Been busy with the final push on the book and also tweeting up a storm (so do follow me there). Hope to get back to more regular posting after the holiday. But news of rising unemployment and the two-track economy got me thinking about the changing nature of jobs and work and my favorite books on employment, labor, and work.
Ben Hamper’s Rivethead, a scorching account of mind-numbing, dehumanizing work on the assembly line.
Harry Braverman’s Labor and Monopoly Capital, the seminal analysis of the separation of mental and manual labor, conception from execution.
David Montgomery, The Fall of the House of Labor, a labor history classic.
In an age when the tendency to separate mental and manual labor has reached an extreme, it’s important to value all work and remember that each and every worker – in the laboratory, artist studio, factory floor, and retail shop – is creative. It’s also important that we continue to strive to improve the pay, working conditions, and creative content of all work. We must do more than just create jobs. Our task is to create better, more fulfilling, more productive, and more humanizing kinds of work. The productivity of our society and well-being as individuals can be greatly enhanced by creating work that employs our full productive capabilities, enables us to use our chosen talents, and fully express who we are and who we want to be. In an era when so many people are alienated by work and choose to express themselves through consumption and lifestyle, work remains a key element – if not the key factor – of our identity.
September 6th, 2009 at 3:44 pm
What you say is quite profound from the standpoint of self actualization. Still , I think the potential of our communities is far from realized. And the community (virtual, remote, global, local) will only improve if PLACE assumes a central role in our lives, identities, and work.
September 6th, 2009 at 6:52 pm
RF – “fully express who we are and who we want to be.”
Yes, wasn’t that what the electorate thought would follow the “Change” promised last year? But now we see that politicians / business people are only interested in fully expressing themselves, and want to keep us as dehumanized as possible ….