Work-based subjectivity and identity: assisted self-service in contemporary British retailing

This thesis explores the discursive construction of work-based subjectivity and identity. It seeks to analyse both theoretically and empirically how people are 'made up' at work, first, by creating a theoretical framework for exploring the discursive production of work-based subjectivities and identities and second, by deploying this framework to examine the production of new work identifies and the construction of particular work-based subjects in a specific service industry. The organization of the thesis reflects this two-fold division. Part one (chapters two, three and four) explores certain limitations in traditional approaches to the analysis of work identity within sociology and attempts to construct a tentative alternative framework for analysing the discursive construction of workbased subjectivity and identity. The concept of 'discourse', it is argued, provides a means of overcoming the 'binary oppositions' - between 'individual' and 'productive apparatus' and 'ideology' and 'truth' - that have characterised analyses of work-identity within sociology by indicating the relational and dislocated nature of any social identity. In the second part of the thesis (chapters five, six and seven), the theoretical framework developed in part one is deployed to examine the construction of new work identities and the production of particular work-based subjects in contemporary British retailing. Thus, in part two of the thesis, the retailing sector functions as a 'case study' for exploring how people are 'made up' at work in the present

Quality of Working Life In Sociological Perspective,

Although the economic and political climate has changed dramatically since the early 1970s, when the 'Quality of Working Life' (QWL) movement was officially 'born', such that QWL has now been effectively marginalised as an issue of public concern, the basic problems at the heart of this movement, and that of both its predecessors and ostensible descendents, are still very much alive. Indeed, it is argued throughout the present thesis that QWL theorists and practitioners have rarely recognised the nature of the problems at the heart of their own project, nor have they traced thoroughly the genealogies of their own theory and practice. Amongst many other things, the QWL project lacks sociological perspective. It is this particular criticism that formed the focus of the present thesis. In approaching the subject matter of the thesis, a deliberate decision was made to locate discussion of QWL within a broader sociological context than its advocates were willing, or able, to do. Thus, it was hoped to show that mainstream approaches to QWL had either Ignored completely, or inadequately conceptualised and treated, issues of key importance to a fuller understanding of the problems at the heart of QWL concerns. The main areas chosen to highlight the weaknesses of QWL theory and practice, and to provide necessary sociological perspective, were those of structural contradiction in the relations between capital and labour; management; work; and worker participation, In addition, an attempt was made to map out and criticise both the homogeneity and diversity of QWL theory and practice. It was subsequently argued that whether considered as one homogeneous perspective, or as a number of divergent, though still related, perspectives, QWL theory and practice lacked soclologiacl perspective, and, that such a lack of perspective had detrimental consequences for the intellectual validity (and, indeed, for the practical utility) of QWL initiatives. Overall, it was concluded that the Inherent limitations of the discourse of QWL precluded deployment of the 'sociological imagination'. However, without the deployment of such a perspective, attempts to comprehend the nature of the problems which lie at the heart of the QWL project are doomed to failure

Stances, Paradigms, Personae

This paper argues that paradigmatic thinking in organization studies has failed to treat personhood as a central problematic within the research enterprise and that this oversight underlies a number of seemingly intractable field-level problems. We emphasise the centrality of personhood to the development and exercise of knowledge via three distinct but complementary projects: Ian Hunter’s investigation into ‘the moment of theory’, Pierre Hadot’s exposition of ‘philosophy as a way of life’, and Bas Van Fraassen’s reconceptualization of philosophical positions as ‘stances’. The notion of ‘stance’ provides a means for assimilating and differentiating otherwise distinct paradigms and thereby circumvents debates about paradigm incommensurability or the theory-practice dualism. Rather, the shift from ‘paradigms’ to ‘stances’ enables us to re-classify the field of organizational analysis according to new values-based criteria such that practical relevance and ethical seriousness can be restored

Disappearing organization? Reshaping the sociology of organizations

This monograph showcases some recent developments in the sociology of organizations, mapping out the most productive relationships between current social scientific work on organizations and core theoretical and empirical concerns in the discipline of sociology

Representar la globalización : Apuntes sobre la discursividad de la vida económica

A principios de su primer gobierno Margaret Thatcher explicó la ambición evangélica de su programa político. “La economía es el método”, dijo. “La meta es cambiar el alma.” En The Hard Road to Renewal, Stuart Hall trazó la urdimbre de estas hebras económicas y morales que produjeron la “cultura empresarial” como símbolo y meta del Thatcherismo1 . Al hacerlo, indicó cómo la dimensión discursiva, o significativa, es una de las condiciones constitutivas de la operación de las estrategias económi..

Who is my neighbour? Understanding indifference as a vice

Indifference is often described as a vice. Yet who is indifferent; to what; and in what way is poorly understood, and frequently subject to controversy and confusion. This paper proposes a framework for the interpretation and analysis of ethically problematic forms of indifference in terms of how different states of indifference can be either more or less dynamic, or more or less sensitive to the nature and state of their object

Minding your own business? Understanding indifference as a virtue

Indifference is sometimes described as a virtue. Yet who is indifferent; to what; and in what way is poorly understood, and frequently subject to controversy and confusion. This paper proposes a framework for the interpretation and analysis of ethically acceptable forms of indifference in terms of how different states of indifference can be either more or less dynamic, or more or less sensitive to the nature and state of their object

Mind the gap: National and local partnership in the Irish public sector

This article uses case study data from a major Irish city council to investigate and explain public sector worker attitudes towards social partnership at local and national level. It is argued that the more sceptical attitudes to workplace partnership reflect structural differences between local and national arrangements, which have enabled public sector employers to use ‘social partnership’ as a constraint in the implementation process of a pre-determined public sector reform agenda