Abstract:
Any attempt to explore the confusion and uncertainty that marks our contemporary experience must, as a central task, analyse the changing meanings of work. It seems clear that a social and cultural pattern of work and employment is finishing. This pattern linked male fulltime, life-long employment with an increasingly deskilled workforce and the increasing cultural standardization which made possible the great productivity gains of the mass production or ‘fordist’ model. This model linked high wages to deskilled work, and came to be at the centre – although continually contested – of the social and cultural patterns of the full-employment post-war settlement.
Details / PDF:
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