Un-learning to labour? Activating the unemployed in a former industrial community

Jon Sunnerfjell (2023), PhD thesis
https://arkiv.nu/butik/un-learning-to-labour/

ABOUT THE BOOK
“Today’s flexible Western labour markets place new demands on the workforce. Whereas industrial society fostered individuals who found dignity in performing long-term, manual labour, few people can now expect to go through working life without engaging in continuous updating of knowledges and skills. However, there are environments on both sides of the Atlantic where the workforce is still adapted to an economy of production. Industrial restructuring has led to islands of unemployment, whereby the labour force has been unable to reorganise into other sectors.
In light of automation and a globalised economy, Jon Sunnerfjell presents a study that explores how a once-flourishing industrial community seeks to manage the challenges of post-industrial society and flexible capitalism. What is at hand is the adaptation to what scholars have labelled the ’active society’, reconceptualising structural inequality in terms of individual exclusion. This is a society that seeks to mitigate public expenditures on social welfare by fostering active and employable individuals able and willing to navigate life responsibly.
Drawing on ethnographic data, Sunnerfjell analyses what becomes of policy concepts such as lifelong learning, employability and entrepreneurship when they are put to work in an environment imbued with industrial history and working-class culture. Ultimately, he shows the tensions that pervade the active society and what forms of resistance it produces.”
EXTRACT
“Here, three overarching inspirations are presented: the governmentality-inspired literature (e.g. Rose 1999; Dean 1995), literature on working-class ethos (e.g. Lamont 2000; Willis 1993 [1977]), and French pragmatism in the form of Luc Boltanski and Laurent Thévenot (2006). Whereas the governmentality-inspired literature is used to make sense of the logic imbuing present activation policies, I employ literature on workingclass dignity to show how governmental attempts to foster neoliberal subjectivity may clash with principles of hard work and loyalty towards the community. I then seek to make sense of tensions observed in the everyday work of activating Milltown’s unemployed by carving out two competing modalities of worth (Boltanski & Thévenot 2006) at play simultaneously in Milltown. In Chapter 4, I turn to the study’s methodological considerations, teasing out my own ethnographic approach to the field.” (p. 23)
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OpenEdition vous propose de citer ce billet de la manière suivante :
diazbone (14 décembre 2023). Un-learning to labour? Activating the unemployed in a former industrial community. Économie des conventions. Consulté le 3 novembre 2024 à l’adresse https://doi.org/10.58079/11tzc