ILRID 1535 In-Class Writing #1

Sociology

• The study of society: social relationships, structures, and processes.

• Examines macro or meso-level phenomena

The Sociological Imagination

ability to connect personal problems to public issues

Social Construction

what we perceive and experience as “reality” is created by larger social forces we share.

ex: Gender is socially constructed

Sociologists do not take everyday life for granted as “natural” or given, but rather built by particular structures and cultures in society

Sociologists like to make the familiar, strange

Sociology of Work

The study of work from the perspective of macro and meso level social structures, relationships, and processes

Examines patterns of inequality, exploitation, and activism that emerge from work

Work vs Labor

Work: tasks and actions people perform to create value and sustain themselves

• Transhistorical. Humans have always worked.

• Various relationships of work

  • Households, tribes, clans

  • Arts, guilds and crafts

  • Kings, lords, parish

  • Slaveownership

Labor (Employment): the capacity to execute tasks, which is sold and bought on a market using money

• 1700s. Humans only recently began to Labor.

• Employer/Employee Relationship of Labor.

  • Bosses and managers in a firm/business

  • Co-workers and colleagues

  • Wages

  • Social classes are defined by markets and property

Proletarianization

proletarianization is the social process whereby people move from being either an employer, unemployed or self-employed, to being employed as wage labor by an employer

Feudalism vs Capitalism

Feudalism

• No labor markets

• Lords and peasant/serfs

• Peasants/serfs depended on land for needs, which lords granted them for their service

• Money less necessary

Capitalism

• Labor markets

• Employers and employees

• Employees depend on wages for needs, which employers give them for their labor

• Money more necessary

Day in the Life of a Peasant/Serf vs Employee

Peasant/Serf

• Till the land for your needs

• Work at your discretion

• Give the surplus (beyond your needs) to your lord

• Monetary exchange minimal for things land cannot provide

Employee

• Sell your capacity to work on a market to employers

• Work “on the clock” that an employer decides for you

• Leisure “off the clock” of your wage labor

• Monetary exchange required for everything, for needs and extra

Changes: Wage dependency emerged as a new social risk in human society & wealth from wage labor emerged as a new opportunity in society

Adam Smith

• “Homo economicus”

  • Trading and bartering are a natural feature of being human

• Wage labor is beneficial for societal ethics and prosperity

• Wealth of Nations, Invisible Hand, and Theory of Moral Sentiments

Karl Polanyi

• “Fictitious commodity”

  • Labor is not a normal commodity, like a computer

• Wage labor undermines societal health, and must be put in check by a state/gov’t

• The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time

Karl Marx

• “Proletarianization”

  • Rendering people dependent on wages to survive

• Wage labor excels at generating wealth, but is bad at distributing wealth

• Capital Volume 1, The Communist Manifesto, The Critique of Political Economy

Max Weber and Emile Durkheim

• “Anomie”

  • Social disintegration and isolation from labor

• Wage labor encourages individualism and rationalization that strains social bonds/relationships

• The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, and The Division of Labor in Society

Exploitation

• “Appropriation of the unpaid labor of workers”

• Workers are paid for their labor power - capacity to work - not for their products of labor

• Systematic feature of the wage labor relationship in capitalism

• Exploitation = labor - labor power

Labor Power

• capacity to work, to create value, which the worker sells to the capitalists in increments for a wage.

• Reproduced outside of labor

  • Bodily upkeep: rest, appearance/aesthetics, exercise, etc

  • Education: technical skills and knowledge

  • Price of labor-power is determined by the cost of food,

    clothing, housing and education at a given standard of living

• Laboring depends on labor power

Class

Economically significant attributes of groups that shape their opportunities, choices, and interests in a market economy

Two Perspectives on Class

Property: Class depends on ownership of Means of Production

Social Stratification: Class depends on a combination of Economic, Cultural, and Social Capital, goes beyond just property ownership

Proletariat vs Bourgeoisie

Proletariat

• Does not own the means of production. Propertyless

• The social class that must sell their labor power to employers

Bourgeoisie

• Does own the means of production. Propertied

• The social class that buys workers as labor power and directs them

Contradictory Class Positions

• People who occupy a middle ground between a proletariat and bourgeoisie class position

• Ex: Workers who are stockowners in their 401ks or individual Retirement Accounts

  • Decreased likelihood in regulating the financial sector

Social Stratification

• Upper, middle, lower, and underclass

• Determined by Economic, Cultural, and Social Capital

• Economic Capital

  • Income ($)

• Cultural Capital

  • Status/Prestige

• Social Capital

  • Who you know

Class Consciousness

• Identifying one’s position in the class structure and how its conditions and interests are shared by others in the same or similar positions

• Basis of labor movements, social revolutions, and political coalitions

• “False Consciousness”

  • Misidentifying one’s position in the class structure and those who share their conditions and interests

Instrumental vs Disciplinary Power

Instrumental Power

• Person A (employer) makes Person B (employee) do something

  • “the probability that one actor within a social relationship will be in a position to carry out his [her/their] own will despite resistance” (Weber 1978: 53)

• Command, Punish, Threaten, among others

• Traditional notion of power

• Inefficient and time-consuming

Disciplinary Power

• Person B (employee) makes oneself comply without Person A (employer) having to do anything

  • “to induce in the [person] a state of conscious and permanent visibility that assures the automatic functioning of power” (Foucault 1977: 201)

• Self-Regulation

• Highly efficient

Bentham’s Panopticon

• circa 1791

• a prison design that allows constant surveillance of inmates from a central tower

  • Asymmetric Visibility

  • Continuous Observation

  • Individualization

• “The Panopticon is a machine for dissociating the see/being-seen dyad: in the peripheric ring, one is totally seen, without every seeing; in the central tower, one sees everything without ever being seen” (Foucault 1977: 202)

Panoptic Control

How Disciplinary Power is exercised

• Makes subordinates always visible and identifiable

• Subordinates cannot see superiors when they are looking

• Observation of subordinates is depersonalized, not done by one superior but rather by “the system”

• Omnipresent potential presence of superiors — power is continuous.

Application of Panoptic Control

Amazon

• ToT: Time off Task system

  • “Always scanning”: items, packages, inventory, locations, etc.

  • “Computer system knows every single scan you’ve made”

  • “If scanning stops... you have ‘time off task,” which is time not working, at least as can be recorded by the computer.”

• Surveilled by computer system that is continuously tracking

• Asymmetric visibility between self and boss

• Individualized locations and actions

• Regulating oneself to work and break within temporal limits

Email Surveillance

• Asymmetric Visibility

• Do not know when boss is reading

• Continuous Observation

• Access to all emails

• Individualization

• Email address

The Panopticon across Society

• Cubicles, hospital rooms with curtains, classrooms

Individualization as a Social Construction

• Individualization is created by social structures

  • Social Media Handles: Companies

  • Social Security Number: Federal Gov’t

  • Net ID: Cornell University

• These render us visible and yet we cannot see who sees us.

• Social construction, not “natural”

Dimensions of Job Quality (Non-Economic)

Non-Economic Dimensions (Control)

• Autonomy over Tasks

  • Autonomy: “self-direction over what they do and how they do it”

• Flexibility over Scheduling

  • Flexibility: “capacity to decide the pace and scheduling of work”

• Termination

  • Termination: ability to leave or for promotion

Dimensions of Job Quality (Economic)

Economic Dimensions

• Income

  • e.g. wage, salary, remuneration, etc.

• Benefits

  • e.g. pension, health insurance, dental insurance, etc.

Polarization

The widening and concentration of inequality in job quality between top and bottom jobs

• Growth of “Good Jobs”

  • High scores (mostly) across Autonomy, Flexibility, Termination, Income, and Benefits

• Growth of “Bad Jobs”

  • Low scores (mostly) across Autonomy, Flexibility, Termination, Income, and Benefits

• Decline of Middle Jobs

  • Mixed scores across Autonomy, Flexibility, Termination, Income, and Benefits

Precarity

• Susceptibility to insecurity and risk

• e.g. volatile income and tenuous employment

• Shared phenomenon across social classes

Origins of Precarity and Polarization in ‘80s

• Shareholder Revolution

• Globalization

• Deunionization

• Reduced Government

Business vs Social Unionism

Business Unionism

• Unions represent their own members

• Union demands are only about wages and benefits

• Contract bargaining with specific employers

  • Workplace only

Social Unionism

• Unions represent all workers

• Union demands are about the power of workers

• Policy reform by gov’t or community changes

  • Workplace connected to wider world

Welfare State

“A state commitment of some degree which modifies the play of market forces in the attempt to achieve a greater measure of social equality”

The Welfare State is for all workers, not just the poorest

The Welfare State supports, not hinders, Capitalism

5 Institutional Pillars of the Welfare State

• Social Insurance: protection against income loss (largest part of welfare state)

• Social Assistance: means-tested poverty relief

• Publicly-Funded Social Services: public goods/infrastructure

• Social Work and Personal Social Services: caseworkers

• Economic Governance: regulation of markets

Decommodification

“The degree to which individuals, or families, can uphold a socially acceptable standard of living independently of market participation”

• Workers no longer having to work to live

• Necessary in capitalism

  • If people are sick = cannot work

  • If people cannot gain employment = no production

  • If people are poor in retirement = cannot consume

Poverty Rates

• After taxes and transfers, US poverty rate gets lower but is still high compared to other countries

• Speaks to US’s welfare state and allocation of resources

Public Programs vs. Private Benefits

Public Programs

• Government provided social insurance

• Social Security, Medicare, etc.

• Compulsory

• Government directly spends dollars using tax revenues

Private Benefits

• Employer provided social insurance

• 401k, Aetna Health Plan, etc.

• Voluntary

• Government indirectly spends using tax expenditures

US Welfare State

• US government provides incentives to companies to provide private benefits to employees

  • Incentive is through tax breaks

  • Goal is to solve inequalities

• US uniquely taxed the rich very high throughout 20th century, along with Britain

  • Both had badly distributed welfare states

    • Why? US is only country without value-added tax rate (tax on production and consumption)

• Welfare state is part of capitalism

  • US has 30 trillion dollars in retirement accounts, goes to financial markets