All that is Solid Melts into Work: Self-Work, the ‘Learning Ethic’ and the work Ethic

Abstract

In this paper I examine the intersections between a general commitment to education and learning and the moral and ethical dimensions of the work ethic under contemporary capitalism. Drawing on Kathi Weeks' (2011) recent exploration of the work ethic in The Problem with Work, I suggest there is a relationship between the form and function of the work ethic‐ and what I term the ‘learning ethic’. I suggest that commitment to a learning ethic, to the unreserved power of learning and education‐ may reiterate a moral commitment to the personal characteristics that define the work ethic under capitalism. As a consequence, consideration of the form and function of these moral character ideals in the continuation of unequal social relations across educational and workspaces, become obfuscated by a generalized celebration of learning, education and self‐work.

Academic critique of neoliberal academia

“…The bitter tragedy of the casualisation of academic work is that the new majority of para-academic workers denied tenable roles at the institution feel, rightly so, that they were actually good at the meritocratic game and invested in the right way in themselves as human capital: they went to university and went as far in that engine of social mobility as they could. When they -like 'us' -did so, it was for the right, old-fashioned reasons -they weren't entrepreneurial subject-effects (Gerrard 2014). Yet now academic meritocracy is shown to be the fiction it has always been: the ceiling is a good deal lower than it had seemed and the ladders have all been pulled up already.…”

The imperative to be seen: The moral economy of celebrity video game streaming on Twitch.tv

“…Structural questions about occupational opportunities are increasingly obscured by cultural ones concerning individual morality, specifically with regard to the level of work and effort that individuals are expected to put in in order to climb to the top. Gerrard (2014) has argued that education and training become important moral markers, signaling a willingness to develop the self in order to better fare on the labour market. This desire for self-improvement and in turn the place of self-improvement as a method towards fame and financial success finds a strong outlet in the world of video game live streaming, existing as it does within a domain that requires no formal qualifications, minimal start-up costs, involves the play of leisure activities as the foundation upon which such a career will be built (cf., Sotamaa, 2007;, and has the demonstrated capacity to result in six-figure incomes and tremendous levels of digital fame.…”

Performances for upward mobility: How Dutch workfare programmes function as temporal spaces of imagination

“…Although the focus is on job search rather than training, workfare policies contain pedagogical strategies Newman, 2010), as the underlying assumption is that welfare clients have gapsin knowledge about the current labour market, and in personal skills needed to successfully participate in that labour marketthat can be filled through performing (unpaid) work and participating in workshops (Cruikshank, 1999;Gerrard, 2014;Kampen, 2014). According to Gerrard (2014), we are witnessing a conflation of a 'learning ethic' with a 'work ethic': a commitment to learning and personal development in order to 'accrue value upon the self' for and through paid work (Gerrard, 2014, p. 863;cf. Walkerdine, 2003;Walkerdine & Bansel, 2010).…”