Browse
You are looking at 1 - 10 of 35,273 items for
One of the greatest impacts of Braverman’s Labour and Monopoly Capital is the discovery of a ‘control imperative’ within the capitalist production process. Whereas his equation of capitalist domination and Taylorism has been heavily criticized early on, the capabilities of the expanded use of digital technologies at the workplace have raised the question of whether a Taylorist mode of control is on the advance once again. The article challenges this perspective by addressing managerial problems that go beyond the problem to transform labour power into actual labour. Taking up Sohn-Rethel’s theory of ‘dual economics’, we argue that the necessity to reconcile contradictory requirements of the ‘economics of the market’ and the ‘economics of production’ poses an equally crucial challenge for management. Whereas that ‘problem of reconciliation’ remained latent in the Fordist era, tensions between the two logics of economics have now increasingly become a problem to solve within the course of controlling the labour process. Drawing on our own research on ‘the inner marketization of the firm’ over the last 15 years, we discuss ‘indirect control’ as a mode of control that precisely addresses the problem of reconciliation and considers recent changes in the course of digitalization. On the basis of our empirical findings, we describe the contradictory forms of activating and restricting subjectivity in the digital workplace and its implications for the legitimation of managerial power and capitalist domination.
This article sets out to explore whether the amendment to the ILO’s 1998 Declaration on Fundamental Principles and Rights at Work which, in June 2022, added a ‘safe and healthy work environment’ to the principles and rights already included, might help to address conditions leading to the disproportionate burden of work-related death, injury and disease estimated to occur in low and middle-income countries (LMICs). It does so by drawing on the findings of an extensive review of the literature to examine evidence for the influence and operation of (a) global and national regulatory standards and interventions; and (b) private standards and their role in influencing practices in export-oriented work. It situates its examination of this evidence in relation to the economic, social and regulatory contexts in which work and its poor outcomes for safety and health are experienced in many LMICs, and hence in relation to the challenges that confront the effective utilisation of regulatory action. The article argues that these contextual challenges are formidable, and evidence of the operational means of securing sustainable improvements to work health and safety in the face of them remains incomplete. But it concludes that the 2022 amendment could contribute a useful driver for the considerable strategic orchestration and leadership required to achieve such effective utilisation if, within the ILO, there were a tripartite consensus concerning its desirability.
This article examines the intersecting roles of the face with reference to the popularisation of the smile in Republican China. Research on emotional labour presupposes the potency of the open, beautiful and polite smile without delving into its underlying emotional, aesthetic and sociocultural fabric. The article argues that the modern invincible smile not only conveys emotions, facial ideals and etiquette but, at a deeper level, reproduces expressive, aesthetic and cultural order. Through the qualitative analysis of Republican discourses about the smile and its visual representations in calendar posters, pictorials, portrait photographs and films, the article demonstrates how the broad, tooth-exposing smile was dynamically constructed as a charming, cheerful and civilised face. The popularity of the smiling face in this era reveals a dramatic transformation in China’s emotional regime and expressive convention, one that is interwoven with the rise of consumerism, the spread of hedonism and the wider social process of modernisation. By exploring this complex interplay, the article evinces the multiple social lines that construct and constitute the face.
The maintenance and reproduction of the working class remains a necessary condition for the reproduction of capital. But the capitalist may safely leave this to the labourer’s drives for self-preservation and propagation. (Marx [1867] 1976: 718)
The capitalist mode of production gives rise to a crisis of working-class social reproduction from the outset, and continually exacerbates that crisis in the course of its development. Far from being in principle a crisis for the capitalist mode of production itself, then, crises of working-class social reproduction are the empirical effects of changes in the capitalist economy, reflecting capitalist power over the fate of the propertyless population. The inherent characteristics of the capitalist
mode of production – competition between individual capitals, uninterrupted scientific and technological revolution, an ever-increasing division of labour on local to global scales, the constant process of ‘creative destruction’ as obsolete capitalist enterprises die and new ones are born, the universalisation of commodity production, concomitant to proletarianisation and the creation of a permanent ‘reserve army of labour’, and the tendency for capital to invade and take over any form of production more ‘primitive’ than itself – all continually disrupt areas of social and economic activity within capitalist social formations and those which capitalism has not fully penetrated yet. The effect of state government policies and governance on the part of international organisations is to induce or exploit crises of working-class social reproduction in order to further the hegemony of capital over their own territory and the world market as a whole.
In this chapter we – Emma Lazenby, a filmmaker, and Karen Gray, a researcher – introduce the analogue journey method. The term ‘analogue’ has dual meanings, and both are relevant. An ‘analogue’ is a thing that is similar to, or that is used to represent, something else through the process of comparison or analogy. The analogue journey method is a novel creative analysis tool that can be used with almost any kind of qualitative or mixed-methods research data, making sense of such data by visualising them in the shape of a journey, with the end goal of communicating this sense to others. The word ‘analogue’ is also now commonly used to denote things whose means of representation is through the quantities and qualities of the physical world. This contrasts to the ‘digital’ world, in which physical quantities are processed through and represented by electrical signals. For example, analogue time is told through the movement of the minute and second hands of a clock, rather than through changing numbers on a computer screen. The analogue journey method requires analogue tools, such as paper, pens, scissors. However, its results are intended to be translated into either words or images using any media to support wider and creative dissemination of research findings. The word ‘journey’ in the name indicates that it involves information being organised and presented in a form that, while linear, is mobile and mutable – open to change. The analogue journey method demands thoughtful connection and reconnection with the data. Its activities encourage cross-disciplinary collaboration, opening up different perspectives or helping to form different constellations of information.
This chapter will discuss analysis of multimodal creative and qualitative research that has been undertaken by the International Women in Supramolecular Chemistry Network (WISC, 2020). WISC’s overarching aim is to create a community to support the retention and progression of women and other marginalised genders within the field of supramolecular chemistry. WISC use an ethos that ‘calls in’ the community and embeds equality, diversity, and inclusion (EDI) expertise (Caltagirone et al, 2021a, 2021b). We intentionally use reflective methods as part of an Embodied Inquiry (Leigh and Brown, 2021) to capture and share their ‘invisible, embodied, emotional experiences’ (Leigh et al, 2023, p 1) as a way to raise awareness and effect change (Leigh et al, 2022a). Science is not known for its diversity and inclusion, whether that is regarding gender (Rosser, 2012), race (Prasad, 2021; Royal Society of Chemistry, 2022), sexuality, (Smith, 2019) or disability (CRAC, 2020). Women are subject to resistance in academia generally (Shelton, Flynn and Grosland, 2018; Murray and Mifsud, 2019), and this is intensified within the science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) disciplines (Rosser, 2012). Despite investment in programmes designed to address the gender imbalance, women remain a minority, particularly in more senior roles (Rosser, 2017). This imbalance is more pronounced in some STEM disciplines than others.
The Unspoken Voices Project is concerned with understanding the experiences of people who rely on augmentative and alternative communication (AAC), also known as communication aids, because they cannot speak clearly. People who use AAC are frequently excluded from being involved, or they are misrepresented, in research because they cannot provide the ‘rich narrative’ often demanded by qualitative analytic methods. The project was inspired by clinical practice as I am a speech and language therapist with experience of working with people who use AAC. I have frequently had cause to wonder at interactions between people who use AAC and their familiar communication partners and have marvelled at the nature of the mutuality that exists beyond words. These observations led me to search for, but not find, analytic methods that would enable me to explore and authentically represent people who use AAC and their experience of communication. A dialogic theoretical lens provided the conceptual tools to extend my understanding of communication and voice, and to develop a creative data analysis method incorporating my embodied experience as a speech and language therapist and researcher. I will draw on data from the Unspoken Voices Project, a research project concerned with understanding more about the experiences of communicating using AAC, to elucidate and illuminate my application of this method and the impact that it had on my research. This method synthesises multimodal data sources through attending to the complexity and nuance of dialogue with this population.
Building on a developing practice of first-person writing as critical method and a theory of knowledge as partial and situated, this chapter will take the form of a conversational autoethnographybetween two early career researchers, Dr Karen Hammond and Dr Nick Fuller. Inspired by the work of Ellis and Bochner (2006), this chapter highlights the potential of autoethnography to aid in the development and dissemination of creative forms of qualitative data analysis. It documents our exchanges and experiences in the context of two recent doctoral projects carried out in the University of the West of Scotland and the University of Stirling. As we both occupy a marginal position between two different and apparently contradictory worlds, we think about how our other identities and, specifically, our spiritual and alternative healing practices outside of the academy have shaped our approaches to data analysis, with a focus on Nick’s unique use of the shamanic journeying method. Together, we explore the challenge of developing creative approaches to qualitative data analysis in the context of mainstream research spaces where conforming to institutional and disciplinary norms is rewarded with research capital. Our dialogue seeks to address important ethical and practical considerations; as we render visible some of the difficulties in describing and engaging with highly individual experiences, we reflect on if and how such creative methods that require specific skillsets and qualities can be taught or passed onto other researchers. It is hoped that the conversational style will make learning data analysis methods more accessible and engaging for students and experienced researchers alike.
A spider created an intricate web in the outside corner of my writing room window. I see her perched in the centre when I look up from my desk. That the delicate legs support the large, round abdomen the size of a small stone amazes me. Throughout the year, she goes about her business, and I go about mine here in the high desert of Santa Fe, New Mexico, in the south-western United States. The seasons of the year serve as a backdrop to the web’s silhouette. The web frames the cumulus clouds of summer as they drift across bright blue sky and the bright green leaves and clusters of magenta flowers of a New Mexico locust tree just beyond the fence. The leaves of that same tree turned gold, rust, and red with the crispness of autumn beyond the web. When snow begins to fall in soft flurries to announce winter’s arrival, I wondered at the spider’s ability to survive. I still do not understand; just know that I am grateful when the air warms again in the late-arriving spring of this altitude. The spider’s web maintained its shape, structure, and strength through the seasons. As the frame of web connects the seasons outside the window, so its connective power has much to teach us as we delve into transdisciplinary and creative research methods. Transdisciplinary research and creative methods honour complexities. These complex dynamics encourage us to move beyond discipline-specific and isolated analyses and into rich and deep research, as ‘only a thoroughly transdisciplinary perspective can navigate such issues, which are at once technological, cultural, ethical, political, economic, and ecological’ (Wells, 2013, p 126).
