Work and Labour
TIME
Rush, frenzied, frenetic "that buzzing feeling" 'cortisol-y' / adrenal fatigue
Type A behaviour & heart attack correlation
Perfectionism / boundaries - CFS - socially not individually imposed on women in performance based spaces
The individual biography / plot / writing your own story and being the 'main character syndrome'
expected to CARE - the collapse of work and play [productive leisure time] and the jobification of the spirit
The spatial imaginary of the office - what are its features? Office politics reside in the body. An internalised consciousness of productivity / internally policed work ethic
Ingold v Thompson - embedded or disembedded in capitalist arena. It is the fight between these two realms where ill health breeds i.e. the physical locatedness of being in a hostile time governed space / SKEGGS - the disconnect between being treated as a human / actually a machine - mystification via metaphor - we're not machines! Work as a battle ground between having a body and having to work as though you didn't / a struggle against neoliberal forces - how does alientation in the marxist sense affect female workers and impact their physiology?
Space-Time continuum 'the chronotope' - speed collapses space with time - all things exist in the fast lane
Johanthon Crary and 24/7 time
'Plastering' - an organism in the office / the outside coming in
Workplace 'ecologies'
Seeing the workplace as a biosocial environment
Somatic, experiential 'smell', sense, touch etc - or lack thereof, still constitutes a real, lived environment
What does this reimagining bring? A sense of habitation, dialogue, embeddedness, and entanglement, against alienation
No such thing as public and private? [Durkheim/Adrent] argued by Haraway and Latour - collapsing of boundaries
New adversity measures of environmental toxicity - vulnerability to hostile spaces (Murphy)
MARX
AND THE BODY
Phenomenology of work
Embodied political economy
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Bodies at work - Wolkowitz, embodiment, etc
Ethnographies: Ho, Stein, Kabeer, Ong,
Is the idea of the spatial imaginary of the office incommensurate with the notion of workplace ecologies? How can this tension be handled? Just necessary to frame ecologies as having an imaginal component
Lies ! The pretense that work isnt harmful, is. modernised, has moved on from exploitation is offensive. i.e a culture that has put such a high value on freedom rents out its populace 37.5 hours a week
Young minds research 2022 - young people are most worried about finding meaningful employment, exams, financial concerns. All time low trust in the government - largest %s always non-binary>women>men (gender discriminate)
WFH
what are the similarities, the differences?
Putting the body back in (not alienated) i.e. re: labour power, where does this come from? muscles, sinews, synapses, breath, cells. the mechanics of work = the mechanics of the body!
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TIMESHEETS! Trust, humiliation, criminality - constant monitoring
Bakhtin, Bachelard, Bourdieu?
SOC of WORK
always an exchange / trade of between the interests of the individual (labour) and the interests of the firm (capital) - who wins?
'ideal types' of economic theory (neo-classical)
Maximising utility - increasing leisure time - the idea that the worker would rather be doing anything else than work. Always the assumption the worker will shirk
Stress as a badge of honour
The worker as a resource (HR) - what happens to people when they are treated like resources?
Productivity as engine of prosperity - determines wages, opportunities, class etc
Different types of job design - fordist / taylorist
And the working day
Alienation
Owning the means of production
Job related affect - control/demand - different for women? opportunities for autonomous decision making is less for women - so work stressors are higher and positive affects are lower! i,e influence at work too
wage fluctuations & value - wage does not always equal effort (criticism of neoclassical theory) i.e compensating differentials
The employer is really purchasing the worker's potential for labour rather than discrete units of effort
Capabilities approach - meaningful and fulfilling work - work can be extremely protective as well as damaging, particularly for women
EPI
Job affects - demand, control, support, security etc
how incompassing/equitable are these job quality indicese - are they good measures for assessing gender?
NB: Women at work is on feminism mindmap