Tony Elger and Chris Smith
- Published in print:
- 2005
- Published Online:
- September 2007
- ISBN:
- 9780199241514
- eISBN:
- 9780191714405
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199241514.003.0002
- Subject:
- Business and Management, International Business
This chapter considers contrasting interpretations of the Japanese model and their implications for international transfer and work transformation. It compares accounts of Japanese production ...
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This chapter considers contrasting interpretations of the Japanese model and their implications for international transfer and work transformation. It compares accounts of Japanese production paradigms as exemplars of neo-Fordism, post-Fordism, or Toyotaism, and locates these accounts within wider debates about evolving work and employment relations in Japan during the post-war period. It considers four rival interpretations of the rise of distinctively Japanese forms of work and employment — culturalist, institutionalist, class relations, and political economy approaches — and the implications of each of these interpretations for the transfer debate. It concludes that an historical analysis of evolving class and gender relations, the role of the state, and wider geo-political contexts is important for understanding the rise of the Japanese economy in the post-war period, the distinctive features of Japanese firms, and the internationalization of economic activity from the 1980s.Less
This chapter considers contrasting interpretations of the Japanese model and their implications for international transfer and work transformation. It compares accounts of Japanese production paradigms as exemplars of neo-Fordism, post-Fordism, or Toyotaism, and locates these accounts within wider debates about evolving work and employment relations in Japan during the post-war period. It considers four rival interpretations of the rise of distinctively Japanese forms of work and employment — culturalist, institutionalist, class relations, and political economy approaches — and the implications of each of these interpretations for the transfer debate. It concludes that an historical analysis of evolving class and gender relations, the role of the state, and wider geo-political contexts is important for understanding the rise of the Japanese economy in the post-war period, the distinctive features of Japanese firms, and the internationalization of economic activity from the 1980s.
Gerardo Patriotta
- Published in print:
- 2004
- Published Online:
- September 2007
- ISBN:
- 9780199275243
- eISBN:
- 9780191719684
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199275243.003.0004
- Subject:
- Business and Management, Strategy
This chapter provides a brief outline of the Fiat Group's origins, business activities, and organizational model. Section 4.2 outlines a profile of the company by describing its main business ...
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This chapter provides a brief outline of the Fiat Group's origins, business activities, and organizational model. Section 4.2 outlines a profile of the company by describing its main business operations as well as by providing a series of significant performance indicators. Sections 4.3-4.5 analyse the distinctive chronological phases characterizing the development of the company. Finally, Section 4.6 presents the main structural principles underlying the organizational model currently adopted by Fiat at the plant level, and hence in the plants considered in this study.Less
This chapter provides a brief outline of the Fiat Group's origins, business activities, and organizational model. Section 4.2 outlines a profile of the company by describing its main business operations as well as by providing a series of significant performance indicators. Sections 4.3-4.5 analyse the distinctive chronological phases characterizing the development of the company. Finally, Section 4.6 presents the main structural principles underlying the organizational model currently adopted by Fiat at the plant level, and hence in the plants considered in this study.
David Ellwood
- Published in print:
- 2012
- Published Online:
- September 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780198228790
- eISBN:
- 9780191741739
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198228790.003.0004
- Subject:
- History, European Modern History, American History: 20th Century
‘Everywhere there emerged the centrality of America — whether loved or loathed — as the crucial term of comparison when the topic was building the future in any form’; the challenges of 1920s ...
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‘Everywhere there emerged the centrality of America — whether loved or loathed — as the crucial term of comparison when the topic was building the future in any form’; the challenges of 1920s modernity now become obvious: mass democracy, mass production, mass communication, and the last two bore unmistakeable signs of America all over them. A wave of adaptation ensued, particularly in Germany, where Fordism was thought to be the key to reconstruction. While the Americans, particularly Herbert Hoover, started to elaborate a new theory linking the survival of democracy to the promise of mass prosperity, a surge of self-conscious criticism of American mass society arose in Europe. Here French intellectuals created a new tradition, but disquiet in Britain was strong across the political and business classes. They attempted a controlled, limited, adoption of American ways, but were not particularly successful.Less
‘Everywhere there emerged the centrality of America — whether loved or loathed — as the crucial term of comparison when the topic was building the future in any form’; the challenges of 1920s modernity now become obvious: mass democracy, mass production, mass communication, and the last two bore unmistakeable signs of America all over them. A wave of adaptation ensued, particularly in Germany, where Fordism was thought to be the key to reconstruction. While the Americans, particularly Herbert Hoover, started to elaborate a new theory linking the survival of democracy to the promise of mass prosperity, a surge of self-conscious criticism of American mass society arose in Europe. Here French intellectuals created a new tradition, but disquiet in Britain was strong across the political and business classes. They attempted a controlled, limited, adoption of American ways, but were not particularly successful.
Chris Freeman and Francisco Louçã
- Published in print:
- 2002
- Published Online:
- November 2003
- ISBN:
- 9780199251056
- eISBN:
- 9780191596278
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/0199251053.003.0008
- Subject:
- Economics and Finance, Economic History
The key inventions that led to the internal combustion engine, to the automobile, the truck, the tractor, and the tank, were made in Europe, but the innovations that led to the assembly line, to mass ...
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The key inventions that led to the internal combustion engine, to the automobile, the truck, the tractor, and the tank, were made in Europe, but the innovations that led to the assembly line, to mass production and consumption, were made at the Ford plant in Detroit in the early years of the twentieth century.These technical and organizational innovations gave such an impetus to productivity, profitability, output, and exports of the US automobile industry that the plant became a Mecca for visitors from all over the world and ‘Fordism’ became a dominant management philosophy as well as an economic and cultural ideology, believed to herald the dawn of a ‘new economy’.The chapter devotes considerable attention to possible explanations for the collapse of this boom and the advent of the ‘Great Depression’ of the 1930s, concluding that, as with previous clusters of innovations, the assimilation of a major new technology into the social system gave rise to enormous political and social tensions and to structural crises of adjustment, both at national and international levels.These tensions and conflicts led ultimately to a Second World War, a motorized war in which tanks and aircraft proved decisive weapons and oil was the essential fuel for the motorized armed forces.The world economy after the war was no less dependent on abundant cheap oil, and became a system dominated by the mass production of cars and consumer durables, as well as motor highways, the mass media, mass tourism, mass education, mass culture, and the political and military supremacy of the US.Less
The key inventions that led to the internal combustion engine, to the automobile, the truck, the tractor, and the tank, were made in Europe, but the innovations that led to the assembly line, to mass production and consumption, were made at the Ford plant in Detroit in the early years of the twentieth century.
These technical and organizational innovations gave such an impetus to productivity, profitability, output, and exports of the US automobile industry that the plant became a Mecca for visitors from all over the world and ‘Fordism’ became a dominant management philosophy as well as an economic and cultural ideology, believed to herald the dawn of a ‘new economy’.
The chapter devotes considerable attention to possible explanations for the collapse of this boom and the advent of the ‘Great Depression’ of the 1930s, concluding that, as with previous clusters of innovations, the assimilation of a major new technology into the social system gave rise to enormous political and social tensions and to structural crises of adjustment, both at national and international levels.
These tensions and conflicts led ultimately to a Second World War, a motorized war in which tanks and aircraft proved decisive weapons and oil was the essential fuel for the motorized armed forces.
The world economy after the war was no less dependent on abundant cheap oil, and became a system dominated by the mass production of cars and consumer durables, as well as motor highways, the mass media, mass tourism, mass education, mass culture, and the political and military supremacy of the US.
Timothy R. Whisler
- Published in print:
- 1999
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780198290742
- eISBN:
- 9780191684838
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198290742.003.0007
- Subject:
- Business and Management, Business History
This chapter describes the relationship between the British production system and Fordism (or ‘Fordist’ production). Between 1945 and 1970, British-owned firms incrementally developed an indigenous ...
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This chapter describes the relationship between the British production system and Fordism (or ‘Fordist’ production). Between 1945 and 1970, British-owned firms incrementally developed an indigenous production system that differed broadly from the stereotypical Fordist model. The established British system, originating in the inter-war years, appeared to be suited to the needs of a reconversion of materials, tooling shortages, and uncertain market prospects. After the war, managers adopted selected Fordist concepts to try to reduce costs and increase output in inefficient areas. The execution of Fordism was frustrated by a failure to alter management, engineering, and labour institutions radically to support strategic change. Neither middle management nor labour felt incentives to modify behaviour and attitudes. Traditional practices that were still being executed, resulted in old problems surfacing in the new system. Costs, however, were even higher.Less
This chapter describes the relationship between the British production system and Fordism (or ‘Fordist’ production). Between 1945 and 1970, British-owned firms incrementally developed an indigenous production system that differed broadly from the stereotypical Fordist model. The established British system, originating in the inter-war years, appeared to be suited to the needs of a reconversion of materials, tooling shortages, and uncertain market prospects. After the war, managers adopted selected Fordist concepts to try to reduce costs and increase output in inefficient areas. The execution of Fordism was frustrated by a failure to alter management, engineering, and labour institutions radically to support strategic change. Neither middle management nor labour felt incentives to modify behaviour and attitudes. Traditional practices that were still being executed, resulted in old problems surfacing in the new system. Costs, however, were even higher.
KEITH KEITH
- Published in print:
- 2001
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199244898
- eISBN:
- 9780191697401
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199244898.003.0006
- Subject:
- Business and Management, Organization Studies, HRM / IR
This chapter returns to the business world to look at Henry Ford, whose leadership inaugurated a qualitative leap from craft to mass production and gave rise to the term ‘Fordism’. It discusses how ...
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This chapter returns to the business world to look at Henry Ford, whose leadership inaugurated a qualitative leap from craft to mass production and gave rise to the term ‘Fordism’. It discusses how Ford enabled vast numbers of Americans to own cars because his prices were so low, but he persisted in assuming that price was critical long after many of his former customers had drifted away to the cars of General Motors and Chrysler, where the competitive edge was in novelty and product enhancements not simply price. It notes that Ford was a pacifist who spent a vast personal fortune leasing a ‘peace ship’ to sail to Europe and stop the First World War—but he simultaneously made an even bigger fortune with his production of munitions, boats, tanks, planes, and jeeps in both wars.Less
This chapter returns to the business world to look at Henry Ford, whose leadership inaugurated a qualitative leap from craft to mass production and gave rise to the term ‘Fordism’. It discusses how Ford enabled vast numbers of Americans to own cars because his prices were so low, but he persisted in assuming that price was critical long after many of his former customers had drifted away to the cars of General Motors and Chrysler, where the competitive edge was in novelty and product enhancements not simply price. It notes that Ford was a pacifist who spent a vast personal fortune leasing a ‘peace ship’ to sail to Europe and stop the First World War—but he simultaneously made an even bigger fortune with his production of munitions, boats, tanks, planes, and jeeps in both wars.
Clare Bambra
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- January 2012
- ISBN:
- 9780199588299
- eISBN:
- 9780191731372
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199588299.003.0002
- Subject:
- Public Health and Epidemiology, Public Health
This chapter examines the development of the welfare state from a political economy perspective. Initially, the emergence of post-war welfare state capitalism is examined, and subsequently ...
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This chapter examines the development of the welfare state from a political economy perspective. Initially, the emergence of post-war welfare state capitalism is examined, and subsequently international variations — Fordist welfare state regimes — are outlined and compared. The crisis and reform of developed welfare states as forms of labour market regulation and capital accumulation are then examined and contextualized within the wider economic and political structural shifts from Fordism to post-Fordism. The emergence of new forms of welfare — post-Fordist workfare state regimes — is also described. In the final section, the role of the welfare state as mediator in the social determinants of health is outlined and differences in population health and health inequalities by welfare state regime are examined.Less
This chapter examines the development of the welfare state from a political economy perspective. Initially, the emergence of post-war welfare state capitalism is examined, and subsequently international variations — Fordist welfare state regimes — are outlined and compared. The crisis and reform of developed welfare states as forms of labour market regulation and capital accumulation are then examined and contextualized within the wider economic and political structural shifts from Fordism to post-Fordism. The emergence of new forms of welfare — post-Fordist workfare state regimes — is also described. In the final section, the role of the welfare state as mediator in the social determinants of health is outlined and differences in population health and health inequalities by welfare state regime are examined.
Elizabeth D. Esch
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- January 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780520285378
- eISBN:
- 9780520960886
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520285378.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, American History: 20th Century
Between World Wars 1 and 2, the Ford Motor Company globalized its sales and production and, in the process, became an exporter of American race practices and what this transnational study calls ...
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Between World Wars 1 and 2, the Ford Motor Company globalized its sales and production and, in the process, became an exporter of American race practices and what this transnational study calls “white managerialism.” In examining three societies—Brazil, South Africa, and the United States—where Ford supported white supremacist political and social policies, this study deepens our understanding of how American firms rose to prominence globally, including in parts of the world formerly dominated by the British Empire. It argues that seemingly arbitrary and irrational racist ideologies found material backing in managerial practices and policies initiated by Ford and supported by local and national governments. Its focus on the interwar years, when Ford hired unprecedented numbers of African American workers in its Rouge plant in Dearborn, Michigan, allows for a focus on those workers who were both simultaneously central to the Ford empire and treated as second-class citizens within it.Less
Between World Wars 1 and 2, the Ford Motor Company globalized its sales and production and, in the process, became an exporter of American race practices and what this transnational study calls “white managerialism.” In examining three societies—Brazil, South Africa, and the United States—where Ford supported white supremacist political and social policies, this study deepens our understanding of how American firms rose to prominence globally, including in parts of the world formerly dominated by the British Empire. It argues that seemingly arbitrary and irrational racist ideologies found material backing in managerial practices and policies initiated by Ford and supported by local and national governments. Its focus on the interwar years, when Ford hired unprecedented numbers of African American workers in its Rouge plant in Dearborn, Michigan, allows for a focus on those workers who were both simultaneously central to the Ford empire and treated as second-class citizens within it.
Joshua L. Miller
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- May 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780195336993
- eISBN:
- 9780199893997
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195336993.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, American, 20th Century Literature
This chapter presents the major work of the most prominent literary critic and editor of the 1920s—Mencken's The American Language—in the context of the shift from juridical attempts to control ...
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This chapter presents the major work of the most prominent literary critic and editor of the 1920s—Mencken's The American Language—in the context of the shift from juridical attempts to control language to cultural efforts to define it. It suggests that Mencken's polemical philology was symptomatic both of the national turn toward linguistic concerns and modernist fascination with new forms of linguistic and symbolic expression. In synthesizing and distilling academic research and political foment, Mencken sought to recoup his own standing in the eyes of Americans, which had been badly damaged during World War I as a result of his rhetorical misfires. The American Language showed Mencken attempting to become the philologist in chief by championing a reinvented, innately modern “American language.” His intense engagement with this project, revising it or other writings on language almost continually from 1919 until 1948, showed Mencken to be a brilliant popularizer and prescient observer of the importance of language to U.S. nationalism. Ultimately, the arguments that Mencken advanced in The American Language helped secure the symbolic capital of English as the singular language of national culture during one of the most polyglot periods of U.S. history.Less
This chapter presents the major work of the most prominent literary critic and editor of the 1920s—Mencken's The American Language—in the context of the shift from juridical attempts to control language to cultural efforts to define it. It suggests that Mencken's polemical philology was symptomatic both of the national turn toward linguistic concerns and modernist fascination with new forms of linguistic and symbolic expression. In synthesizing and distilling academic research and political foment, Mencken sought to recoup his own standing in the eyes of Americans, which had been badly damaged during World War I as a result of his rhetorical misfires. The American Language showed Mencken attempting to become the philologist in chief by championing a reinvented, innately modern “American language.” His intense engagement with this project, revising it or other writings on language almost continually from 1919 until 1948, showed Mencken to be a brilliant popularizer and prescient observer of the importance of language to U.S. nationalism. Ultimately, the arguments that Mencken advanced in The American Language helped secure the symbolic capital of English as the singular language of national culture during one of the most polyglot periods of U.S. history.
Edward W. Soja
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- September 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780520281721
- eISBN:
- 9780520957633
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520281721.003.0002
- Subject:
- Sociology, Urban and Rural Studies
A look at some of the dramatic changes that have taken place in Los Angeles since 1965, this chapter begins with a vigorous defense against eastern biases rooted in the concept of postindustrialism. ...
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A look at some of the dramatic changes that have taken place in Los Angeles since 1965, this chapter begins with a vigorous defense against eastern biases rooted in the concept of postindustrialism. Far from being postindustrial, Los Angeles after the Watts riots was pioneering the formation of a new industrial economy. As the country’s largest manufacturing center, Los Angeles combined Frostbelt deindustrialization with Sunbelt and Pacific Rim reindustrialization to epitomize the growth of the post-Fordist industrial metropolis. The chapter draws on the initial work done for the Coalition to Stop Plant Closings, including excerpts from an unpublished pamphlet, “Shutdown—Early Warning Signs of Plant Closings.” Also responding to the CSPC was Soja’s first article on Los Angeles, cowritten with Rebecca Morales and Goetz Wolff, that introduced the concept of urban restructuring as a form of social and spatial change. Soja, Morales, and Wolff argued one could find in Los Angeles a Detroit and a Houston, a Singapore and Sao Paulo, as well as representations of so much more—hence the idea that “it all comes together in LA,” borrowing from the old masthead of the LA Times. Urban restructuring is reinterpreted here as an attempted spatial fix, an effort to respond to crisis by creating a new and more sustaining geography.Less
A look at some of the dramatic changes that have taken place in Los Angeles since 1965, this chapter begins with a vigorous defense against eastern biases rooted in the concept of postindustrialism. Far from being postindustrial, Los Angeles after the Watts riots was pioneering the formation of a new industrial economy. As the country’s largest manufacturing center, Los Angeles combined Frostbelt deindustrialization with Sunbelt and Pacific Rim reindustrialization to epitomize the growth of the post-Fordist industrial metropolis. The chapter draws on the initial work done for the Coalition to Stop Plant Closings, including excerpts from an unpublished pamphlet, “Shutdown—Early Warning Signs of Plant Closings.” Also responding to the CSPC was Soja’s first article on Los Angeles, cowritten with Rebecca Morales and Goetz Wolff, that introduced the concept of urban restructuring as a form of social and spatial change. Soja, Morales, and Wolff argued one could find in Los Angeles a Detroit and a Houston, a Singapore and Sao Paulo, as well as representations of so much more—hence the idea that “it all comes together in LA,” borrowing from the old masthead of the LA Times. Urban restructuring is reinterpreted here as an attempted spatial fix, an effort to respond to crisis by creating a new and more sustaining geography.
Kit Hughes
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- December 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780190855789
- eISBN:
- 9780190855826
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190855789.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, Cultural History
This book explores how work, television, and waged labor come to have meaning in our everyday lives. However, it is not an analysis of workplace sitcoms or quality dramas. Instead, it explores the ...
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This book explores how work, television, and waged labor come to have meaning in our everyday lives. However, it is not an analysis of workplace sitcoms or quality dramas. Instead, it explores the forgotten history of how American private sector workplaces used television in the twentieth century. It traces how, at the hands of employers, television physically and psychically managed workers and attempted to make work meaningful under the sign of capitalism. It also shows how the so-called domestic medium helped businesses shape labor relations and information architectures foundational to the twinned rise of the technologically mediated corporation and a globalizing information economy. Among other things, business and industry built extensive private television networks to distribute live and taped programming, leased satellite time for global “meetings” and program distribution, created complex closed-circuit television (CCTV) data search and retrieval systems, encouraged the use of videotape for worker self-evaluation, used videocassettes for training distributed workforces, and wired cantinas for employee entertainment. Television at work describes the myriad ways the medium served business’ attempts to shape employees’ relationships to their labor and the workplace in order to secure industrial efficiency, support corporate expansion, and inculcate preferred ideological orientations. By uncovering industrial television as a prolific sphere of media practice—one that continually sought to reshape the technology’s cultural meanings, affordances, and uses—Television at Work positions the medium at the heart of Post-Fordist experiments into reconfiguring the American workplace and advancing understandings of labor that increasingly revolved around dehumanized technological systems and information flows.Less
This book explores how work, television, and waged labor come to have meaning in our everyday lives. However, it is not an analysis of workplace sitcoms or quality dramas. Instead, it explores the forgotten history of how American private sector workplaces used television in the twentieth century. It traces how, at the hands of employers, television physically and psychically managed workers and attempted to make work meaningful under the sign of capitalism. It also shows how the so-called domestic medium helped businesses shape labor relations and information architectures foundational to the twinned rise of the technologically mediated corporation and a globalizing information economy. Among other things, business and industry built extensive private television networks to distribute live and taped programming, leased satellite time for global “meetings” and program distribution, created complex closed-circuit television (CCTV) data search and retrieval systems, encouraged the use of videotape for worker self-evaluation, used videocassettes for training distributed workforces, and wired cantinas for employee entertainment. Television at work describes the myriad ways the medium served business’ attempts to shape employees’ relationships to their labor and the workplace in order to secure industrial efficiency, support corporate expansion, and inculcate preferred ideological orientations. By uncovering industrial television as a prolific sphere of media practice—one that continually sought to reshape the technology’s cultural meanings, affordances, and uses—Television at Work positions the medium at the heart of Post-Fordist experiments into reconfiguring the American workplace and advancing understandings of labor that increasingly revolved around dehumanized technological systems and information flows.
Ramsay Burt
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- November 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780199321926
- eISBN:
- 9780190456627
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199321926.001.0001
- Subject:
- Music, Dance
Ungoverning Dance examines the work of progressive contemporary dance artists in continental Europe from the mid-1990s to 2015. Placing this work within its historical and political context—that of ...
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Ungoverning Dance examines the work of progressive contemporary dance artists in continental Europe from the mid-1990s to 2015. Placing this work within its historical and political context—that of neoliberalism and austerity—it argues that these artists have developed an ethico-aesthetic approach that uses dance practices as sites of resistance against dominant ideologies and attests to the persistence of alternative ways of thinking and living. In response to the way that the radical values informing their work are continually under attack from neoliberalism, these artists recognise that they in effect share common-pool resources; and while contemporary dance has been turned into a market, they nevertheless value the extent to which it functions as a commons. Works that do this, it argues, ungovern dance. It begins with a theoretical discussion of dance in relation to neoliberalism and post-Fordism, and then develops an account of ethico-aesthetics in choreography, drawing in particular on the work of Emmanuelle Levinas and its adaptation by Maurice Blanchot. It also explores ethics from the point of view of affect theory, drawing on the work of Erin Manning and Brian Massumi. These philosophical ideas inform close readings of works from the 1990s and 2000s by two generations of Europe-based dance artists. Topics examined include dance and precarious life, choreographing friendship, re-performance, the virtual in dance, and a dancer’s experience of the Egyptian Revolution. Ungoverning Dance proposes new ways of understanding recent contemporary European dance works by making connections with their social, political, and theoretical contexts.Less
Ungoverning Dance examines the work of progressive contemporary dance artists in continental Europe from the mid-1990s to 2015. Placing this work within its historical and political context—that of neoliberalism and austerity—it argues that these artists have developed an ethico-aesthetic approach that uses dance practices as sites of resistance against dominant ideologies and attests to the persistence of alternative ways of thinking and living. In response to the way that the radical values informing their work are continually under attack from neoliberalism, these artists recognise that they in effect share common-pool resources; and while contemporary dance has been turned into a market, they nevertheless value the extent to which it functions as a commons. Works that do this, it argues, ungovern dance. It begins with a theoretical discussion of dance in relation to neoliberalism and post-Fordism, and then develops an account of ethico-aesthetics in choreography, drawing in particular on the work of Emmanuelle Levinas and its adaptation by Maurice Blanchot. It also explores ethics from the point of view of affect theory, drawing on the work of Erin Manning and Brian Massumi. These philosophical ideas inform close readings of works from the 1990s and 2000s by two generations of Europe-based dance artists. Topics examined include dance and precarious life, choreographing friendship, re-performance, the virtual in dance, and a dancer’s experience of the Egyptian Revolution. Ungoverning Dance proposes new ways of understanding recent contemporary European dance works by making connections with their social, political, and theoretical contexts.
Seb Franklin
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780262029537
- eISBN:
- 9780262331135
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- The MIT Press
- DOI:
- 10.7551/mitpress/9780262029537.003.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Technology and Society
This chapter opens with a discussion of Gilles Deleuze’s theorization of control societies and its relation to concepts of post-Fordism, neoclassical economics, immaterial labor, and attention ...
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This chapter opens with a discussion of Gilles Deleuze’s theorization of control societies and its relation to concepts of post-Fordism, neoclassical economics, immaterial labor, and attention economies. Following this, the chapter traces the historical relationship between the conceptual structure of control and the fundamental logic of the capitalist mode of production. This historical examination passes through three major stages: an analysis of Marx’s work on capital, labor, and abstraction; a discussion of Charles Babbage’s work on computing machines, political economy, factories, and theology; and a close reading of the automation of essentialism that undergirds Herman Hollerith’s late-nineteenth century work on machine tabulation.Less
This chapter opens with a discussion of Gilles Deleuze’s theorization of control societies and its relation to concepts of post-Fordism, neoclassical economics, immaterial labor, and attention economies. Following this, the chapter traces the historical relationship between the conceptual structure of control and the fundamental logic of the capitalist mode of production. This historical examination passes through three major stages: an analysis of Marx’s work on capital, labor, and abstraction; a discussion of Charles Babbage’s work on computing machines, political economy, factories, and theology; and a close reading of the automation of essentialism that undergirds Herman Hollerith’s late-nineteenth century work on machine tabulation.
Rebecca Gumbrell-McCormick and Richard Hyman
- Published in print:
- 2013
- Published Online:
- January 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780199644414
- eISBN:
- 9780191756290
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199644414.003.0002
- Subject:
- Business and Management, HRM / IR
This chapter identifies the main power resources which trade unions have deployed. It explores how changes in the world of work (‘post-Fordism’), in the relationship between national economies and ...
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This chapter identifies the main power resources which trade unions have deployed. It explores how changes in the world of work (‘post-Fordism’), in the relationship between national economies and the global level (globalization), in social attitudes (often viewed as a trend to individualism) and in political environments have weakened some traditional resources. This in turn has encouraged a search for alternatives. The chapter summarizes the relative importance of the key challenges facing unions in each of the ten countries examined in the book, noting that what are objectively similar challenges may have very different implications because of different histories, institutions and identities. Finally it summarizes the main routes to union ‘revitalization’ which have been discussed in recent literature on trade unionism.Less
This chapter identifies the main power resources which trade unions have deployed. It explores how changes in the world of work (‘post-Fordism’), in the relationship between national economies and the global level (globalization), in social attitudes (often viewed as a trend to individualism) and in political environments have weakened some traditional resources. This in turn has encouraged a search for alternatives. The chapter summarizes the relative importance of the key challenges facing unions in each of the ten countries examined in the book, noting that what are objectively similar challenges may have very different implications because of different histories, institutions and identities. Finally it summarizes the main routes to union ‘revitalization’ which have been discussed in recent literature on trade unionism.
George Steinmetz
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- February 2013
- ISBN:
- 9780226090948
- eISBN:
- 9780226090962
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226090962.003.0009
- Subject:
- Sociology, Comparative and Historical Sociology
This chapter on American sociology between the early 1930s through the mid-1960s examines the shift from an epistemologically splintered discipline before World War II to a more hegemonized situation ...
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This chapter on American sociology between the early 1930s through the mid-1960s examines the shift from an epistemologically splintered discipline before World War II to a more hegemonized situation afterward. It analyzes sociology internally in terms of its field-like qualities (or lack of), asking about the emergence of agreed-upon definitions of unequally distributed social scientific capital. The burden of the argument in this chapter is to track the postwar narrowing of sociology's intellectual diversity or, more precisely, the shift from a relative equality between nonpositivist and positivist orientations in terms of scientific prestige to a condition in which positivism as defined here was clearly dominant. It examines the epistemological characteristics of some of the leading sociology departments and disciplinary publications of the middle third of the century. It concludes by summarizing the author's arguments and findings from previous studies concerning the specific ways that postwar Fordism seemed to provide immediate confirming evidence for social science positivism.Less
This chapter on American sociology between the early 1930s through the mid-1960s examines the shift from an epistemologically splintered discipline before World War II to a more hegemonized situation afterward. It analyzes sociology internally in terms of its field-like qualities (or lack of), asking about the emergence of agreed-upon definitions of unequally distributed social scientific capital. The burden of the argument in this chapter is to track the postwar narrowing of sociology's intellectual diversity or, more precisely, the shift from a relative equality between nonpositivist and positivist orientations in terms of scientific prestige to a condition in which positivism as defined here was clearly dominant. It examines the epistemological characteristics of some of the leading sociology departments and disciplinary publications of the middle third of the century. It concludes by summarizing the author's arguments and findings from previous studies concerning the specific ways that postwar Fordism seemed to provide immediate confirming evidence for social science positivism.
Ipsita Chatterjee
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- June 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780199465132
- eISBN:
- 9780199086825
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199465132.003.0003
- Subject:
- Sociology, Urban and Rural Studies, Economic Sociology
This chapter explores the existing literature on globalization. Some understand globalization as an economic process seen as neoliberalization. Others focus on the cultural aspects of globalization, ...
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This chapter explores the existing literature on globalization. Some understand globalization as an economic process seen as neoliberalization. Others focus on the cultural aspects of globalization, seeing it as McDonaldization. Yet others talk about globalization spatially, conceptualizing it as ‘time–space compression’, ‘space of flows’, and ‘de- and re-territorialization’. This chapter aims to understand globalization in its totality. But how to conceptualize these contradictory cultural, economic, and spatial realities in a tight nutshell? To answer that question, the author looks at churches, mosques, and other religious institutions that go global by using Facebook, YouTube, and the internet. She uses examples from cyberspace to indicate how these institutions resolve the cultural (religion) and economic (call for subscriptions, memberships, selling CDs, confessions, and sacred rites) through a cyber-material city, a transcendent space where culture always unfolds with the economy.Less
This chapter explores the existing literature on globalization. Some understand globalization as an economic process seen as neoliberalization. Others focus on the cultural aspects of globalization, seeing it as McDonaldization. Yet others talk about globalization spatially, conceptualizing it as ‘time–space compression’, ‘space of flows’, and ‘de- and re-territorialization’. This chapter aims to understand globalization in its totality. But how to conceptualize these contradictory cultural, economic, and spatial realities in a tight nutshell? To answer that question, the author looks at churches, mosques, and other religious institutions that go global by using Facebook, YouTube, and the internet. She uses examples from cyberspace to indicate how these institutions resolve the cultural (religion) and economic (call for subscriptions, memberships, selling CDs, confessions, and sacred rites) through a cyber-material city, a transcendent space where culture always unfolds with the economy.
David M. Smith
- Published in print:
- 2005
- Published Online:
- March 2012
- ISBN:
- 9781861346018
- eISBN:
- 9781447302872
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Policy Press
- DOI:
- 10.1332/policypress/9781861346018.003.0002
- Subject:
- Sociology, Social Stratification, Inequality, and Mobility
This chapter considers post-Fordism and post-industrialism theoretical approaches which have sought to make sense of the changes in the processes that have expanded the scale of global capitalism, to ...
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This chapter considers post-Fordism and post-industrialism theoretical approaches which have sought to make sense of the changes in the processes that have expanded the scale of global capitalism, to show how the ‘socially excluded’ have been located in contemporary debates about the changing industrial, occupational, and class structures of ‘post-industrial’ capitalism. It explains that in tracing the roots of the term ‘social exclusion’, Silver (1994) notes that each period of social and economic upheaval brings with it new concepts to categorise those groups most disadvantaged by change. It observes that while previous periods brought concepts of ‘poverty’, and ‘unemployment’, so contemporary changes have given rise to new conceptions: ‘underclass’, the ‘new poverty’ and ‘social exclusion’.Less
This chapter considers post-Fordism and post-industrialism theoretical approaches which have sought to make sense of the changes in the processes that have expanded the scale of global capitalism, to show how the ‘socially excluded’ have been located in contemporary debates about the changing industrial, occupational, and class structures of ‘post-industrial’ capitalism. It explains that in tracing the roots of the term ‘social exclusion’, Silver (1994) notes that each period of social and economic upheaval brings with it new concepts to categorise those groups most disadvantaged by change. It observes that while previous periods brought concepts of ‘poverty’, and ‘unemployment’, so contemporary changes have given rise to new conceptions: ‘underclass’, the ‘new poverty’ and ‘social exclusion’.
J. Paul Narkunas
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- January 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780823280308
- eISBN:
- 9780823281534
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Fordham University Press
- DOI:
- 10.5422/fordham/9780823280308.003.0002
- Subject:
- Political Science, Political Theory
This chapter describes how citizenship can be bought like any other commodity through H1B Visas as a marker of a new historical formation of the “Market Human.” Through an engagement of Antonio and ...
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This chapter describes how citizenship can be bought like any other commodity through H1B Visas as a marker of a new historical formation of the “Market Human.” Through an engagement of Antonio and Michel Foucault, the author describes a shift in governmentality from protection of citizens to producing “economic humans” who can plug into the market and view managing risk, including of their own lives, as a categorical imperative. The chapter delineates how the industrialization of subjectivities, thought, and affect continues to happen in the information age, dismisses arguments on the newness of the digital age and demise of the nation-state, and maps how the financial capitalist categories of risk management now delineate the life worth living. The chapter also speculates on why the impoverished align with market humans aspirationally and why they are willing to support policies that actually make their lives more precarious.Less
This chapter describes how citizenship can be bought like any other commodity through H1B Visas as a marker of a new historical formation of the “Market Human.” Through an engagement of Antonio and Michel Foucault, the author describes a shift in governmentality from protection of citizens to producing “economic humans” who can plug into the market and view managing risk, including of their own lives, as a categorical imperative. The chapter delineates how the industrialization of subjectivities, thought, and affect continues to happen in the information age, dismisses arguments on the newness of the digital age and demise of the nation-state, and maps how the financial capitalist categories of risk management now delineate the life worth living. The chapter also speculates on why the impoverished align with market humans aspirationally and why they are willing to support policies that actually make their lives more precarious.
Barnaby Haran
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- September 2016
- ISBN:
- 9780719097225
- eISBN:
- 9781526109705
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719097225.003.0001
- Subject:
- Art, Art History
This chapter sets up the book by considering another of introductory themes. ‘The red Atlantic’ involves an American-Russian transnationational interchange across several media in relation to the ...
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This chapter sets up the book by considering another of introductory themes. ‘The red Atlantic’ involves an American-Russian transnationational interchange across several media in relation to the aesthetic of the machine as a signifier of the influence of American technology on Soviet communism. For the Soviets, America represented the means to construct communism in the USSR, albeit without a capitalist economy. It asserts the need to think beyond the Franco-American paradigm as a means of figuring the emergent radical culture of the 1930s. The putative area of ‘American Constructivism’ mainly involved cultural interrelations of American communists and Soviet counterparts. Finally, there is a consideration of methodology including assessments of transnationalism, Interdisciplinarity, and the avant-garde.Less
This chapter sets up the book by considering another of introductory themes. ‘The red Atlantic’ involves an American-Russian transnationational interchange across several media in relation to the aesthetic of the machine as a signifier of the influence of American technology on Soviet communism. For the Soviets, America represented the means to construct communism in the USSR, albeit without a capitalist economy. It asserts the need to think beyond the Franco-American paradigm as a means of figuring the emergent radical culture of the 1930s. The putative area of ‘American Constructivism’ mainly involved cultural interrelations of American communists and Soviet counterparts. Finally, there is a consideration of methodology including assessments of transnationalism, Interdisciplinarity, and the avant-garde.
Paul Apostolidis
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- February 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780190459338
- eISBN:
- 9780190459369
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190459338.003.0005
- Subject:
- Political Science, Political Theory, Political Economy
The theme of facing “risk on all sides” imbues day laborers’ reflections about occupational safety and health (OSH) hazards. This theme expresses a contradictory structure of body-time pairing ...
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The theme of facing “risk on all sides” imbues day laborers’ reflections about occupational safety and health (OSH) hazards. This theme expresses a contradictory structure of body-time pairing workers’ incessant physical vulnerability with suddenly arising dangers and traumatic incidents. Workers vow to keep “eyes wide open,” striving to protect themselves through temporalized practices of personal responsibility, although employment power-relations induce workers to violate their own principles. Drastically erratic employment and deportation threats make day laborers’ OSH predicament exceptional, even among nonwhite working-class groups. Yet the themes also reflect the pervasive proliferation of OSH risks in “fissured workplaces,” as conceptualized by David Weil, under post-Fordism and financialized capitalism. Day laborers further help generate the morally stigmatizing discourses of “slow death,” theorized by Berlant, that produce the self-undermining subjectivities needed by this order. These theme-theory resonances nonetheless invite workers at large to oppose the transmutation of capital risk into workers’ bodily risk.Less
The theme of facing “risk on all sides” imbues day laborers’ reflections about occupational safety and health (OSH) hazards. This theme expresses a contradictory structure of body-time pairing workers’ incessant physical vulnerability with suddenly arising dangers and traumatic incidents. Workers vow to keep “eyes wide open,” striving to protect themselves through temporalized practices of personal responsibility, although employment power-relations induce workers to violate their own principles. Drastically erratic employment and deportation threats make day laborers’ OSH predicament exceptional, even among nonwhite working-class groups. Yet the themes also reflect the pervasive proliferation of OSH risks in “fissured workplaces,” as conceptualized by David Weil, under post-Fordism and financialized capitalism. Day laborers further help generate the morally stigmatizing discourses of “slow death,” theorized by Berlant, that produce the self-undermining subjectivities needed by this order. These theme-theory resonances nonetheless invite workers at large to oppose the transmutation of capital risk into workers’ bodily risk.
