The distinction drawn in class between reskilling and re-empowerment makes me wonder if there is another term we should be using. To me, reskilling connotes re-empowerment, but it seems that what we are calling re-skilling is really reprogramming in social Taylorism. Individuals are being reprogrammed as efficient consumer/producers. *shudder*
Can we also think of reskilling in the information age as another name for mediatization? At the bottom of p. 115, R&W say that "...work can actually be organized to allow greater autonomy and independence for workers -- apparent autonomy and independence" (emphasis added). Is this not akin to the adding of eggs to cake mix, Person of the Year 2006, TPS reports, etc.?
3 comments:
Seems exactly right to me, but maybe with one little addition: it is important to recognize that the reason for "re-skilling" is not in most cases simply to sell more product (as in the egg-cake mix example), but rather the contradictions internal to capitalist development reach a point at which the system must either change or collapse. The illusion of increased autonomy you point out could thus be designated an "imaginary" solution to the "real" circumstances of existence in a capitalist society, i.e., it is ideological. It would not be difficult to cast the egg example in a similar light (automatization of domestic work --> deskilling of domestic worker (females in the 1950s) --> "reskilling" (adding an egg) as compensation for human redundancy). In this way traditional divisions of labor in the home are reinforced without any loss to the production cycle--consumption is in fact increased as a result. However, what the egg example lacks is the crucial turn where re-skilling actually increases the overall level of control the market can exercise over all spheres of human activity. In short, the egg momentarily preserves what is already a tenuous and changing domsetic situation in the 50s in favor of maintenance of the current regime of production, while much of the re-skilling we're talking about actually seeks to induce a change in the way that daily activities are experienced by individuals (as pellets of labor-potential). So, the addition of an egg is essentially conservative, while computer skills, for instance, represent a blurring of traditional divisions of labor (mental/physical, male/female, work/leisure) whose overall effect is to increase labor (potential and realized) and the ability to control time spent outside of work in order to better rationalize both consumption and production. Does that distinction make sense? It seems pretty thin...maybe someone can do it better than I.
I totally agree. I kept thinking today in class, what skill do I have as a consumer? Is my skill the ability to make a reasoned choice about what I will purchase and given the growth of consumerism as a response to mass production were consumers ever empowered to make these decisions? Or is my skill to simply to "create" a feedback commodity given my consumer choices. Maybe my concept of skill is too nineteenth-century.
I think this idea of reprogramming is more adequate, perhaps even the Zizek concept of mediatization - giving the illusion of agency.
Chad: big winner, chicken dinner!
I think your articulation of reskilling with eggs as a conservative move works as an example of what Fordist reskilling might look like (to connect back to the original prompt) such that Fordist reskilling mediatizes with no real increase in productivity, but simply protects production on the shopfloor, as it were.
The distinction you draw between this and social Taylorist reprogramming which amounts to "increased labor (potential and realized)...in order to better rationalize both consumption and production" (your words) really resonates with me.
Thanks for helping me crystallize this one...
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