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- Convenors:
-
Jens Kjaerulff
Jakob Krause-Jensen (Aarhus University)
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- Discussants:
-
Daniel Miller
(University College London (UCL))
Susan Wright (Århus University)
- Format:
- Workshops
- Location:
- 415
- Sessions:
- Wednesday 27 August, -, -, -, Thursday 28 August, -
Time zone: Europe/Ljubljana
Short Abstract:
Novel visions, conditions and practices of employment relations, e.g. in terms of "flexible" capitalism, provides impetus for inquiry about mutuality and diversity at work. Papers comprise anthropologically grounded approaches to experiences of and changes in work under contemporary circumstances.
Long Abstract:
'Work' as distinctive from other domains of exchange and reciprocity is a recent phenomenon of "Western" origin. As such work (employment) remains an important part of social life, where relationships of mutuality and diversity are continuously at issue. The emergence of novel visions, conditions and practices of work, e.g. in terms of 'new' or 'flexible' capitalism over the past decades, provides impetus for new inquiries and theoretical engagements.
Under New Capitalism, stable forms of work organization are superseded by more volatile environments, at once pregnant with opportunity and fraught with insecurity: less clearly bounded 'networks' are promoted, as are engagements framed as short-term projects and teamwork. New dimensions to work practice are sought measured or rendered auditable, while more personalized and mutual relations between management and employees are also pursued.
The workshop aims at exploring the potentials of ethnographic research and anthropological imagination in examining experiences of, and changes in, work under such contemporary circumstances.
Accepted papers:
Session 1 Wednesday 27 August, 2008, -Paper short abstract:
This paper takes issue with Sennett's famous book 'The Corrosion of Character', in which he suggested that flexible work undermines important social dimensions to working. Instead, the paper argues that work as a cultural tradition is being reinvented through situated practices of flexible work.
Paper long abstract:
Ten years ago, in his famous book 'The Corrosion of Character' (1998), Richard Sennett suggested that 'the new, flexible capitalism' was undermining important social aspects of work, such as relations of mutual commitment, and work as a source of identity. Based on fieldwork among people practising a form of flexible work known as 'telework' (working from home via internet), this paper argues that Sennett was wrong, but that aspects of his argument ressonate with shifts in so-called 'hidden' dimensions of working life. Where Sennett suggested that habits and routines in contexts of work where 'dying' albeit of 'primary value in social practice and selfunderstanding', this paper instead suggests that habits and routines, and their social significances, are being reinvented through the practice of flexible work. The paper proposes a comparative perspective where work is seen as a dynamic cultural tradition, from which the material under consideration may be approached as situated processes of cultural reproduction and incremental change.
Paper short abstract:
This paper will explore how 'mutuality at work' is currently being challenged by practices and representations of 'labour precariousness' in the Portuguese call-centre industry, thus contributing to a new social division of labour between 'stable' and 'precarious workers'.
Paper long abstract:
Precarious forms of employment characterized by insecure short-term jobs increasingly mark modern forms of work. Many aspects characterize precariousness in labour relationships. They include the fragile contractual relation between employer and employee; the vulnerability associated with possibilities of work in the future; the low wage salaries tied to activities with an inferior status; and by the loss, felt by such workers, of the social rights which were once connected to a stable and long term job (Paugam, 2000).
A very large portion of Portuguese call-centres is associated with temporary work firms, and represent at this moment one of the most rapidly growing forms of work in Portugal. In April 2004, a Portuguese economic journal indicated that between 0.7% and 1% of the active national population was currently working in call-centres, and they estimated that Portugal would be the country of fifth largest growth of this labour activity among countries of Europe, Africa and the Middle East. The picture is also similar in Great Britain and France.
Based on ethnographic research, currently in progress, in a telecommunications call-centre it will be argued that call-centre work represents a paradigmatic case in order to understand how 'labour precariousness' is continuously produced and reproduced through the practices and representations attached to the labour process. It will be argued that in order to develop an operational concept of 'labour precariousness' firstly one needs to understand the processes through which 'precarious workers' are distinguished and opposed to 'stable workers' in specific labour settings.
Paper short abstract:
Stress-coping in companies has in recent decades developed as a big market along with the increases experience of stress among modern employees. Consultants in psychic work environment, psychotherapists, coaches, meditation-trainers offer trainee-programmes for managers and employees. This paper will discuss stress-coping discourse within flexible work.
Paper long abstract:
A variety of techniques that are rooted in organizational psychology, psychotherapy and New Age philosophy have been applied in private and public organizations. Personal development shows an increasing interest in other aspects of an employee's competence than the professional qualifications. Courses in personal development often have a therapeutic dimension, deliberately intended to change people's behaviour or self-perception by a particular method. From studies in stress-coping techniques the idea of 'personal development' is suggested by consultants as a way to overcome modern employee's experience of stress. Still the experience of stress is increasing among all kind of workers in most parts of the Western world in spite of access to stress-coping-tecniques in companies.
From a Foucault inspired critical perspective I have examined the use of personal development courses and stress-coping in work life. How does the relation between employee and employer develop under the flexible capitalism and how does is influence modern employee's. Along with the increasing interest in the cultivation of the Self stress-coping and personal development build on ideas of personal growth that goes very well with the ideas of flexible organizations and the neo-liberal idea of economic growth. My aim in this paper is to elucidate the consequences of the emergence of a new ethic of sensitivity through courses in personal development and what it means for ideas about stress-coping and how it is practiced in working life.
Paper short abstract:
This paper explores the social and cultural implications and effects of importing ’Lean’ — a management technology from the manufacturing industry — into the public sector of social work in Denmark.
Paper long abstract:
Flexible capitalism does not only concern companies selling commodities on the global market. Under the banner of New Public Management, public sector organisations are transformed in the image of the private sector. Consequently the public sector is open to new ideas of management from the private sector. At the moment, one very prominent such concept is 'Lean', which originated as the 'Toyota-model', and which is now applied as an important part of the public sector reform in Denmark to enhance performance and quality and overcome stress.
Normally it is easy to identify common sense and ideology as two distinct cultural systems (Geertz 1973). However, 'Lean management' is part of an ideology that comes across as common sense. It is explicitly not about new strategies. It is not about what you should do, but how you do what you already do more efficiently— It is about optimizing, not revolutionizing. But how is the Lean concept transposed and made relevant to social work? And how do the social workers negotiate and apply these new ideas? In this paper based on non-participant observation and interviews with Danish social workers and lean consultants, I argue that Lean and NPM changes fundamentally the way employees should look at themselves and their work.
Paper short abstract:
This paper will discuss the phenomenon of Corporate Social Responsibility and the role it is playing in changing expectations of the workplace in Ireland beyond work and accommodating a range of personal identities beyond that of employee.
Paper long abstract:
The purported goal of CSR oscillates between 'doing the right thing' and 'mere company lip service'. Companies certainly use CSR to make the most of their brands and reputations for competitive edge and most are striving to make it measurable so that its value can be shown.
However, CSR also draws attention to a complex web of relationships that the company is involved in between a range of so-called stakeholders (Freeman 1984). Internet communication and the rapid communication of negative corporate behaviour means that the concerns of employees among many other stakeholders—for example, NGOs, community groups, neighbours, shareholders, media and others—are now carefully attended to. In my ethnographic research among CSR practitioners in Ireland, it seems that old divides—between ethics and life in the company and those outside it, as described by Adam Smith and Karl Marx for instance—are being complicated. Now an employee's personal ethic also seems to belong at work potentially changing what a company is and what an employee is.
This paper will explore these questions in Ireland where CSR is engaging with a range of concerns prompted by the perceived condition of moral decline accompanying Ireland's Celtic Tiger wealth.
Mutuality and flexibility at work
Grete Brorholt
(Danish School of Education)
Paper short abstract:
This presentation argues that the demand for mutuality and flexibility among employees and managers is an indication of strongly individualised and capitalized forms of management, policy and practise. This development has consequences for the employee in her daily work life at the hospital.
Paper long abstract:
"Mutuality" and "flexibility" have turned into a favourite refrain for employees, management, policy and consultants, when they approach the concept of psychological working environment. "If they (the managers) do not do something for me, I will merely do the indispensable". I have heard this phrase expressed in various manners by individual employees during my fieldwork. It is a vague expression of sentiments towards the new forms of management (audit, npm, accountability, etc.) in the hospital. Few years ago the debate and practice regarding working environment was approached by organisations and institutions (unions, ngo´s , fellowship, rules, law). Now it seems that the responsibility of working environment is internalised and perceived as an individual responsibility (healthy life stile, be happy at work, meditation, brain neurones, etc.).
Right through the material, I have gained by a multisided fieldwork by doing participant observation on a hospital ward, reading policy documents about working environment, observe public debates and interviewing employees and managers, the concept of mutuality is a premise practised and obliged by employees and management, which also calls for new social practices.
The presentation, which is based on my research regarding working environment at a public hospital argue, that the perception of "mutuality" among employees and management is one indication (among others) of strongly individualised and capitalized forms of management, policy, change, practise and obligations concerning "working environment" in a public hospital.
Paper short abstract:
This paper focuses on those zones of fluidity formed at the conjunction of the old, still dominant ethos of work, and the new realities emerging within the institution of work in the era of flexible capitalism.
Paper long abstract:
The venue of work has always been an influential factor in constructing immigrants' individual projects and civic identities in a new place. This paper is based on the ethnographic study of post-Soviet Jewish immigrants in contemporary Germany. The group of newcomers studied here face difficult realities: they are expected to rebuild their biographies and civic identities through the venue of work, even as the latter is undergoing drastic transformations. The paper inquires into the way that individuals experience and cope with changing realities of work in rebuilding their life projects following migration.
Focusing on a particular case, the paper shows that the field of work remains crucial in shaping relationships of social reciprocity in general and between immigrant subjects and the host country in particular. The immigrant's ability to give - in the form of work - and the state's ability to receive the immigrant as equal worker, symbolize this mutual recognition. The violation of this reciprocal cycle - either because of the state's inability to provide the immigrant with work or, in some cases, because of the migrant's unwillingness to engage in work and create a 'working biography' - stands at the core of unrealised individual projects, problematic civic identities, and the perpetuation of the migrant's social marginality and exclusion.
Paper short abstract:
In this paper I intend to elaborate on the issues of free lancers, more specifically those who work in artistic professions. The discourse is initially based on their circumstances mostly in Slovenia, but compared to and broadened with the picture in Holland.
Paper long abstract:
In the first part I would like to illuminate the raising phenomenon of free lancing from the perspective of how the kind of work is perceived by free lancers themselves. I speak about the complexity of idea-processing, product-making, product-selling, advertising, private life, networking, etc, coming all together in a 24/7 working zone performed by a one-man-band. Such total connectedness with all the stages of production finally results in a total personal identification with work as well. Although free lancing may at a first glance sound like a dreamland: mostly attractive for its "flexibility" and "freedom of being your own boss", there are many traps and misunderstandings, which lately lead into more and more hidden abusive situations. In the second part I therefore focus on the way how free lance artists are integrated in the society from the perspective of increasing exploitation by other leading and established sectors. Often their position is so vaguely understood that it is no longer clear who provides work and who sets the price. Since free lancers are not joined among each other, they remain weak in fighting for better conditions and often turn to professionally unethical tactics of exploiting even each other's weaknesses. Is their "freedom" in fact their biggest "prison": not at all flexible?
Paper short abstract:
This paper discusses various discourses around diversity and identity produced by leading London companies whilst implementing diversity strategies. Although diversity management approach calls for a need to recognize and value diversity, it carries the risk of essentialist perception of diversity and may not account for practices of mutuality.
Paper long abstract:
The aim of this paper is to discuss various discourses around diversity and identity. In 2007 Centre for Employment Research at the University of Westminster conducted a study on experiences of leading London companies in implementing diversity strategies. As the study showed, diversity has been given various meanings from equal opportunities to managing diversity and from moral to business case-related.
United Kingdom has been a point of immigration for centuries, and therefore is characterized by a culturally diverse population. However, discrimination on ethnicity grounds is still prevalent in the UK workplaces despite of equal opportunities legislation having been implemented in the 1970s.
In the 1990s equal opportunities approach started to be replaced by diversity management approach. Although, diversity management approach calls for a need to recognize and value cultural differences between employees, there is a risk that it may encourage essentialist perception of ethnic identities as `fixed` (Wrench 2005) and it may lead to employers not accounting for practices of mutuality. Furthermore, it may result in employers perceiving employees through socially constructed stereotypes (and for example as not being able to "fit in" company's culture), as there is no mechanism in diversity management approach to challenge prejudices (Kirton & Greene 2000). However, contemporary writers on identity in the multicultural context such as Bhabha or Hall, perceive identity as process, which is constantly being negotiated and according to this approach belonging in the multicultural society is a complex phenomenon. However, this may not always be taken under consideration in managing diversity.
Paper short abstract:
This paper examines the invocation of flexibility as an institutional rationale for encouraging international student mobility. I argue that this invocation acts more as a canon of ideological faith than a simple description of training practices.
Paper long abstract:
As in many other Western countries, across a variety of Canadian sectors and institutions, including those of government, tourism, and academia, an increasingly expansive set of rhetorical claims portray international student and youth mobility as a crucial tool of training and international exchange. An extended sojourn abroad is often represented as inculcating a capacity for flexibility because students learn new ways of doing things while working or studying outside their own country. And the capacity for flexibility supposedly denoted by a stay abroad is seen as providing students with marketable career credentials while also enhancing Canada's national competitiveness in the global economy. Yet there is little substantiating evidence either that students learn new skills relevant to their future careers or that their stays abroad will have any impact on their attractiveness to future employers. In this paper I will argue that the identification of international experience with flexibility functions more as a canon of ideological faith than a simple description of training practices. But is this faith in internationalism legitimized by reference to flexibility or faith in flexibility legitimized by reference to internationalism? This paper thus seeks to work through the ideological impetuses for a particular institutional invocation of flexibility.
Paper short abstract:
Employability, especially for low skilled workers, is increasingly becoming a central issue both in the European political debate on globalization and labour market demands and within recent studies of work life. The paper discusses meanings of employment policies in light of, existing theories of changing work identity, individualization and flexible management.
Paper long abstract:
The present paper examines prevailing new demands on 'employability' in a global labour market by analyzing different understandings of 'competency development', recruitment policies and employment practices in a Danish industrial network. Based on empirical analysis, the paper illuminates the concrete processes through which dominant political discourses on 'employability' are contextualized and practiced at the workplace. The paper focuses on changing connotations of 'employability' and on 'conceptual inflation' (Shore and Wright 2000) in policies and practices of competency development as the 'concept' 'moves' from EU discourse to becoming a specific HR policy within a specific Danish industrial workplace. Furthermore, the paper highlights a series of discrepancies between HR discourse and practice, reproducing as well as creating new diversities at the workplace. In doing so, existing (Foucault-inspired) theories on changing work identity and loss of personal integrity associated with modern forms of work are critically reviewed. The analysis of low skilled workers' responses to HR policies and their reflections regarding their future employability suggests a lack of mutuality with management ideas as well as a lack of commensurability with prevailing theory.