The Brave New World of Work

In the The Brave New World of Work, Ulrich Beck argues that the work society as we've known it is coming to an end. More and more people are ousted from their jobs by smart technologies. In the United States, all the but the highest-level workers are now unsure of their jobs and incomes. The idea of middle-class security is eroding, and so -- Beck believes they are related -- is worker enthusiasm for democratic practices like voting. Work here and in much of the West is increasingly resembling labor patterns in the Third World -- fluid, part-time, entrepeneurial, free-lance, self-directed. The idea of the "job for life" has disappeared, temporarily creating a political economy of insecurity. Down the road, he argues, this new kind of work society may actually be good for the world, creating a new kind of civil transnationalism, and enhancing our freedom and our civic lives. The Brave New World of Work author Ulrich Beck pages 202 publisher Polity Press rating 8/10 reviewer Jon Katz ISBN 0-7456-2398-0 summary The end of the work society

Beck has written a surprising and provocative book about how working is changing radically under our very noses with little serious discussion in our media or political communities. We see stories all the time about employment rates, but most people have little or no sense of the radical changes affecting the nature of work.

Work has become unstable throughout the modern world, writes Beck, a professor of sociology at the Ludwig Maximillian University of Munich. Skills can be suddenly devalued, jobs obliterated, social and welfare safety nets eroded. Companies merge, collapse, form and reform, often at the expense of their workers.

Fear and economic insecurity prevail among the middle-class majority as well as the underclass, writes Beck. "The United States is the only advanced country where productivity has constantly risen over the past twenty years, while the income of most of its citizens (eight out of ten) has either stagnated or declined. The average weekly earnings of 80 per cent of Americans in gainful employment dropped by roughly 18 per cent between l973 and l995, he reports, from $315 to $258 a week. At the same time, the real income of top managers soared by 19 per cent in just ten years between 1979 and 1989.

As entire industries rise or fall, as firms expand, shrink, separate, "downsize" and restructure, employees at all but the highest levels must go to work each day without knowing whether they will have their jobs or for how long. The newly unstable work society leads to the erosion of the middle-class and in our collective interest in civics. According to Beck, decline in civic participation and voting is directly tied to the decline of work society, which he says is closely linked to worker attitudes about democracy.

Is this all bleak? No, according to Beck. Although the loss of work security creates a temporary loss of security and social capital, he believes that down the road, this individuality and freedom -- much of it empowered by the same technology that has eroded work security -- will create a new kind of global citizen, one who is better informed, more communicative and civically-involved than before. He foresees a more inclusive kind of transnational society, with less nationalism and provincialism. The alternative facing the world is either collapse or political self-renewal, and he foresees the latter.

It's an interesting look at a subject that will affect almost every single American whose lives are being shaped by powerful technological forces they sense but don't quite understand. Work is a critical subject, and technology is changing it. In Brave New World of Work Beck helps us understand how and gives us some sense of how the new workplace might affect our futures.

You can purchase Brave New World of Work at Fatbrain.

Comments

Re:Whoa: let's see step B, please

[Em Emalb]

Step A: Lose Job
Step B:
Steb C: Profit

Hey, this was my idea !!

[opencode]

About a year ago I began work on a novel about a newspaper reporter exiled into the Obit Department after inadvertantly tampering with evidence for a murder in a story he is following. The columnist decides to follow leads on an "accidental death" which he suspects is actually a botched murder of a rock star.

At one point, he begins reflecting on the possibility that someday his job will be eliminated by soul-less AI agents to write obits for his employer.

Feel free to read the unfinished manuscript here (someday I'll get around to finishing this)

Re:HTML tables

[Hoi Polloi]

What exactly are you criticizing here? You must be pretty desperate for something to bitch about.

Re:programmers per computer declining?

[unclei]

Consider also that in the 60s era of mainframe computers, there were very few such computers in exitence. They required so many programmers to support because nearly everything that ran on them was written by hand for very specific, special purposes.
Now there are billions and billions of computers out there in various places, and sure, the programmer to computer ratio is low. But I would attribute that more to mass production of computers that all use the same software (IE identical brake controllers on thousands and thousands of cars), rather than the industry needing fewer programmers to get their jobs done.