Labor Process Theory

Elle reprend les actes d’une journée d’étude organisée à Liège le 7 mars 2020 et intitulée : « Le "Big Bang Alibaba". Quels enjeux socio-économiques pour la logistique aéroportuaire à Liège ? ». Cet événement a réuni différent.e.s intervenant.e.s et participant.e.s intéressé.e.s par les conséquences sur le travail, l’emploi, et les économies locales du développement des activités logistiques en Cité ardente et au-delà.

Cette rencontre s’inscrivait dans le cadre des débats suscités par le choix du géant chinois du commerce électronique, Alibaba, de faire de l’aéroport de Liège son principal hub logistique européen. Les interventions et les échanges repris dans cette brochure ont ainsi vocation à alimenter ce débat, ainsi que les stratégies de lutte de tous ceux et toutes celles qui pourraient vouloir s’opposer à la « logistisation du monde ».

https://gresea.be/Fuite-en-avant-logistique-quelles-consequences-quelles-resistances

The development of platform capitalism and the digitization of labor processes have enabled scholars and the public to describe the contemporary organization of work giving particular emphasis to the role of algorithms. Through document analysis, interviews, participant observation and a direct work experience in two Amazon distribution centers, the article argues against the myth of the algorithmic organization of work. In order to do so, it proposes questioning the centrality of algorithms in management, locating them within a broader system of rules and practices. Rather than relying on concepts such as algocracy (Aneesh, 2006, 2009), the article tries to retrive and revisit the ideal type of bureaucracy in a «Pluralist» meaning (Gouldner, 1954; Burawoy, 1979; Edwards, 1979), putting it to the test of empirical analysis of the labor process.



Keywords: labor process, algorithmic management, platform capitalism, bureaucracy

This paper aims to analyse education on the basis of the concepts of the labour process theory and thereby tries to develop a theoretical framework for understanding the transformations in teachers’ labour. For this aim, first labour process theory is mentioned generally, then the following studies relating to labour process of teaching are discussed. In this context, an approach has been tried to be developed why the education, on the axis of teachers work, should be analyzed as a labour process. Finally, based on the conceptualization of labor process of teaching, the components of this process have been evaluated in the light of critical discussions about it. Due to the subject being comprehensive and multi-dimensional, in this article, the important main lines in the analysis of the labour process of teaching are put forward with a political economy approach and in this context an introduction to the debates on the issue has been made.

In this essay, I will argue, basing myself on Marx’s critique of political economy, that the automation, including robotization and the rise of the “gig economy,” is the historical tendency of the capitalist mode of production, deeply rooted in the dynamic of capital accumulation and the labor process. In Section 1, I will outline Marx’s theory of automation that flows from the dynamics of capitalist accumulation.  In Section 2, I briefly discuss how Marx’s theory of automation relates to his theory of socialist revolution.  In Section 3, I would note some aspects of the development of socialist history and theory of automation which largely represent a retreat from Marx’s critique of it, with the notable exception of Harry Braverman’s Labor and Monopoly Capital (1974).  I conclude in Section 4 with some key questions raised by Marx’s theory of automation about the effort to develop a theory of ecological socialism which envision an integral theory of human society as part of the planet’s ecosystem and not its dominion.

During the mid-1990s, teachers' emotions emerged as an area of research in the sociology of education because many teachers all over the world were reported to be unhappy, dissatisfied, stressed, frustrated, and even alienated. This implies that teachers' emotions, especially negative ones, go beyond individual factors and have become a social issue. Therefore, researchers use sociological perspectives and theories to deepen our understanding of the phenomenon. In order to advance our understanding of the social construction mechanism of teachers' emotions, this article reviews four sociological approaches of teachers' emotions: labor process of teaching in the context of education reforms, emotion management in teaching, social interaction in school settings, and teacher identity.

Just-in-time inventories have been portrayed as the centerpiece of the flexible production system developed by Toyota, and the key element in outperforming the mass production systems utilized in the United States.  We demonstrate that just-in-time inventories--and other elements of flexible production--were pioneered by the US auto industry in the first part of the 20th century; were the key elements in making Detroit the global capital of auto production, and were abandoned by Detroit just as Toyota was copying the system in Japan.

An historical examination of managing people in different organisations will show that a number of changes have taken place over the last two centuries. Whereas Henry Ford was eager to ensure that his workers were remunerated adequately enough so that they could aspire to purchase one of the vehicles they had assembled, the current system forces many businesses to compete by reducing costs and keeping wages as low as legally possible.

This trend is creating a divide between the formally employed privileged elite and the rest of the work-seeking population - who have little option but to accept whatever alternatives are available in order to subsist. Globalisation has not always fulfilled its original promise of increased economic prosperity for all.

Whilst many organisations give lip service to the benefits of diversity, a number of marginalised and vulnerable groups still experience discrimination. The disabled and particularly those considered ‘mentally disabled’ are amongst the most disadvantaged groups despite attempts to use policies to change social attitudes and behaviours.

This review offers a radical approach to perceptions of mental disability, arguing that the myth of the “mad genius” actually has an element of truth attached to it. Scientific studies prove that intelligence and mental disorders are linked. People who have different brains can often add substantial value to society if they are included and accepted.

Whilst the future of formal work remains in a state of flux, the growing trend of crowdworking offers both the abled and disabled an opportunity to engage in income generating activities. Given the relatively unregulated environment that currently prevails, the researcher proposes that local and global institutions need to develop suitable systems and policies to protect those engaged in precarious work, particularly when they engage in cross-border labour and require legal recourse.

A theoretical treatment of the continuing evolution of librarianship as an occupation, this paper focuses specifically on the analysis of the labor process. Initially drawing on the chapter on the labor process in Karl Marx, Capital (volume I) and the sociology of Max Weber, it incorporates elements of the revisionist labor process theory of Harry Braverman, and Jean Baudrillard's sociology of consumerism in advanced industrial societies.

Resumo: O propósito do ensaio é discutir o nexo entre base técnica e organização do trabalho como unidade cuja mudança é determinada pela inflexão entre manufatura e grande indústria. Para tanto, discute-se as limitações existentes no enfrentamento do problema, procurando contribuir com o entendimento daquela inflexão entre setores econômicos e o desdobramento da grande indústria no século XX. Palavras-chave: Base técnica; organização do trabalho; manufatura; grande indústria. Technical base and organization of labor in manufacture and machine system: inflection, uneven development and reciprocities Abstract: The aim of this essay is to discuss the link between technical base and organization of labor as a unit whose change is a function of the inflection between manufacture and machine system. In order to do that, one discusses the limitations of studies about this subject, looking for to be contributive for the understanding of such inflection amongst economic sectors and the machine system unfolding throughout 20th.

The U.S. tech industry has been going through a re-shuffling of labour forces, which destabilises the previous masculine structure. Drawing on 11 months of ethnographic work and 46 interviews, this study finds that labour games have become a contested terrain where different groups of engineers promote their masculine selves. Brogrammers highlight their brogram-ming masculine habitus through initiating 'pranking-games'. Tech hobbyists embodied with video-gaming habitus invest in the 'number games' through which they display their technological masculinity. Despite the divergent motives, two minority groups-coding peasants and female workers-choose to distance themselves from these labour games, which reinforce their marginalised status. These findings contribute to masculinity scholarship and the study of labour games by demonstrating how labour games organised on the engineering floor have become a crucial milieu for the construction of masculinities.

This working paper will focus on conceptualising why informal labour continues to persist in the Indian economy. More specifically, it will try to theorise why, despite generating growth, informal labour has been locked in unequal and exploitative terms of contracts. Crucially, it will try to understand why informal labour processes do not evolve mechanisms for providing security and support to labour in the form of benefits and rights.

En “El Legado de Braverman: La tradición del proceso de trabajo veinte años más tarde”, un artículo publicado en castellano en 1995/6, Vicky Smith procuraba sistematizar aquellas líneas problemáticas y conceptuales que, a partir de Braverman pero recorriendo las faltas en pos de su superación, habían atravesado los veinte años que mediaban desde la publicación de “Labor and Monopoly Capital” (1974).  La autora otorga a Braverman el mérito de haber restituido la “tradición del proceso de trabajo” como objeto de conocimiento, al tiempo puntualizaba tres áreas fundamentales de investigación: la que indagaba en ‘la agencia’ de los trabajadores y su importancia en la configuración de las estrategias de control; la que re – ubicaba al género como categoría central en los análisis laborales y, finalmente, la que problematizaba las posibles trayectorias múltiples de las – cada vez más escurridizas – ‘calificaciones’.
Otras dos décadas transcurrieron desde aquella actualización de los debates y aportes acumulados a partir de la propuesta bravermaniana; lapso durante el cual se profundizaron, hasta tornarse dominantes, formas de organización y gestión de los procesos productivos e innovaciones tecnológicas, que para ese momento se hallaban desplegadas a mucha menor escala y adquirían estatus de interrogación en las investigaciones. En los debates abiertos por estos procesos, la cuestión del control y de la descalificación adquirieron centralidad, puesto que funcionaban como terreno de disputa entre posiciones antagónicas que, en un esquematismo extremo, pueden agruparse en torno de la dicotomía apologética – crítica. La primera de estas posiciones procuraba resaltar la centralidad que adquirían  los procesos de ‘enriquecimiento de tareas’, ‘autonomía para tomar decisiones’ y ‘mayor participación’ en las nuevas estructuras industriales. Entre tanto, los críticos focalizaban en los límites al ‘enriquecimiento’ y los estrechos márgenes de ‘participación’, subrayando la continuidad de las relaciones de explotación y la intensificación del trabajo, supuestas en estas ‘nuevas’ formas de organización del trabajo.
Las problemáticas vinculadas con el control y el saber obrero continúan teniendo una vigencia fundamental en las prácticas contemporánea de los trabajadores. En este trabajo, proponemos contribuir a los debates sobre proceso de trabajo y control,  a partir de un aporte situado empíricamente en la industria siderúrgica argentina y las transformaciones acaecidas en el mediano plazo. Con este objeto, presentaremos una breve descripción de las transformaciones en los procesos de trabajo, focalizando en ciertos puestos estratégicos de la producción de acero, recuperando tres líneas analíticas presentes en Braverman:  la relación entre trabajo vivo y trabajo muerto, la separación entre ejecución y planificación y las vinculaciones entre trabajo productivo e improductivo. Mediante estos vectores analíticos, avanzaremos en la problematización del concepto de calificaciones, dimensionando el contenido histórico y contradictorio que suponen los atributos de la fuerza de trabajo.
En este desarrollo, nos interesa recuperar el cuestionamiento a Braverman respecto de la importancia de las prácticas de los trabajadores en la configuración concreta de los procesos de trabajo y control. En este camino,  procuraremos avanzar en una consideración relacional que nos permita introducir la perspectiva de los trabajadores y de su rol en la configuración de las relaciones de cooperación supuestas en los procesos de trabajo. Para ello, centraremos la atención en la configuración de los equipos de trabajo y en la carga laboral – entendida laxamente como el conjunto de factores presentes en los puestos y procesos de trabajo que provocan desgastes específicos en los trabajadores. En este punto, nuestro interés estará focalizado no en las construcciones significativas que los trabajadores construyan, sino en la ponderación de las rupturas y continuidades en las relaciones que establecen entre sí, con los superiores jerárquicos y con los medios de trabajo.
Sintéticamente, proponemos reconstruir el proceso de reorganización de los procesos de trabajo en la industria siderúrgica en su indisoluble relación con la dinámica de la lucha de clases no sólo a escala nacional, sino también internacional – expresada fundamentalmente bajo la forma de las conexiones/imposiciones vinculadas con el mercado mundial o regional o de procesos de relocalización.  En este sentido, recuperar las premisas bravermanianas nos permite vincular el incremento del trabajo indirecto derivado de la objetivación de funciones y tareas en los medios de trabajo y las transformaciones en los puestos y equipos de trabajo, con procesos de centralización de los principales elementos de la planificación y programación que se encuentran  indisolublemente ligados a procesos de acumulación dispersos territorialmente. Esperamos contribuir a mostrar que esta dinámica general de centralización del control y de la planificación, opera sobre el conjunto del colectivo de trabajo, independientemente de los grados de autonomía o control que puedan evidenciar algunos sectores de trabajadores concretos. Un elemento adicional a la problemática del control, reside en indagar la suerte de las inmensas estructuras organizacionales vinculadas con el control de la fuerza de trabajo y de las funciones que ellas concentraban. En resumen, proponemos afinar la lectura sobre la realidad actual del control de los procesos de trabajo, volviendo a Braverman para recuperar ciertos vectores analíticos y replantear la vigencia de algunas de sus conclusiones.

Each year most of the thousands of pages written about teaching focus on what teachers do when standing in front of their classroom: what they teach, how they teach it, and what their students learn. Yet few of those pages address teaching as work—the behind-the-scenes efforts of individuals who wish to earn a living teaching, and the work outside the classroom required to support teaching within it. Still fewer pages address teaching as gendered work, an occupation in which women are in the majority doing what is considered women’s work. Teaching is a feminine and feminized occupation that involves more than just time in front of students. Teaching around the world involves street-level bureaucrats, mostly women, in the interpretation and implementation of neoliberal education reforms. What does a teacher’s workday look like outside those hours in front of the kids? How is that work affected by reforms borrowed from private-sector notions of worker flexibility, choice, standardization, incentives, and the “free market”? How is gender involved in the neoliberal transformation of the occupation? And how does an expanded view of teachers’ gendered work affect our understanding of the politics of education reform? Gendered Notions examines these questions through a rich ethnographic, and comparative look at high school teachers’ work lives. At a time when teachers are at the center of political controversy around the world, Gendered Notions is an important reminder that school change is about changing the feminine and feminized work of teachers.   
The restructuring of work, and teaching specifically, is a global issue, the result of a transnational movement of policy. Considering the case of Argentina allows us to examine neoliberal reform in a context not often at the center of such investigations: a developing and Southern Hemisphere nation. With its typical school reforms, re-emerging economy, highly literate society, well-established system of public education, and extensive history of feminist and women’s movements, Argentina is a rich context in which to explore the effects of teaching work reform from a gendered perspective. Argentina’s educational system also is not easily categorized as that of so-called developing or developed nations; it reflects attributes of education within both economic settings. I compare changes to Argentine teachers’ work across two public high schools located in different school districts to understand how the reform movement simultaneously manifests differently, even within national contexts. Gendered Notions introduces the reader to the everyday work lives of 16 teachers (11 women, 5 men) who navigate the overlapping interplay of global reform discourses and the transformation of deeply rooted local institutions that will at once seem quite familiar to readers around the world. 

Teachers navigate global institutional changes from a local terrain. It is an uneven terrain too. Gender, in particular, binds the global-to-the-local movement of reform. As a dynamic social category that shapes how teachers understand and then implement reform, masculinities and femininities provide meaning and form to street-level bureaucracy. Gender is foregrounded as an analytic concept shaping the occupation too. Men and women make meaning of policy in their struggles to earn a living. Together, a gendered view of policy and of teaching shift the focus to how policy is done and how policy leads to particular outcomes while not shifting the conceptual focus: understanding the implications of global education reform on teachers’ work. Gendered Notions attends to the commonalities of global presses to reform the education worker from an on-the-ground and nuanced vantage point. To understand reform of teaching we must focus on the gendered labor process, the behind-the-scenes work done to make sense of reform and implement it during the workday.
Based on ethnographic research undertaken at two public high schools in Argentina from 2003 to 2013. The methods framed 16 teachers as street-level bureaucrats who approached doing policy as gendered persons confronting gendered policy. In other words, in what ways did masculinities and femininities shape teachers’ decision making about how or whether to put a policy into practice during the workday? Interviews and observations across the years reveal definitions of policy and what it means to be a teacher-worker in the reform context. Observations of “typical” workdays, professional development workshops, and job fairs illuminate the complex process through which policy impacts the work of teaching far beyond the classroom. At the first group interview, teachers invited me to “Come see how we work!” They invited me to visit their classrooms, but they also implored me to follow them beyond the classroom (for example, to a public job fair) to learn how they secured work. It was this early foray outside the classroom that illuminated something I had not been prepared to notice: the impact of reform on teachers as workers. In the years that followed, I joined them in the classes they took to keep their credentials current. I studied how they negotiated ever-changing demands for curricular expertise with their own demands to maintain professional identity, prestige, and status. And I saw them struggling with a question that their troubled work lives made unavoidable for them: for what kind of society were they educating youth? Without an answer from the state or from international non-governmental organizations, they were left to reconcile the goals of reform and how to provide an education within the ever-evolving reform context. Each data-driven chapter addresses a different facet of neoliberal education reform: teacher education programs and the labor market; curriculum and school structures; salary and incentives; and extracurricular work caring for students and their families. 

Reform of teaching continues to be of interest to authors around the globe. This literature has contributed to our understanding of reform outcomes such as teacher retention or improved teacher quality. However, none have satisfactorily shifted attention to how neoliberal educational reform transforms teaching as labor performed in and out of the classroom. Gendered Notions makes an important contribution to scholarship through a street-level view of teachers’ decision making from the beginning of professional education through maintaining a teaching job. Gender proves to be a useful analytic tool for teasing out teacher policy-making processes. Teachers are savvy policy protagonists who critically analyze reform and engage in the transformation of their profession from unequal gendered positions. If educational policy makers are to improve educational reform outcomes, they will need to heed teachers’ street-level views and incorporate them in decision-making.

Gendered Notions won the 2016 Critics’ Choice Book Award of the American Educational Studies Association for making an outstanding contribution to scholarship in the Social Foundations of Education.

This paper provides an analysis of Japanese hybrid factories in Australia in a context of labor relations aspect of the Japanese management and production system.  The paper argues that the labor relations aspect of the Japanese system is the most successful transfer to Australia.  In its second part the paper compares the data from Australia with Tetsuo Abo’s research in the UK and the US where ‘labor relations’ is the most successful transfer detected by Abo.  This paper is not a reconstruction of Abo’s hybrid framework but instead seeks to draw a qualified comparative analysis using Abo’s results.  The paper argues that there is a parallel between research findings from the UK, the US and Australia in terms of the success of labor relations that is inherent to the Japanese management and production system.  It is suggested that future research can investigate this point with larger comparative data sets.

Taking a labor process approach to organizations in cultural industries, this article compares expressive and routine workers (audio engineers and studio attendants) within a US music-recording organization. I describe a practical control strategy that aims to reproduce the pleasurable feel of expressive work among routine cultural workers. Because this strategy depends upon workers’ aesthetic experiences of technological objects, I term this strategy aesthetic enrollment. Drawing upon theories of aesthetic experience and Callon and Law’s enrollment processes, I theorize this strategy as a form of control. Engineers come to love their ability to express creativity at work and appear captivated by the organization’s aesthetically compelling technical artifacts (music equipment or “gear”). Among rehearsal hall attendants, management provides similar aesthetically appealing, expressive technologies. These objects afford experiences among routine staff that resemble those found in more expressive occupations, providing opportunities for creativity in the context of routine, task-oriented work. This strategy manages the “feel” of work and thus incorporates employees by way of their relationship with technical artifacts – part of the organization’s aesthetic landscape.

THE INCONGRUENCE OF TAYLORISM TO THE TEXTILE INDUSTRY AS A MACHINE SYSTEM IN BRAZIL AND THE UNITED STATES This article aims to analyze the formal and historical congruence between, in one hand, the textile sector as a machine system (or large industry) in Brazil and the United States and Taylorism as a method of increasing productivity by intensifying work in the transition between the 19th and 20th centuries, in the other. In order to carry out the analysis, we differentiated manufacture and large industry (machine system), showing the most adherent productivity expansion methods. Methodologically the research was carried out by a qualitative historical study regarding the approach of the data collected for the period between 1842 and 1946. The central conclusion points to the low adherence between Taylorism and the textile sector as a large industry in which other predominant methods of expansion were developed productivity, such as the largest number of machines per worker, in the United States, and the extension of the working day, in Brazil. The main contribution points to the importance of the precise delimitation of Taylorism as a method of intensification and of concrete research by sector instead of an abstract conceptualization and abusive generalization.

O presente artigo objetiva analisar a congruência formal e histórica entre o setor têxtil como
sistema de máquinas (ou grande indústria) no Brasil e nos Estados Unidos e o taylorismo como
método de ampliação da produtividade por meio da intensificação do trabalho na transição entre
os séculos XIX e XX. Para realizar a análise, diferencia-se manufatura de grande indústria
(sistema de máquinas), explicitando os métodos de ampliação da produtividade mais aderentes.
Metodologicamente, a pesquisa foi realizada por meio de estudo histórico de caráter qualitativo
quanto à abordagem dos dados colhidos para o período entre 1842 e 1946. A conclusão central
aponta para a incongruência entre taylorismo e setor têxtil como grande indústria no qual se
desenvolveram outros métodos predominantes de ampliação da produtividade, como o maior
número de máquinas por operário, nos Estados Unidos, e o prolongamento da jornada de
trabalho, no Brasil. A contribuição principal aponta para a importância da delimitação precisa
do taylorismo como método de intensificação e da pesquisa concreta por setor em lugar de
conceituação abrangente e da generalização abusiva.

This article aims to empirically delimit the inflection of the principle on the technical basis for the Brazilian automobile sector, marking the period with the greatest probability of the transition between modern manufacturing and machine system. The research tested the hypothesis that this transition took place late in Brazil, not before the 2000s, analyzing the economic factors related to capital inversions and the change in the workforce in the period between 1996 and 2017. The research confirmed the hypothesis and also delimited the occurrence of the transition between 2000 and 2004.

The study aimed at investigating the characteristics of the peasants' alienation and the relationship between their alienation and the capitalist state power. This was qualitative research that employed interview conducted with 9 peasants a focus the paddy field concentration focusing on the production for distribution but with rented lands having alienation conditions. The results revealed that A: The peasants in the study met five (5) dimensions of alienation, ; (1) alienation from production; absence of rent contract, career instability, advantages taken on rising rent fees, deception of cultivation on the undeveloped lands, burdening the price surge of the raw materials, price cut selling, rising debts and pressure of debt repayment; (2) alienation from products, for example powerless to choose the paddy seeds, disability to fix paddy price and using the money from selling to repay the debt; (3) alienations from others, the rich peasants with lands had better quality of life than the peasants without lands, and advantages taken from compensation registration; (4) alienation from oneself, included feeling that life had no values, and words were meaningless; and (5) physical and mental anomaly, for instance stress, myopathy and skin rash. B: the peasants' alienation had relationship with the state capitalist power in that the state became the special tool facilitating gains to the various capitalist groups comprising of landowners, merchants, mills and financial institutions that took advantage of the peasants on (1) the government policy of paddy pawning which facilitated gains for the capitalist land owners, merchants and mills to fix disadvantageous and unfair land rent rate, rising the prices of production materials, pressuring paddy prices, and fixing high interest rate and creating the debt cycle of life. (2) The government policy on selling paddy facilitated rice merchants and mills to exploit and pressure paddy price. (3) The Bank of Agriculture and Agricultural Cooperatives a financial institution gearing gains extorted peasants through the debt cycle of life which led to various alienations among peasants.

The job content and work practices for office workers have significantly changed since the publication of " Labor and Monopoly Capital " (Braverman, 1974). With the advent of Mobile Internet 'white-collar work' has been virtualized and decentralized radically. The work place is extended and augmented to include all private and public spheres. The worker is isolated, further alienated and has lost the basis for solidarity of a traditional workplace. By revisiting Braverman's analyses of labor process that calls for a social approach, this paper aims to contribute to discussions of the labor process and explores the new forms of employment in the mobile working era of telecommunication workers in the Turkish telecom industry. Examination of the survey findings with mobile telecom workers showed that mobile working accelerates surplus value production via rising managerial surveillance and intensification of the labor process. Mobile working includes increased control over labor and a hidden form of control, facilitating a real subsumption of labor. The changing organic composition of dead labor and living labor causes hybrid control regimes that include both conventional and technology-intensive labor controls. Continuous skill development needs and associated increase in workload act as parts of the control over labor process. The intervention of capitalist power in workers' private time is transforming social relations between capital and labor. With the removal of temporal and spatial boundaries between work and private life, the internal division of the worker between herself and her work began to be blurred and duality almost disappeared.

Workers in cultural industries often say that the best part of their job is the opportunity for creativity. At the same time, profit-minded managers at both traditional firms and digital platforms exhort workers to “be creative.” Even as cultural fields hold out the prospect of meaningful employment, they are marked by heightened economic precarity. What does it mean to be creative under contemporary capitalism? And how does the ideology of creativity explain workers’ commitment to precarious jobs?

Michael L. Siciliano draws on nearly two years of ethnographic research as a participant-observer in a Los Angeles music studio and a multichannel YouTube network to explore the contradictions of creative work. He details how such workplaces feature engaging, dynamic processes that enlist workers in organizational projects and secure their affective investment in ideas of creativity and innovation. Siciliano argues that performing creative labor entails a profound ambivalence: workers experience excitement and aesthetic engagement alongside precarity and alienation. Through close comparative analysis, he presents a theory of creative labor that accounts for the roles of embodiment, power, alienation, and technology in the contemporary workplace.

Combining vivid ethnographic detail and keen sociological insight, Creative Control explains why “cool” jobs help us understand how workers can participate in their own exploitation.

Recent contributions have highlighted a technological bias in the substitution of routine work as a cause of wage inequality. Technological progress is assumed to increase returns to abstract, cognitive work and reduce those related to physical, usually routine, work activities. This article puts forward an alternative interpretation whereby wages are related to employees' control over work, which is conditioned by the institutions that represent workers' interests. We use O*NET detailed occupational level data to build two measures of control over i.) physical or tangible work activities, ii.) abstract or non-tangible work activities and one of the direct impact over rm's prots and production. These are used to contest previous interpretations of this data as a measure of task intensity and the relevance of a disaggregation between routine and non-routine work, at least for wage outcomes. We develop a simple bargaining model that suggests employee control adds to the bargaining power of workers and has a negative relation to impact, which is used to a greater extent in industries where control over work is not sucient to increase wages, a relation that is corroborated by random slopes multilevel models estimates. A comparison of these random coecients with industry level characteristics provides evidence that institutions such as unions and professional associations increase the odds of receiving a wage premium related to employee control, but nds very limited support for a relation between technological change and the estimated wage premia.

In recent years, many teachers suffered different kinds of negative emotions in the context of education reforms. A typical explanation was that the education reforms disempowered teachers in teaching, so teachers were forced to do much non-instructional work. Teachers considered their work meaningless but were powerless to change it, and eventually indulged themselves in negative emotions. However, the present research suggested that this explanation had neglected teacher agency and might be incomplete. Arguing from the perspective of social constructionism, the research showed that teachers in Hong Kong experienced negative emotions in education reforms because, on top of the disempowerment, the reforms structurally displaced teachers’ educational goals with administrative goals. The goal displacement impeded teachers’ evaluation of the instructional values of their work. Thus, teachers perceived their work as inconsistent with their major purpose of teaching (i.e. making a difference) and they felt negative towards work.

This study aims to reveal the labor exploitation and domination practices in hotels through the labor process theory. For that purpose, a qualitative approach including in-depth interviews with 10 participants was used. In this study, interview texts were analyzed via content analysis. According to the findings, labor exploitation and domination practices are classified within the framework of lack of basic rights, control, consent, and oppression mechanisms. Hotel workers are deprived of basic rights such as leaves, breaks, overtime payment, and severance pay. Their bodies and emotions have been brought under control; their works and behaviors have been standardized. The threat of dismissal, one of the most important domination practices, has a negative impact on the lives of already precarious tourism workers.

In the era of monopoly capitalism, all areas including services which are subject to exchange relations are being commodified. This is the case in higher education. Through neoliberal policies which form the ideological base for this commodification process, the services which were previously provided by the state are being privatized. To understand and explain the effects of this commodification process of higher education on the academic profession, qualitative research has been conducted as part of a PhD thesis. In-depth interviews have been carried out with 28 teaching members from the departments of psychology, sociology, history, philosophy, geography and art history who are working in public or foundation universities located in the cities of Istanbul and Izmir. Academic incentive mechanisms have been discussed and analyzed in the context of proletarianization of professionals. The study showed that instead of intrinsic rewards, academics are concentrating on monetary rewards such as academic incentives. This is seen as a control strategy, where academic labor is losing control over academic labor process. This can be interpreted as part of the process of proletarianization of academics. Özet Tekelci Sermaye döneminde, hizmetler de dahil olacak şekilde, piyasa ilişkilerine konu olan tüm alanlarda metalaşmanın gerçekleştiği görülmektedir. Bu durum yükseköğretim alanı için de geçerlidir. Bu metalaşma sürecine ideolojik temel sağlayan neoliberal politikalar yoluyla, geçmişte devletin sunduğu hizmetler özelleştirilmektedir. Yükseköğretimin metalaşması sürecinin akademisyenlik mesleği üzerindeki etkilerini anlamak ve açıklamak üzere, doktora tezinin alan çalışması kapsamında niteliksel bir araştırma gerçekleştirilmiştir. Bu çerçevede, İzmir ve İstanbul illerinde bulunan devlet ve vakıf üniversitelerinin psikoloji, sosyoloji, tarih, felsefe, coğrafya ve sanat tarihi bölümlerinde çalışan 28 öğretim üyesi ile derinlemesine görüşme yapılmıştır. Akademik teşvik mekanizması, profesyonellerin proleterleşmesi kuramı çerçevesinde ele alınmış ve tartışılmıştır. Çalışma, akademisyenlerin içsel ödüller yerine parasal ödüller üzerine yoğunlaştıklarına işaret etmiştir. Bu durum, akademik emeğin kendi emek süreci üzerindeki kontrolü yitirmesine sebep olan bir kontrol stratejisi olarak değerlendirilmiştir. Bu değerlendirme, akademisyenlerin proleterleşmeleri süreci çerçevesinde ele alınabilir.

The main objective of the essay is to present an alternative approach to the study of
metamorphose of capitalist production. Criticising Regulationist concepts, like Fordism, the
paper contributes to the development of the inflectionist approach which highlights the
changes of manufacture and machine production. The paper shows the development of
machine production till its paroxysm, that is, the modern machine production, analysing the
accumulation of capital and its contradictions.