SIGNIFICANCE OF WORK - KEY PEOPLE Flashcards
Al Gini
Argued that “what we do is what we’ll become”- essentially, our identity will come to be shaped by the work we complete. This is partly because we’ll spend so much time doing that work that it’ll become part of our identity.
McIntosh
Argued that their leisure lives are controlled by their families- their husband and their children- rather than their working lives. Because women are far more likely to work part time, and in sectors that may apply to Parker’s work less well, they disagree that work shapes identities.
Parker
Argued that the type of work will shape not just their working lives, but also their leisure pursuits.
Robert Putnam
Argued that, in modern America, participation in non-work based society is actually declining, not increasing. In his book Bowling Alone, he argued that the amount of Americans participating in bowling leagues, local politics, parent-teacher association, youth groups and community groups has declined since the 1980s.
Doherty
Argued that work has become increasingly ‘degraded’- it is no longer satisfying or interesting. As a consequence of this, it matters less to our lives.
Instead of having careers people- and especially young people- trend towards flexible and short-term work, part time and temporary hours, and highly insecure work such as zero hours contracts. As a result of this sort of work, the work itself plays little to no role in how we see ourselves.
Mason
argued that many people in manual and unskilled jobs are at risk from automation- but that this will also affect the unskilled service industry, such as “greeting” roles and food servers.
Ian Taylor
has argued that working class jobs are being ‘offshored’ to poorer countries, creating a globalised proletariat.
Atkinson
Identified two labour markets:
A primary labour market for core workers selling their skills
A secondary labour market, for people whose labour provides services for those people.
Walby
Argued that women are more likely to take part in the secondary labour market as periphery workers for two key reasons:
More likely to work in service industries
More likely to seek casual work in order to make time for childcare and housework
Additionally, Walby argued that statistics appearing to show higher rates of unemployment for men fail to recognise that women often move quickly through a series of peripheral jobs, rather than spending long periods of time unemployed.
Danny Dorling
completed a meta-analysis of doctor’s records in the 1990s and found that those in secure employment recovered from conventional illnesses far quicker than those who were unemployed.
Gulliford
found far higher rates of mental illness amongst unemployed men, and suggested that a strong connection to ideas of masculinity and work had been severed by worklessness.
Durkheim
Those who were out of work would experience anomie, the sense of a lack of purpose in society. People derive identity from work so without it feel lost and disrupted
Beck
for example, argues that we can ‘construct our own biographies’ from a variety of building blocks, and that we do this consciously. According to Beck, we can decide how much work shapes our identity.
So whilst work might be important for some, for others it may be an increasingly inconsequential part of our identity.
Bauman
(2005) argued that leisure choices, rather than work, has become a central part of our identity. We increasingly think that we are what we do out of choice, rather than what we are required to do at work.
David Harvey
argued that the perceived relaxation of work in modern times (what he called ‘flexible accumulation) appears to create greater freedom, whilst actually creating greater insecurity for the working class.
