The New Social Economy: Reworking the Division of Labor.

Esser, John P.; Sayer, Andrew; Walker, Richard

doi:10.2307/2075274

Cited by 10 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 0 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…Management needs to produce an operational model that is somehow on the knife edge of both flexibility and standardisation, it tries to be light on buffer stock and inventory and yet somehow resilience in the face of change, it tries to control labour while being dependent on the dynamic creativity of labour. Economic geographers have also engaged structural contradictions vis-à-vis firm strategy (Clark, 1994;Harvey, 2018;Sayer and Walker, 1992;Schoenberger, 1997;Walker and Storper, 1991), yet this line of theorising has gone out of fashion despite its relevance.…”

Section: Key Contributionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Book review: Who controls the future now?

Burø¹

2023

Organization

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

New social ordersI live close to Christiania, the self-proclaimed Copenhagen freetown that has sustained itself for 51 years and which is featured in The Future is Now as an exemplary empirical case of prefigurative politics in practice. Though I know the history and culture of Christiania, I never considered it to be a community established with a prefigurative intent. After reading the book, I know better.Lara Monticelli has edited a neat 241-page book that assembles cutting-edge contributions from 23 scholars. It is divided into three parts that sets the context for, describes the practices of, and present reflections on researching prefigurative politics. The afterword by Davina Cooper asks, among other things: "what is being prefigured?" (p. 230). In a sense, the foreword by Arturo Escobar is a reply: "throughout this volume's chapters . . . prefigurative politics is amply shown to involve not only a struggle against both capitalism and the state, and the multiple forms of power and material-semiotic arrangement of everyday life they deploy, but a diverse set of political experiments to bring about new social orders" (p. xxiii, my emphasis). Chapters are short, to the point, like a good hardcore punk rock tune and, indeed, the book reminds me of a high-quality anarchist A 'zine like Inside Front or Maximum rock'n'roll (which, to be sure, is a good thing). Critique of prefigurative reasonIf in doubt, then observe. At the back of the book cover, prefigurative politics is aptly summarized as the act of "envisioning alternative futures," and The Future is Now is subtitled an "introduction to prefigurative politics." However, this book can be observed to produce a critique of prefigurative political reason, in the Kantian sense, as it sets and establishes the limits of the validity of prefigurative reason. What kind of reason might that be? While Kant's critiques asked: "what can I know?"; "what must I do?"; and "what can I hope for?", the present salient questions are either "what imagined future social order may I enact?" or "what is the future social order immanent to my present agency?" The questions are substantially different but reflect prefigurative reason all the same. At the heart of the matter lies the problem of living today the life that you wish would be the life tomorrow, speaking in future perfect: when the new order has been established, some of us will have already experienced it. Bergson (2007) analyzed this problem in The Possible and the Real (p. 73ff): whenever something profoundly new happens, its possibility is born too and is projected back in time. Even if we could hitherto

show abstract

Section: Key Contributionsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Book review: Who controls the future now?

Burø¹

2023

Organization

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Certainly, current workplace and ILM restructurings are changing linkages with local labour markets. As stressed above, firms systematically assess behavioural and social skills (e.g., Sayer and Walker 1992;Salzman et al 1998;Hudson 2001) for internal training and are often driven by organizational integration. Technical skill training of course is not irrelevant and links with colleges and institutions of higher education may become more important as firms need colleges to provide remedial training/filtering services and technical specialties and spot training (Salzman et al 1998, 24).…”

Section: Flexibility Risk and The Demise Of The Internal Labour Market?mentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Flexibility Risk and The Demise Of The Internal Labour Market?mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Thus coupled with an increase in firm labour market power due to higher unemployment, firms were effectively ‘taking control’ of recruitment. As Sayer and Walker (1992) and Rutherford (1994, 1995) stress, the adoption of new forms of work organization necessitating increased reliance on employee discretion, judgement and commitment to the firm have been coupled with significantly more stringent recruitment standards to better ensure that these qualities are present in the workforce. More generally, employers saw changes to the EILM as associated with social control issues.…”

Section: A Tale Of Two Cities: the Restructuring Of Ilms In Kitchener...mentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Requiem or rebirth? Internal labour markets and labour market restructuring in the Kitchener and Sault Ste. Marie regions

Rutherford

2006

Canadian Geographies / Géographies canadiennes

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Since the 1980s, social scientists and economic geographers have stressed that ‘standard’ forms of employment and internal labour markets (ILMs) which characterized Fordism have declined and have been displaced by post‐Fordist non‐standard and contingent employment arrangements. However, some researchers are critical of the assumptions of a universal decline in ILMs and stress that although ILMs have been significantly restructured, they remain an important part of firm employment strategies. On the basis of a postal survey and interviews conducted with ninety firms and institutions in Kitchener‐Waterloo and Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario, in 1995–1996, I assess the role of ILMs. Although shifts towards non‐standard arrangements are evident, employers are clearly aware of the need to maintain if not develop ILM structures. Finally, I argue that geographers need to reconceptualize the relationships between ILMs and external labour markets (ELMs) as integrated phenomena. Thus firms do not use contingent or ELMs and ILMs in exclusion to each other but as part of a continuum of strategies leading to increased blurring of the ILM and ELMs.

show abstract

“…The chapters in this volume certainly give evidence of this feeling of compression, but the character of time consciousness is further complicated by the character of neoliberal production (or rather, its notable absence) in much of Africa. While the exigencies of post-Fordist production, according to studies focusing on its Euro-American forms (Martin 1995, Sayer andWalker 1992), generate a horizon of temporality that is perpetually oscillating, expanding, and collapsing in keeping with the rapid shifts of capital and marketing strategies in much of Africa, production has been less 'just in time' than 'out of luck.' Indeed, the recent history of Africa indicates that the 'global' dimensions of capitalism are unevenly realized, just as they were under colonialism.…”

Section: Inclusion and Exclusionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Introduction: Contentious Futures: Past and Present

2004

Producing African Futures

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The New Social Economy: Reworking the Division of Labor.

Cited by 10 publications

References 0 publications

Book review: Who controls the future now?

Book review: Who controls the future now?

Requiem or rebirth? Internal labour markets and labour market restructuring in the Kitchener and Sault Ste. Marie regions

Introduction: Contentious Futures: Past and Present

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About