement, and the... more Diversity among women trade union activists is explored with reference to feminism and the women's movement, and the social and civil rights movements of black, disabled and lesbian and gay groups. Relationships between this diversity and women's individual and group identities and priorities are traced through some of the women's own descriptions and reflections on their trade union activism. These are drawn from our research with the public service union UNISON, in particular, two questionnaire surveys and semi-structured interviews. We draw on theories of social identity, the relations of out-group status and gender group consciousness to help to understand and explain the complexity of the social interactions involved. This frames our central analysis of the role of self-organization in the union in the construction of women's identities and consciousnesses, and the potential of self-organization as a site for collective action leading to organizational challenge, change and transformation.
