Naure of Work and leisure

The Nature of Work and Leisure

The Nature of Work:

· Work: An activity that provides goods and services to others, which is perceived by the individual to be work. Can be a means to an end- when people work for rewards like money or satisfaction. Can also be and end. The term has a heterogeneous nature.

Paid and Unpaid Work:

· Work may be paid or unpaid.

· Unpaid work: housework, voluntary or charity work. The official list of occupations in Australia does not recognize unpaid housework, child minding or parenting as an occupation.

· Economists tend to define work as activities for which a price is paid. Official statistics tend to equate work with paid employment.

· The criteria for occupational classifications are based on the knowledge and skills of those in the paid workforce.

· The idea that people will work rather than have a job is becoming increasingly significant in the Western world. Part time, casual and contract work is becoming more important than a lifelong, secure job.

· Jobs came into existence in the 19th century in industrialized countries as a way of packaging the work that needed doing in factories bureaucracies.

· Technology has customized production- large corporations are outsourcing work to small businesses and individuals.

· Businesses- efficiency and profit.

· The transactional costs of searching for labour are preferable to the on-costs (payroll tax, superannuation, workers compensation, holidays and loadings) outlays of other wages.

· Major cost of rent- reduced with many workers now working from home.

· Many ‘stitch’ together an income with some hours salaried work, and the rest chasing contracts and casual work.

· Employment- becoming self managed rather than a secure job.

The Changing Nature of Work:

· Pre industrial societies: work was task orientated.

· New time discipline: Industrial revolution of 18th and 19th centuries.

· Also division of labour and specialization.

· Gender: socially constructed categories of masculine and feminine.

· Industrial capitalism: Separation of the sphere of work from the household, development of a labour market- individuals could sell their labour to employers and increasing division of labour resulting in more specialization of occupations.

· As the notion of work as paid labour emerged the importance of the wage as the main source of livelihood grew.

· Early 19th century- centrality of the wage market recognized.

· Work became regulated.

· By 20th century work was formed outside the home, and preformed predominantly by men.

· Households became consumption units.

· Industrialization brought significant changes to the labour process- the workers own control over the work done, and the reward it should receive.

· Work done through household and black economy.

· Black economy- unofficial economic activity where work is carried out but no record is made, usually to avoid tax.

· Greater awareness of the relationship between the household and the sphere of paid employment:

Ø Women’s movement

Ø Growing participation of women

Ø New technology and employment relations

Karl Marx’s View of Work:

· Karl Marx Das Kapital (1867).

· Argued that what distinguished humans was their capacity to produce the means of their own subsistence. This productive activity contributed to the definitive expression of humanity.

· Essential characteristic distorted in industrial society because work/wage labour in capitalism was alienating and exploitative.

· Alienation- originally used by Marx to describe feelings of estrangement experienced by workers under industrial capitalism.

· Wage labour is exploitative as in the capital labour process workers, through their labour; add a value to a product as a commodity that is greater than the value of their compensation in the form of wage.

· Surplus value is appropriated by the owner as a means of production (the capitalist), as a profit when the commodity is sold.

· Results in conflict between workers and capitalists.

· Marxism- analysis of society that gives primary significance to economic activity, and in particular the manner in which the economic base determines the nature and structure of society.

· Societies structured according to the exploitation of a subordinate classes by a dominant class.

· Historical charge analyzed by developments in the economic base, which manifest as class conflict.

· Marxism is committed to a (theoretically) non-exploitative society- communism.

· This is typically through the liberation of the proletariat (working class) who are the oppressed class within capitalism.

· Ideology- perception that is a mistaken sense of reality or false consciousness.

· In a class-divided society culture is produced that either maintains and legitimizes existing power relations or resists them.

· Marx’s character of capitalism has changed in at least three respects from his ‘classical’ version:

Ø Markets and production units have been altered

Ø The role of the state and the economy and in the regulation of labour capital has expanded

Ø The social circumstances of the working class have altered.

· Changes have caused the continuing antagonism between capital and labour in contemporary capitalism.

· It is manifested in the way which work is organized and controlled.

· As a result of state intervention in the market place, democratic capitalist societies allow for a greater degree of political equality for workers.

· Western societies are able to pursue individual strategies to improve the material conditions for workers and political strategies.

· Based on Marxism, all socialist societies are far less well off and have fewer rights than their capitalist counterparts. They are usually exploited by their political masters instead of their employers.

Emile Durkheim’s View of Work:

· The Division of Labour in Society (1902) - second classical approach.

· Argued that the occupational division of labour creates a form of social solidarity, as we are all dependant on each other for specialist services.

· Mutual interdependence of people resulted in social order.

· Organic solidarity contained in modern industrial societies, which differed from the previous mechanical solidarity.

Max Weber’s View of Work:

· The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1904-5).

· Motivations to work do not centre around simple economic factors. Protestant religious beliefs in the moral value played a part in the development of capitalism.

· Work and success was a sign of grace, of salvation and of God’s selection.

· Religious motivation to work hard, to be rational and disciplined was the secular notion of work ethic.

· Work ethic taught functional principles of industriousness and the accumulation of wealth.

· Argued that the imprisoning effect of calculability, imprisoning and standardization meant that modern men and women have gained rational control of the social universe at the expense of losing the traditional features of closeness, flexibility and spontaneity that make life worth living.

H. Braverman’s View of Work:

· Developed Marx’s arguments in Labour and Monopoly Capital (1974).

· Developed the labour process theory. Combined a renewed analysis of Marx’s account of changes in the mode of production with an explanation of what he called the degradation of modern labour.

· The Practice of management focused on the division of the work process into the greatest number of constitution parts so that the broader knowledge and skills were removed from workers who would become deskilled operatives.

· Major role of conception and control of production would become the sole prerogative of management. Arrangements would be facilitated by the application of new technologies in the work place and the refinement of organisational structures across both blue and white collar occupations.

· These developments the result of the application of scientific management inspired through the managerial philosophy of Frederick W. Taylor.

· Changes made to methods of organizational design to improve production efficiency.

· While Taylor stressed the need for greater cooperation, the reality that most of the advances were in technical areas, not human resource areas.

· Attacked class inequality in worker-manager relations.

· Neo-Marxist analysis had a significant impact on the sociology of work during the late 1970’s.

· He also had his critics.

· Reality is that control of the labour force has impacted on the labour force in a much more uneven fashion, than the unidirectional processes of deskilling emphasized by Braverman.

· Managerial practices range from direct personal control to workers who are allowed some discretion.

Fordism and Post-Fordism:

· Fordism refers to that form of industrial economy based on mass production and mass marketing prevalent in the post WWI period, as pioneered by Henry Ford in the manufacture and sale of his Ford motor car.

· Ford developed a system of production that concentrated all the resources and materials for production on one site, e.g. the factory.

· Allocated specialized tasks to different workers in a ‘production line’ to ensure the maximum degree of economic efficiency.

· Post-Fordism refers to a move away from this mode of mass production into diversified sites of production.

· Smaller industrial units replaced the large scale factory.

· Often associated with the rise of modern technology, and the replacement of older and heavier industry forms of production.

· Characterized in terms of a historical development into a global capitalist culture, which uses and coordinates the efforts of a localized workforces in order to deal with a more flexible market.

· Skilled and adaptable workers are increasingly required by industrial societies.

· ‘Flexible specialization’ to describe an alternative post-Fordist perspective. It allows workers a greater degree of control over the immediate labour process and provides for multiskilling.

· In advanced capitalist countries production systems have shifted away from an emphasis on the mass production of single product types, to an emphasis on small batch productions.

· Workers are becoming more functionally flexible and employers require greater flexibility to hire, dismiss and engage in labour.

· Resulting in labour markets with a core of privileged workers employed while less skilled marginalized workers exist who can be drawn for temporary requirements.

· Causal and part time work has risen, especially amongst females.

The Labour Market:

· One of the first structural elements of modern society that people encounter when seeking paid work.

· Workers often viewed as human capital.

· Sociologists take other approaches, such as:

Ø Intuitionalist perspective: Separate and competing labour markets with boundaries established by formal rules and informal conventions.

Ø Dualist perspective: Views the labour market as having two major segments. A primary sector characterized by stability, reliability, good wages and good working conditions. A secondary sector consists of jobs that have relatively low wages and limited promotion opportunities. Consists of small, labour intensive firms in highly competitive conditions and low rates of unionization. Jobs here require few skills, with workers who are easily hired and fired. Women, ethnic workers and young people are overrepresented in this sector. Increasingly white collar workers are marginalized into this sector. Increased management flexibility for an increasingly globalized society.

The Nature of Leisure:

The Changing Notion of Leisure:

· Leisure is recognized as a modern phenomenon, which did not exist in pre-industrial society.

· In a pre-industrial society, leisure was not a separate section of the day.

· The division between work and labour came about when wage labour was introduced entering economic subsistence in factories.

· Leisure then emerged as a result of the changing organisation of the work process with the implementation of the factory system and forced separation of work and home with industrial capitalism.

· Increasingly sharp separation between home and work, and production and consumption created by industrialization.

· Work became routine and repetitive and inflexible. Leisure became a routine experience of non-work and when commodities were purchased and consumed.

· People increasingly define leisure as the opposite of work.

· Origin of the term ‘recreation’ where leisure is defined by work.

· It has only been since World War II in affluent Western Societies, that sociologists began to pay attention to leisure.

· Activities in which people choose to participate in their free time, which are seen as distinctive from other aspects of life, activates where there is no compulsion and personal control are regarded as leisure.

· Leisure is non-work activity.

· Leisure is status placing, as it demonstrates to others who we are and what we believe in.

· There is no such thing as free-time- leisure time requires you to do something.

Veblen’s Theory of the Leisure Class:

· Veblen was an early critic of modern commercial society in America.

· The social functions of conspicuous consumption and conspicuous waste of economic resources.

· Argued that conspicuous consumption is a strong motivating force for the distribution of wealth in societies where a substantial surplus over subsistence us produced.

· People compete for wealth and through this social prestige. Most attain wealth through work.

· Leisure as a disciplined, a deeply motivated performance activity, which was designed to signify meaning to others.

· Applied reason structures leisure.

· Leisure has honorific value in mass culture. Veblen claims that we have a strong tendency to emulate the standards set by the most economically powerful nation.

· In Veblen’s time, sons and daughters of the elite capitalist class were expected to follow gentlemanly and lady-like pastimes and interests, which established a person’s rank in society.

· Connects leisure and power. Seen to be preformed.

· However Veblen’s theory can be criticized on three counts:

Ø Overestimated homogeneity of the leisure class.

Ø Overestimated the passivity of the masses.

Ø Did not grant enough importance to the seductions of corporate capitalism.

· Wealthy people do not necessarily choose to spend it in a conspicuous leisure activity.

· The rich often make no distinction between work and leisure. The accumulation of immense personal wealth often does not mean the giving up of work. (e.g. Bill Gates)

The Rise of the Celebrity Class:

· Grown in importance, often directly involved in presenting products to the consumer.

· Celebrities personalize these products through advertising.

· Celebrity elite far more important than the economically richest class.

· Moulds consumption choices in leisure time.

· Highly mobile and follow global dimensions.

· View themselves as brilliant individuals rather than belonging to a class.

· Most passive sponsors, not corporate owners.

· Shift to behavioural codes organized around hedonism.

· Leisure is increasingly encompassing the following:

Ø Body modifications and the natural life cycle.

Ø Shift to lifelong learning arrangements and the blurring of boundaries between education and the rest of life.

Ø Division between work and leisure being eroded by flex-time, homework and the professionalism of many leisure activities.

Ø The privatization of leisure.

Unpaid Work:

· Work can also be unpaid, such as housework and volunteer work.

· Following a vocation or calling (e.g. a priest).

The Interrelationship Between Work and Leisure:

· With the growth of leisure there has been a corresponding danger in the decline of work ethic.

· Anomie refers to a social condition in which values are conflicting, weak or absent.

· Leisure may be understood in terms of its positive functions within society, may view leisure as a safety valve.