The article analyzes the evolution of the gap between the Centre-North and the South of Italy during the transition from the Fordist techno-economic paradigm to the learning economy paradigm, and the ...consequent impact on development policies. According to the discussed hypothesis, in order to support the South of Italy in overcoming the middle-income trap, it appears necessary to shift from convergence policies to innovation policies. The former, at least during a certain phase of the Extraordinary Intervention, triggered a catching-up dynamic in the southern economy. However, over time, the South gradually lost its push towards convergence, leading to a situation where it fell into the middle-income trap. The presence of multiple deficits, both in the national innovation system and in regional systems, significantly limits the development potential in the South area.
Post-Fordism describes a situation in which precarity and un/underemployment becomes normalised while the requirement for young people to seek subjectivity through work is intensified. In this ...context, this article draws on interviews with youth living in regions of high youth unemployment to examine how young people create identities as workers. The article shows that young people approach the cultivation of a working self in terms of how the capacity for productive labour contributes to projects of 'self-realisation'. Classed subjectivities are formed through the different ethics through which young people approach the formation of the self as a worker. This demonstrates how the disciplinary requirements of work contribute to the contemporary experience of class among youth. The article concludes by suggesting that generational shifts in the experience of youth currently associated with employment insecurity can be usefully understood in terms of the dynamics of post-Fordist labouring subjectivities.
This article presents a critical political economy of contemporary surveillance-for-profit. The article makes the central argument that surveillance capital emerged out of the contradictions of ...capitalist accumulation and remains subject to the imperative of accumulation for the sake of ever more accumulation. Platforms constitute the infrastructure and surveillance provides the instrument for the expropriation-accumulation-commodification of user-generated data. Firstly, the article maps how surveillance capital valorizes. Surveillance capital derives surplus value from expropriation rather than exploitation in a strict Marxian sense. Secondly, the article shows that surveillance capital is far from unique in its expropriation of both resources and labor. Indeed, capitalist accumulation has always entailed both expropriation and exploitation. Thirdly, the article argues that while surveillance has always been a key tool for shaping capital-labor relations, surveillance capital as such first emerged under Fordism and has now become an integral part of a Post-Fordist mode of flexible accumulation that is based on the expansion and intensification of forms of surveillance that arose in response to the requirements and contradictions of earlier modes of capitalist accumulation. The article concludes that Post-Fordist flexible accumulation in general and surveillance capital’s valorization in particular may end up producing a crisis of effective demand, as workers who are subject to increasing precariousness and disposability may no longer have the income to consume the commodities on whose sale surveillance capital ultimately depends.
Meaningful Work Voswinkel, Stephan
Comparative sociology,
12/2020, Letnik:
19, Številka:
6
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Abstract
Though work is important for people's self-esteem and recognition, the sociology of work pays little attention to the meaning of work. This reflects that work in capitalist societies tends ...to be alienated. But empirical findings show that employees nevertheless try to appropriate their work by asking for its meaning. They claim for a meaningful work and for the possibility to execute work in a meaningful way. If they have to carry out work they feel to be meaningless they can suffer psychological strain. Meaning has not only an individual dimension but it refers to the meaning for society and other people and there are social institutionalizations of recognized meanings of work. Fordism and flexible capitalism are connected to different forms of alienation and difficulties to appropriate work as meaningful. Therefore, meaningful work is embedded in relations of collegiality and cooperation and can be damaged by the fragmentation of work.
The article reviews the recent advances in comparative political economy. It reconnects knowledge on growth regimes and welfare regimes by analyzing how growth and welfare regimes covary over both ...time and space. It underlines the fact that governments pursue different growth strategies to adjust to new economic environments, focusing in particular on welfare state reforms. Synthesizing the literature, we propose a definition of growth and welfare regimes that integrates different engines of growth as a way to track general trends in the evolution of capitalism. We analyze the main trends of three eras of capitalism: Fordism, neoliberal financialization, and the digitalized knowledge-based economy. We trace the various paths of change by identifying the five growth strategies governments have pursued to adapt their growth and welfare regimes to the new capitalist era. The result is not a typology of fixed types of capitalist models but a dynamic process of adjustment.
The idea that road safety could be secured using sound – particularly talkback radio and music – is fascinating. This paper explores Ford’s recent and unprecedented level of investment in car stereos ...in its 2018 models alongside the terrifying 2014 anti‐speeding commercial produced by the Northern Ireland Department of Environment (Road Safety). The commercial makes use of one musical track styled in two different ways to sonically represent safety and danger. Ford’s use of sound to create a feeling of safety for the driver, and the Department of Environment’s use of particular qualities of musical sound to craft ideals of safe and dangerous driving raise interesting questions: what is the relationship of sound to road safety? Why are specific qualities of sound related to safety and others to danger? I argue that conferral of safety (actual or fantastical) involves letting the dangerous world outside the car inside – even though we might think of safety as something we assure for ourselves by sealing out the external world, exercising control over it from our dashboards. I argue too that most explanations of why some qualities of sound assure safety obscure the workings of post‐Fordist regulation that is so ‘natural’ its power goes unnoticed.
Sain et sauf : écoutant Guns N’Roses en conduisant
L'idée que la sécurité routière pourrait être assurée par le son, en particulier à travers des émissions radio avec de l’interactivité ou de la musique, est fascinante. Cet article examine le niveau d'investissement récent et sans précédent de Ford dans les autoradios de ses modèles 2018, ainsi que le spot publicitaire anti‐vitesse terrifiant de 2014, produit par le ministère de l’Environnement (sécurité routière) d'Irlande du Nord. La publicité fait usage d'une seule piste musicale stylisée de deux manières différentes pour représenter de façon sonore la sécurité et le danger. L'utilisation du son par Ford pour créer un sentiment de sécurité pour le conducteur et l'utilisation par le ministère de l’Environnement de qualités particulières de sons musicaux pour créer des idéaux de conduite sûre et dangereuse soulèvent des questions significatives : quelle est la relation entre le son et la sécurité routière ? Pourquoi certaines qualités sonores sont‐elles liées à la sécurité et d'autres au danger ? Je soutiens que le fait de conférer la sécurité (réelle ou fantaisiste) à celles‐ci implique de faire entrer le monde dangereux situé à l'extérieur de la voiture à l'intérieur en le contrôlant depuis nos tableaux de bord, alors que nous avons tendance à penser la sécurité comme quelque chose que nous assurons pour nous‐mêmes en nous isolant du monde extérieur. Je soutiens également que la plupart des explications concernant la façon dont certaines qualités de son assurent la sécurité obscurcissent le fonctionnement de la réglementation post‐fordiste qui semble si « naturelle » que le pouvoir exercé par elle passe inaperçu.
The apparent de-bordering of the western world under the impulse of economic globalization has been paralleled by a simultaneous process of re-bordering of late-capitalist societies against global ...migrations. This re-bordering is part of a broader punitive turn in the regulation of migration which has emerged, particularly in the European context, since the mid-1970s. On the one hand, non-western immigrants are targeted by prohibitionist immigration policies which in fact contribute to the reproduction of their status of illegality; on the other hand, the systematic use of incarceration (together with administrative detention and deportation) as the main strategy in the ongoing war against unauthorized immigration configures a dynamic of hyper-criminalization of immigrants, whose result is the intensification of their socioeconomic and political marginality across Europe. Following the materialist criminological approach known as political economy of punishment, this article suggests that these punitive strategies should be analyzed against the background of an increasingly flexible and de-regulated neoliberal economy: in this context, the hyper-criminalization of migrations contributes to the reproduction of a vulnerable labor force whose insecurity makes it suitable for the segmented labor markets of post-Fordist economies.
Based on an in‐depth study with 56 informants (25 women and 31 men), across the ICT (information and communication technology), creative and academic sectors in one city/regional hub in Ireland, this ...article investigates the so‐called revolution in work/life practices associated with the post‐Fordist labour processes of the Knowledge Economy from the perspectives of workers themselves. Recent theorizations of post‐Fordist work patterns emphasize a rearranging of work and life place boundaries; a reconfiguring of work and life time boundaries; and a dissolving of the gendered boundaries of work and life (production and social reproduction) (Adkins and Dever ; Morini and Fumagalli ; Gill and Pratt ; Weeks ; Hardt and Negri ). Our findings suggest that, instead of dissolving boundaries, workers constantly struggle to draw boundaries between what counts as work and as life, and that this varies primarily in relation to gender and stage in a gendered life trajectory. Work extensification is compensated for via a perceived freedom to shape one's own life, which is articulated in terms of individualized boundary‐drawing. While younger men embraced ‘always on’ work, they also articulated anxieties about how these work habits might interfere with family aspirations. This was also true for younger women who also struggled to make time for life in the present. For mothers, boundary drawing was articulated as a necessity but was framed more in terms of personal choice by fathers. Although all participants distinguished between paid work and life as distinct sites of value, boundaries were individually drawn and resist any easy mapping of masculinity and femininity onto the domains of work and life. Instead, we argue that it is the process of boundary drawing that reveals gendered patterns. The personalized struggles of these relatively privileged middle‐class workers centre on improving the quality of their lives, but raise important questions about the political possibilities within and beyond the world of post‐Fordist labour.
In the Fordist era, trade unions promoted welfare state expansion and coverage against risks for the broader workforce. With the shift to the post-industrial economy, however, new economic groups ...have been left without representation. This is particularly evident for women: despite a rapid increase in female employment since the 1980s, unions' membership base remains anchored in the male, old and industrial working class. Without the crucial pressure of labour, welfare systems have failed to enhance the reconciliation of work and family life. Under which conditions do unions support the expansion of work-family policies? Marshalling evidence from 20 OECD countries in the 1980-2010 period, this paper investigates the role of political actors in family policy reform. Findings suggest that unions promote the expansion of work-family packages when they are gender-inclusive and have institutional access to policy-making.
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