Few goods are delivered ‘complete’ to consumers as ready for use without further processing. The operation of markets and capitalist production presuppose the work of consumers in searching for, ...completing and coordinating between goods and services. Yet the critical contribution of consumers in finalising and complementing a division of labour is rarely acknowledged in theories of either work/production or consumption. The article argues for a radical extension of the division of labour, a central and classical concept of sociology, in order to overcome this limitation. Consumption work is defined as ‘all work undertaken by consumers necessary for the purchase, use, re-use and disposal of consumption goods’ and its distinguishing characteristics are delineated. Building on a relational socio-economic perspective, which emphasises the connections between different forms of work (paid/unpaid, formal/informal, production/consumption), an analytical framework for consumption work is developed and then elaborated by reference to comparative empirical research.
The use of internet‐based tools during work for personal purposes is a widespread phenomenon in both private and public organisations. By analysing 30 in‐depth interviews with cognitive workers in ...Canada, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States, this study explores the ways in which contemporary workers engage in, experience, and rationalise personal Internet use at work. The results show that inter‐generational differences, organisational culture, and the patterns in the organisation of labour affect how workers experience and rationalise the phenomenon of PIUW. This study contributes to the organisational literature with an analysis of how contemporary cognitive workers experience navigating between working and non‐working activities in the workplace.
Employment conditions have been subject to far-reaching flexibilization and fragmentation in recent decades. One of the many ways to make labor flexibly available and cost-effective is to divide the ...working day using split shifts. In this qualitative study on the home care sector in Austria, we investigate the workers' experiences of split shifts as example of fragmented work and unsocial working times. On an empirical level, the findings show that split shifts imply severe challenges for the workers. On a conceptual level, the research emphasizes the need to consider complex and subjective dimensions of time in researching working times. Our findings suggest that even seemingly clear delineations between work and non-work time are in fact fragile and ambivalent. In that sense, the interruption between the two shifts in split shift work is neither work nor real leisure.
Telecare’ refers to the use of digital or information and communication technologies (ICTs) to facilitate health and social care delivery to individuals in their homes. This article explores the ...phenomenon by foregrounding its interconnections with work activities, paid and unpaid. It draws on research as a part of the design and deployment of a set of telecare innovations for older people in an Italian municipality. The project was conceived at the outset in terms of formal inter‐ relationships between functions and components of technical systems. Technical setbacks, however, were resolved only by enrolling the active support of groups and individuals (including civil society organisations and older people). By situating a telecare intervention conceptually within the ‘total social organisation of labour’ (TSOL), we provide an analysis that contributes to understanding how a socio‐technical infrastructural approach to telecare reveals ways to improve our understanding of how formal and informal care systems interact.
알렉산드르 보그다노프는 1908년에 쓴 볼셰비끼 과학소설인 『붉은 별』에서 사회주의가 완성된 사회인 화성과 사회주의가 미완으로 끝난 지구를 대비하는 가운데』 경제학 단기 코스』(1897)에서 개진한 자신의 사회주의 경제이론, 당대의 사상적 좌표 속에서 정립한 자신의 경험일원론, 과학기술이론, 노동의 조직과 분배이론, 볼셰비끼로서 벌인 프롤레타리아문화 ...운동과 예술 등에 대해 이야기하고 있다. 본 논문은 그의 소설 속에 나타난 이러한 보그다노프의 여러 가지 사상들을 살펴보고 세계자본주의가 지배하는 현대사회에서 그의 사회주의이론이 갖는 의미를 살펴보고자 한다.
Bogdanov has written a book 『A short course on economics』 in 1897 and has written a preface for 『Capital』 translated into russian in 1909. He has established < Socialist Institute of Social Science > in 1917 and gave lecture about economics. He has been well familiar with general economics and political economy. On the other hand he believes in vision to which scientific technology points as suggested by an argument with Lenin about Taylorism. Furthermore he has contributed to the establishment of < Institute of Blood Transfusion >. Besides these he has led < Proletkult > for a proletarian culture movement. And he has led a philosophical discussion with Lenin. He was a Bolshevik as Leonid in his novel 『Red Star』. In a word, his novel 『Red Star』 seems to be a general examination of his developing ideas and thoughts. Bogdanov`s novel has a s simple plot according to which a hero Leonid reaches a Martian society and watches a completed socialism through a technological development, cultural high - degree level etc. In the meanwhile Leonid comes to love Netti and kills Sternyi to argue to invade an Earth. It is interesting that Earth`s socialism not to be done and Mar`s completed socialism is compared in terms of environment, culture etc. In this context this treatise will examine the prehistory in Russia and abroad of SF novels and influences of 『Red Star』. This treatise pays attention to the novel 『What is to be done?』 of Chernyshevsky. And then this treatise analyzes various parts such as a factory in section Ⅱ in chapter Ⅱ, community of children in chapter Ⅲ, section about art museum, hospital, clothes factory in section Ⅲ in chapter Ⅲ where his ideas about socialistic society. This treatise aims at showing his vision and theory of socialism by extracting an aspect from many aspects which is included and connected organically each other in 『Red Star』. And at the same time this treatise tries to show how his novel 『Red Star』 reflects his various ideas about a scientific technology and its progress, socially organized society, socialistic organization of production and distribution, promotion of productivity of labour by technology, socialization of means of production, cultural level to reach the completion of socialism like Mar in his novel. Lastly this treatise tries to think about a possibility to reach a socialism where world capitalism prevails today. Especially I am reluctant to agree with his vision to abolish a contradiction of capitalism such as private ownership and reach a socialization of means of production through a scientific organization of labour, not by emancipation of labour from wage system of capitalism. We cannot help saying that we cannot anticipate whether the possibility to reach a socialism comes to utopia or dystopia though Bogdanov has a optimistic vision about a utopia. Finally I think that Bogdanov anticipates the idea of participatory economics in spite of some weakness in his idea such as a prevailing inclination to technology and scientific organization of labour.
Most current sociological approaches to work recognise that the same activity may be undertaken within a variety of socio-economic forms - formal or informal, linked with the private market, public ...state or not-for-profit sectors. This article takes care of the elderly as an exemplary case for probing some of the linkages between paid and unpaid work. We attempt to unravel the interconnections between forms of care work undertaken in different socio-economic conditions in two settings, the Netherlands and Italy. The research is part of a broader programme concerned with differing interconnections and overlaps between work activities. In this article, we are concerned with: 1) how paid and unpaid care work map on to four ‘institutional’ modes of provision - by the state, family, market, and voluntary sector; and 2) with the configurations that emerge from the combination of different forms of paid and unpaid work undertaken through the different institutions. Despite the centrality of family-based informal care by women in both countries, we argue that the overall configurations of care are in fact quite distinct. In the Netherlands, state-funded care services operate to shape and anchor the centrality of family as the main provider. In this configuration, unpaid familial labour is sustained by voluntary sector state-funded provision. In Italy, by contrast, there is significant recourse to informal market-based services in the form of individual migrant carers, in a context of limited public provision. In this configuration, the state indirectly supports market solutions, sustaining the continuity of family care as an ideal and as a practice.
Der allgegenwärtige Reflex und seine Kritiker im Post‐Revolutionären Russland. Im letzten Jahrhundert war der Reflex mehr als ein wissenschaftlicher Begriff: er war ein kulturelles Idiom, das mit ...verschiedenen Zielsetzungen genutzt werden konnte – politisch, wissenschaftlich und künstlerisch. In dem Aufsatz entwickle ich die These, dass der Reflex im Russland der 1920er Jahre zu einer allgegenwärtigen Idee und einem geläufigen Wort wurde, zu einem Teil des revolutionären Diskurses und, schließlich, zu einem Kennwort der Moderne. Zwei Faktoren trugen hierzu maßgeblich bei: die physiologischen Theorien des Reflexes, die in Russland Anfang des 20. Jahrhunderts weit verbreitet waren, und die materialistische Philosophie, die nach der Revolution durch die Kommunistische Partei befürwortet wurde. Jeder, der modern und materialistisch sein wollte, musste sich in Übereinstimmung mit den offiziellen kommunistischen Ansichten auf den Reflex beziehen. Dennoch war der Begriff selbst in dieser Zeit nicht unproblematisch und wurde von einigen Wissenschaftlern, Philosophen, Künstlern und sogar Parteimitgliedern kritisiert. Im Folgenden beschreibe ich beides, die verschiedenen Verwendungen des Reflexbegriffs und die Kritik, die er in den politischen, wissenschaftlichen und künstlerischen Diskursen erfuhr. Es ist nicht unüblich, dass wissenschaftliche Begriffe, die ihren Ausgang in der Kultur und Alltagssprache genommen haben, später in diese Bereiche in Form von Metaphern zurückkehren. Dem entsprechend war der Reflex im 19. Jahrhundert zu einem rigoros wissenschaftlichen Begriff erklärt worden, um im nächsten Jahrhundert als ein kulturelles Idiom zu zirkulieren und verschiedene Sphären des politischen, künstlerischen und akademischen Lebens zu durchdringen.
The Ubiquitous Reflex and Its Critics in Post‐Revolutionary Russia. In the last century, the reflex was more than a scientific concept: it was a cultural idiom that could be used to various aims – political, scholarly, and artistic. In Russia in the 1920s, the reflex became a ubiquitous notion and a current word, part of the revolutionary discourse and, finally, a password to modernity. Two major factors contributed to it: physiological theories of the reflex, widespread in Russia at the early twentieth‐century, and the materialist philosophy backed after the Revolution by the Communist party. Everybody who wished to be modern and materialist, in conformity with the official communist views, had to refer to reflexes. Yet, even in this period, the concept was not unproblematic and was criticized by some scientists, philosophers, artists and even Party members. In the paper, I describe both the array of uses of the term and the criticism it received in political, scientific and artistic discourses. It is not uncommon that, taking their origins in culture and common language, scientific concepts later return there in the form of metaphors. Similarly, the reflex was made into a rigorous scientific concept in the nineteenth century but, in the next century, it circulated as a cultural idiom penetrating various areas of political, artistic and academic life.
This article investigates the diverse and heterodox array of labour practices and economic activities in artistic work. Existing studies contend that artistic income is highly skewed, with the ...majority of artists living in poverty, and that artistic work is intermittent, project-by-project based and precarious, with artists juggling multiple jobs. However, these prevalent perspectives typically foreground only formal contractual employment while neglecting the variegated range of informal, alternative and relational economic practices. Building on a mixed method study of Danish visual artists’ livelihoods and drawing on the total social organization of labour perspective, the article maps a diverse spectrum of labour practices ranging from formal paid/unpaid work to informal cash-in-hand work and non-monetized barter exchanges, to wholly non-commodified everyday practices of mutual aid and favour-swapping, as well as ‘consumption work’ such as thrift and self-provisioning. Heterodox economic practices are the primary mode by which artists cope with and manage precarious artistic livelihoods.
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