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Productivity as a Social Problem: The Uses and Misuses of Social Indicators
Abstract
The study of social indicators is valuable for understanding the role that the social sciences play in the political arena. One common pattern is for a particular social indicator to become frozen in place once it takes on political significance, and this can result in ironic consequences. This study traces out the case of indicators of aggregate productivity trends in the United States. These measures were initially developed as part of an underconsumptionist argument that was linked to the political left, but there was considerable debate over different measurement schemes. Over time, one particular measure of trends in aggregate productivity became central for wage negotiations and for government policy. This created a context in which the slower rates of growth of this measure of productivity in the 1970s helped to validate the views of those on the political right who saw the need for greater restrictions on wage gains and government civilian spending. The paper raises questions about the value of this particular measure and ends by emphasizing the problems of locking in place an "objective" social indicator when the reality being measured is in continual flux.
... We think that Foucault's point about "specific intellectuals" was precisely about a movement that takes one from the problems and contestations encountered at the technical level to the "political effects" of these technicalities. It follows that intervention could be also in the form of a report, a technical document, expert testimony, even an experimental demonstration (properly publicized), or-as we shall emphasize here-in the form of a "politics of measurement," by modifying how matters of public concern are quantified, measured, and represented (Porter 1995;Breslau 1998;Alonso and Star 1987;Block and Burns 1986). The crucial point is that the format or mode of intervention can take many different forms besides the 2. In a play on the old Weberian distinction, we could say that intellectuals live "for opinion," while pundits (and think tanks) live "of opinion." 3. Philip Mirowski and Edward Nik-Khah (in this volume) demonstrate the extent to which actors within this buffer zone can completely block, distort, or disarm the interventions made by scientists and academics. ...
... A good example is the indicator of aggregate productivity trends. As Fred Block and Gene Burns (1986) show, it was compiled as part of an underconsumptionist explanation for the Great Depression. Productivity gains, it was argued, would lead to weakening demand if wages do not rise as fast, or prices decline accordingly. ...
This essay argues that the term public intellectual is too narrow for historical research about the public influence of economists and economic expertise. We propose, instead, the concept of public interventions to inform a more comprehensive approach that broadens the analytical frame by multiplying the relevant actors, modes, and targets of intervention yet could still include within it research on public intellectuals narrowly construed. As an empirical example, we suggest that the design and diffusion of economic indicators—specifically, the GDP and the myriad indicators compiled in recent years as part of proposals to replace it with a better representation of human welfare—could be analyzed as a specific mode by which economists intervene in and shape the public sphere.
... Trois hypothèses de recherche permettent de représenter l'apport du texte à la réflexion sur les enjeux actuels de la productivité au Canada : H1 : La productivité peut être abordée sous la forme d'une question sociale (Lahire, 2006 ;Block et Burns, 1986) en se demandant quels sont les acteurs collectifs qui portent cette thématique dans l'espace public et quels sont les principaux axes qu'ils privilégient dans leur réflexion. La productivité est ainsi autant une mesure statistique qu'une construction sociale. ...
This communication analyzes the productivity puzzle in Canada since the late 1980s, in the Neoliberal context. The principal questions that this communication addresses are: Where does the productivity agenda come from? Should labour unions resist or cooperate to this agenda? What is the strategic level of collective bargaining on this issue? We argue that productivity puzzle is related to neoliberalism in Canada, especially at the mesoeconomics industrial level of analysis. Productivity are mainly documented through either macroeconomic data or individual evaluation of efforts, but rarely in relations to the "government of industry", or governmentality (Foucault, 2004). In this perspective, we argue that problems of workers and labour unions to deal with productivity in the context of the Neoliberal company (Coutrot, 1998) should not be understood as a weakness of industrial relations' system and unions' global strategy per se. On the contrary, we make the assumption that industrial deregulations are a central element. As opposed to the "Keynesian" mode of regulation, the Neoliberal context does not allow any "social compromise" about productivity because the strategic level of negotiation is outside the direct influence of labour movements. Moreover, productivity is now based more on control then on productive capacity because the neoliberal agenda about productivity is based on three main sources: the efficiency of financial circulation (securitization and financial trust capital control), the individualization of welfare (active labour market policies and reduction of redistribution's policies), and the industrial corporate rationalization. We propose therefore to highlight some of the main "organized practices" which are contributing to the risk transfer of capital over labour through the productivity agenda. Our approach will be documented through the consideration of industrial transformations in Canada in the last two decades.
... 9. In particular, see the discussion of the introduction of GNP as a social indicator advanced by Block and Burns (1986). Beyond conceptual problems, which are central to this article, it is also worth highlighting that there are likely to be serious reliability problems with measures of national income particularly outside of the advanced, industrialized countries. ...
Cross-national research on taxation is a growth industry in political science. This article discusses key conceptual and measurement
issues raised by such studies. First, it highlights the ways in which taxation has been studied as a rich and varied concept,
including as a component of the state-building process, as a collective action problem, and/or as a problem of distributive
justice. Second, the article identifies the central tradeoffs associated with the construction of taxation indicators used
to measure such ideas. It discusses considerations such as which forms of revenue should be included and which should not,
whether and how to standardize taxation measures, and how no fine-tune measures through a clear specification of units, universes,
and measurement calibration. These choices have important implications for the “scoring” of countries, and for making valid
inferences about the relationship between states and societies.
... This broad acceptance of headline indicators-figures for trade, unemployment, inflation, and so on-stands in contrast to frequent critical analyses of more obviously constructed metrics, such as the output gaps (Heimberger & Kapeller, 2017), financial risk (de Goede, 2004), credit ratings (Paudyn, 2013), or accounting standards (M€ ugge & Stellinga, 2015;Perry & N€ olke, 2006). 2. For inflation, see (Boskin et al., 1998;Johnson, 2015;Mackie & Schultze, 2002); for unemployment (author; Baxandall, 2004;Green, 2000); for public debt (Bloch & Fall, 2015); for economic growth (Shaikh & Tonak, 1994;Stiglitz et al., 2010;Fleurbaey & Blanchet, 2013); for the balance of payments (UNECE & Eurostat & OECD, 2011;Kerner, 2014;author); for productivity statistics (Block & Burns, 1986;Guvenen et al., 2017). 3. ...
Macroeconomic statistics simultaneously shape and try to capture the political economy we study. Their biases mold social and political dynamics; they also infect academic and policy analysis. Political economy can both benefit from and advance an understanding of economic statistics as political artefacts. To help unlock that potential , this article builds on scholarship dispersed across disciplines and highlights three points. First, a binary debate that either acclaims or vilifies economic data is misdirected. Indispensable for public policy, quantification is neither good nor bad per se; the question is what its specific ramifications are. Second, macroeconomic statistics have been built around an ideal of white male factory work for wages. The further economic activity is removed from that image, the more statistics misrepresent or ignore it, with systematic biases as a result. Third, the real-world impact of statistics always depends on how they are understood, used, and subverted. It hinges on statistical practices, not just on abstract measurement approaches. As political economists we are political agents when we define, and reproduce, our object of study. We face both an analytical and a normative imperative to work with and towards statistics that do justice to the world and the people in it.
... For that reason, our understanding of the nature of information as an instrument of power must enable us to discount the assumption of a perfectly rational world. The dictum from Machiavelli's The Prince (quoted in the beginning of this article) serves as a reminder that knowledge and information is by no means impervious to manipulation and abuses (for example, on indicators see Block and Burns, 1986;Ribaudo et al., 2001). The failure of social indicators to shape policy action in the past has been attributed to 'an overly simplistic view' of the conditions and mechanisms of how knowledge influences policy (Innes, 1989: p. 430). ...
The perception that better information on environment and development is the determinant of effective rational decision- and policy-making processes provide the impetus for global interest in the use of sustainable development indicators (SDIs). Accordingly, proposals for SDIs are framed either on organisational goals or on disciplinary and multidisciplinary theories—aiming to reduce uncertainties in choosing the best alternative among a set of options concerning sustainability. Despite the fact that many SDI initiatives are explicitly aimed at improving policy-making, it is not apparent that political settings and organisational realities are taken into consideration in designing the framework for sustainability assessment. Ignoring the realities of policy-making dynamics can result in poor institutionalisation of the SDI development process, and therefore reduced impact of indicators. Linkage of SDIs to policy processes must also take into account the complex role of information in policy processes. The importance of societal values, cultural contexts and behaviour of bureaucracies must be understood and used to assist the assessment of progress towards sustainability using SDIs. Essentially, objective knowledge must be tampered with pragmatism in governance. This paper highlights the case of SDI development in the state of Selangor where the notion of instrumental rationality is balanced with the ‘incrementalism’ of the policy process that provided the foundation for institutionalising the reporting and use of SDIs. The ideals and paradoxes of participatory decision-making, the principles of the rational model and decision-making processes within a state government are critically examined.
... Ultimately, however, this effort is indistinguishable from the much longer battle of defining the meaning of unemployment itself conceptually. As previous investigators pointed out in an insightful study of "productivity" metrics, it is crucial to investigate the social construction of a "social indicator" if one is to employ it effectively (Block and Burns 1986). When social indicators like productivity or unemployment become a central part of social and economic policy, historical analysis will inevitably reveal the contested nature of their construction. ...
The following study is concerned with the problems posed by contemporary unemployment--especially the U.S. but also globally to some extent. The most immediate problem is the dominance of neoclassical models, which routinely neglect the deeper issues raised by contemporary mass unemployment. To go beyond these inadequacies, the study also assesses the performance of sociological interpretations. One key finding is that sociological analyses also largely fail to provide a compelling theory of unemployment and, moreover, that most perspectives implicitly adopt problematic assumptions from neoclassical economics. This highlights the dual nature of the problems posed by unemployment: on one hand, it is an urgent social issue; and, on the other hand, it exemplifies significant weakness within most sociological paradigms.
In order to address the challenges posed by unemployment, the narrative centers on the resolution of three key anomalies of unemployment: 1) persistent unemployment; 2) so-called "jobless recoveries;" and 3) the rise of worker precariousness. The anomalies are taken as evidence of paradigmatic contradictions within neoclassical economics and, to some extent, sociology.
The main theoretical contribution of the study is a careful reconstruction of Marx's classical theory of the reserve army of labor (part of "The General Law of Accumulation"), which has inspired all critical sociological perspectives on labor markets to date. The investigation highlights distinctive characteristics of "political-economic sociology," a term that refers to economic sociologists who draw heavily on notions of class and power reminiscent of classical political economy and classical sociology, forming an important bridge with heterodox economic approaches.
The theory of the reserve army is in need of "renewal," however, because even political-economic sociologist have failed to carry the analysis forward and build upon the firm foundation provided by Marx. The study's conclusion is that the reserve army framework has enormous potential to strengthen existing work within political-economic sociology.
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... Kelley and Simmons 2012, Merry 2012), or it can increase the autonomy of international organizations(Clegg 2014). Even if an indicator is developed for a particular end, it may end up serving rival political projects(Block and Burns 1986). ...
Macroeconomic indicators – especially inflation, gross domestic product growth, public deficits and unemployment – stand central in economic governance. Policy-makers use them to assess their economies’ health. Citizens evaluate politicians’ performance using them as yardsticks. But these indicators defy simple definition, and the formulae underlying them have varied across countries and over time. Particular choices have fundamental distributive consequences. This research agenda outlines how we might study macroeconomic indicators as powerful ideas and ask: why do we measure the economy the way we do? It illustrates the myriad ways in which macroeconomic indicators are embedded in contemporary social and political life, and it outlines how we can uncover both what power rests in these indicators and who has power over them. After path-breaking scholarship has demonstrated how consequential these indicators are, it is imperative to understand better which forces determine our choice for one indicator formula over its alternatives.
... In this way, managerialism altered the balance of class forces because it inserted managers between capital and labor, reducing the classness of both. The new center of negotiations between owners and workers became 'productivity', and as wage gains became linked to productivity increases (Block and Burns, 1986), managers emerged as 'professionals of productivity' -measuring it, fostering it, organizing in order to attain it, motivating workers to attain it, and so forth. In the same process, the class struggle was decomposed into two component struggles: a struggle between owners and managers over issues of rational management and efficiency, on the one hand, and a struggle between managers and workers over discipline, motivation, and knowledge, on the other. ...
This article proffers an invitation to neoclassical sociology. This is understood as a Habermasian reconstruction of the fundamental vision of the discipline as conceptualized by classical theorists, particularly Weber. Taking the cases of Eastern and Central Europe as a laboratory, we argue against the idea of a single, homogenizing globalizing logic. Currently and historically what we see instead is a remarkable diversity of capitalist forms and destinations. Neither sociological theories of networks and embeddedness nor economic models of rational action adequately comprehend this diversity. A neoclassical approach enjoins an empirical research agenda comparing capitalisms, and an ironic, historical approach to analysis to inform an immanent critique of capitalist possibilities.
Abstract Dieser Artikel stellt theoretische und methodische Ansätze einer neoklassischen Soziologie vor. Die neoklassische Soziologie
versteht sich als eine Habermas’sche Rekonstruktion der von ihren klassischen Theoretikern, hier vor allem Max Weber, konzeptualisierten,
grundlegenden Idee der Disziplin. Mit Blick auf die Entwicklungen in Ost- und Mitteleuropa widersprechen wir der dominanten
Vorstellung einer einzigen, homogenisierenden Globalisierungslogik. Sowohl in der Geschichte als auch in der Gegenwart lässt
sich nämlich eine bemerkenswerte Vielfalt kapitalistischer Formen und Ausprägungen feststellen. Weder soziologische Netzwerktheorien
oder Theorien der „Einbettung“ noch ökonomische Modelle rationalen Handelns vermögen diese Vielfalt angemessen zu erfassen.
Der hier vorgestellte neoklassische Ansatz verknüpft empirische, vergleichende Ansätze der Untersuchung des Kapitalismus mit
einem ironischen historischen Analyseansatz und ermöglicht so erst eine differenzierte und kritische soziologische Analyse
der verschiedenen Formen des Kapitalismus.
Summary This article proffers an invitation to neo-classical sociology. This is understood as a Habermasian reconstruction of the
fundamental vision of the discipline as conceptualized by classical theorists, particularly Weber. Taking the cases of Eastern
and Central Europe as a laboratory, we argue against the idea of a single, homogenizing globalizing logic. Currently and historically
what we see instead is a remarkable diversity of capitalist forms and destinations. Neither sociological theories of networks
and embeddedness nor economic models of rational action adequately comprehend this diversity. A neo-classical approach enjoins
an empirical research agenda comparing capitalisms, and an ironic, historical approach to analysis to inform an immanent critique
of capitalist possibilities.
The study of organizational 'goodness' is examined in four leading organizational journals (American and European) spanning a period of 35 years. The survey of 349 articles shows that 'performance' and 'effectiveness' have been studied most frequently, while 'efficiency' and 'productivity' are rarely addressed. Since 1978, performance has become the single most dominant concept in the literature. Organization Studies was more likely to publish studies of effectiveness, whereas The Academy of Management Journal and The Administrative Science Quarterly were more likely to study performance. Only one fifth of the studies provide a theoretical definition of the concepts used, and the number of articles without a nominal definition has increased since 1975. The provision of definitions was more prominent in The Academy of Management Review and Organization Studies than in the other two journals. The results suggest that the literature does not offer a consistent approach to the study of organizational goodness and that measurement is largely erratic.
Statistics are key elements of contemporary life. They figure prominently in the media, in political discourse, and in daily conversations. They also weigh heavily within the economic and political spheres of modern societies. Yet, the study of statistics in the public sphere has been neglected by social scientists in favor of a focus on their production and history. This article remedies this lacuna by focusing on the public life of statistics. Through a case study of a financial indicator—country risk—that exhibited a rich public life in Argentina in 2001, it argues that statistics are not simply transparent fragments of information, but rich symbols and collective representations able to condense multiple meanings and generate deep emotional reactions. Using in-depth interviews, newspaper covers, headlines, and leads, cartoons and archival materials, this article shows that country risk became a powerful collective representation and introduces a new concept, the fact-totem, to make visible the cultural life of statistics. A fact-totem is a statistic with high media presence that captures the imagination of diverse publics and becomes articulated with basic identity narratives of a collectivity. This article begins to elaborate dramatic dimensions of statistics in public.
Much research in the sociology of law seeks to play a role informing policymakers about the effects of particular policy initiatives and to participate in debates about how to use law as an instrument of public policy. The paper examines the origins of policy studies in legal realism and describes the way contemporary law and society scholars selectively appropriate aspects of the realist heritage while ignoring others. Particular attention is paid to the ways in which those scholars separate policy from politics and operate as if policy focused research were not itself political. The paper traces the pull of the policy audience and the separation of policy from politics through a close examination of several widely respected examples of sociolegal scholarship. In addition, an effort is made to assess the impact that the desire to speak to the powerful has had in shaping what constitutes acceptable scientific practice and in shaping the domain of study. The paper concludes by arguing that the sociology of law would benefit from an effort to interrogate the basic premises which inform policy debate and that such an interrogation itself requires greater distance from the policy audience.
This paper proposes an applied sociology of social problems that encompasses concern with the definition of problems and the
conditions defined as problematic. The literature on applied sociology focuses on social problems, but exhibits no concern
with the social definition of problems, an issue that should be of primary concern according to the constructionist perspective
on social problems. I propose an applied research orientation that is capable of assessing the definition of a problem as
well as describing the condition defined as problematic. I illustrate the proposed orientation by discussing an applied study
of the people who inhabit the streets in Santa Cruz, California. The study succeeded in redefining those people as streetpeople
instead of as transients, but not as part of the new poor. The paper considers the implications of assessing the definition
of a problem for policy development, the factors that constrain the redefinition of a problem, and other issues of general
relevance. The paper concludes by underscoring the importance of definitional processes and politics, and indicating the prospects
of an applied sociology of social problems.
This article is a first attempt at theorizing the differences in the political meaning of unemployment and how governments create these differences. It first reviews existing explanations about why unemployment is an especially pressing political threat to those in power. In lieu of a an existing literature on the sources of variation in this threat, the next section puts forward four alternative explanations based on related arguments about politics and the economy. These are the approaches of power resources, protest mobilization, deprivation, and ideology. Guided by the promises and pitfalls of these respective theories, the subsequent section argues for an alternative institutional-constructivist approach. Starting with the historical observation that the category of unemployment was invented alongside particular social institutions and employment practices, this approach seeks to explain how variation in these institutionalized practices is responsible for differences in the political salience of unemployment. The section that follows discusses how government policies can reconstruct the meaning of unemployment by reconfiguring the available set of institutional choices in the labor market and by designating what kinds of choices constitute involuntary joblessness. It is argued that “unemployment” is defined against institutionalized norms of what kinds of work constitute “employment.” Changes in the boundaries of the concept of unemployment come about through changes in the ways that governments hold certain kinds of work as exemplary while granting other forms of work lesser recognition. The final section considers how this reciprocal relationship between the construction of unemployment and employment both imposes political constraints for governments and creates opportunities. Governments face numerous conflicting incentives whether to expand or restrict the institutionalized definition of unemployment. While they must retain semblance with inherited conceptions of unemployment; they can redefine the problem of unemployment through the institutionalization of new solutions.
Argument
Created in 1884, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) has been the major federal source for data in the United States on labor-related topics such as prices, unemployment, compensation, productivity, and family expenditures. This essay traces the development and transformation of formal and informal consulting relationships between the BLS and external groups (including academic social scientists, unions, businesses, and other government entities) over the twentieth century. Though such a history cannot, of course, provide a comprehensive analysis of how political values have shaped the construction of labor statistics during this period, I argue that it can nevertheless provide important insights into the political context for the construction of knowledge about American workers and their living and working conditions.
As a means of increasing living standards productivity growth now features as a key element in state economic and industrial relations policy. But how successful have economists and labour market specialists been in identifying the sources of productivity growth? The paper looks at this question as well as examining analyses provided by management researchers and sociologists. It concludes that productivity growth depends a great deal on management but that management behaviour needs to be situated empirically in relation to the role of the state and major economic institutions. Hence the importance of a sociological approach that is historically grounded and combines macro and micro analysis.
In 1977 John Kenneth Galbraith hosted the documentary series The Age of Uncertainty on public television; three years later Milton Friedman hosted a competing series, Free to Choose. This essay examines the development of these two projects, examining both the institutions that supported them and the ways in which Galbraith and Friedman approached the visual representation of economic ideas. Friedman’s series drew on support from advocacy organizations and corporate interests, relayed accessible expositions via an empirical documentary style, and framed its episodes around Friedman’s proposed solutions to contemporary economic problems. Galbraith’s series, by contrast, relied on public financing, adopted an ironic and self-reflective stance toward its medium, and maintained a posture of uncertainty in regard to contemporary economic debates. Free to Choose proved the more enduring popular and critical success. These differences between these two series, the essay argues, help explain the divergent trajectories of right-wing and left-wing economic rhetoric in the late twentieth-century public sphere.
What drives the private sector’s attitude toward the public sector? We address the question by regressing survey data on the perceived burden of government regulation on objective data on the nature, cost, and administration of the regulation of entry in different political and economic contexts. The results suggest that businesspeople perceive democratic, regulatory, and left-of-center governments to be inefficient, net of objective conditions, and tax havens to be well-governed despite—or perhaps due to—their lack of transparency. Our findings contribute to both the sociology of knowledge and political sociology by demonstrating that indicators of public sector performance that are derived from surveys of businesspeople and used by donors and investors are not only biased against liberal democracies that try to regulate and/or tax the private sector but—insofar as they influence the flow of public and private resources—a threat to regulation and redistribution in the twenty-first century.
This compelling contribution to contemporary debates about the banking industry offers a unique perspective on its geographical and conceptual 'placement'. It traces the evolving links between the two, revealing how our notions of banking 'productiveness' have evolved alongside the shifting loci of banking activity. An original contribution to the urgent debates taking place on banking sparked by the current economic crisis Offers a unique perspective on the geographical and social concept of 'placement' of the banking industry Combines theoretical approaches from political economy with contemporary literature on the performativity of economics Details the globalization of Western banking, and analyzes how representations of the banking sector's productiveness have shifted throughout the evolution of Western economic theory Analyzes the social conceptualization of the nature - and value - of the banking industry Illuminates not only how economic ideas 'perform' and shape the economic world, but how those ideas are themselves always products of particular economic realities.
Here, by popular demand, is the updated edition to Joel Best's classic guide to understanding how numbers can confuse us. In his new afterword, Best uses examples from recent policy debates to reflect on the challenges to improving statistical literacy. Since its publication ten years ago, Damned Lies and Statistics has emerged as the go-to handbook for spotting bad statistics and learning to think critically about these influential numbers.
In accessible prose for North American undergraduate students, this short text provides a sociological understanding of the causes and consequences of growing middle class inequality, with an abundance of supporting, empirical data. The book also addresses what we, as individuals and as a society, can do to put middle class Americans on a sounder footing.
Somewhere in the 1970s liberals in the United States lost their way. After successes like the New Deal, they became arrogant. So argues Douglas Massey in Return of the "L" Word. Faced with the difficult politics of race and class, liberals used the heavy hand of government to impose policies on a resentful public. Conservatives capitalized on this with a staunch ideology of free markets, limited government, and conservative social values. The time is ripe for a liberal realignment, declares Massey, but what has been lacking is a consistent liberal ideology that explains to voters, in simple terms, government's vital role in producing a healthier, more financially equitable, less divided society. This book supplies that ideology. Massey begins his powerful manifesto by laying out the liberals' mistakes over the past twenty years. Drawing on insights from the expanding field of economic sociology, he then sets forth a clear set of liberal principles to explain how markets work in society, principles he applies to articulate salable liberal policies. After outlining a new liberal political philosophy, Massey traces liberalism's opposition and says plainly: liberals should have no illusions about the competition's resolve and skill. He closes with a practical approach to liberal coalition-building in America. The political economy conservatives have constructed in recent decades has benefited 20 percent of the people. Liberal success requires a return to material rather than symbolic politics, showing most Americans why it is in their economic as well as moral interest to support the liberal cause.
Der vorliegende Sammelband fragt nach den Konjunktionen von Finanzmarkt und den Krisen der modernen Gesellschaft, und zwar unter dem Aspekt von Öffentlichkeit beziehungsweise unterschiedlicher Finanzmarktpublika. Dahinter steht die Vermutung, dass es insbesondere Öffentlichkeit und Publikumsstrukturen sind, in deren Wandel sich das Paradigmatische von Finanzmärkten für allgemeine Mechanismen der Integration, Kohäsion und Imagination moderner Gesellschaften zeigt. Solche Momente finanzmarktlicher Paradigmatizität sollen auf der Grundlage konzeptioneller Überlegungen und empirischer Befunde zu Verhältnissen zwischen Operationsweisen von Finanzmärkten, der Konstitution von Öffentlichkeiten und der Strukturierung moderner Gesellschaften freigelegt und zur Diskussion gestellt werden. Wie Jürgen Habermas, Richard Sennett und andere gezeigt haben, existieren verschiedene Gegenbegriffe von Öffentlichkeit: zeremonielle versus bürgerliche Öffentlichkeit, öffentlich versus geheim, öffentlich versus privat. In der vorliegenden Einleitung wird die Frage aufgeworfen, inwieweit in diesen Öffentlichkeitsmodellen Marktlogiken impliziert sind.
Seit dem Ausbruch der europäischen Schuldenkrise hat die Öffentlichkeit in vielen Ländern der Eurozone, die unter den Druck der Finanzmärkte geraten sind, von der Existenz eines wichtigen Indikators ökonomischer Konvergenz innerhalb der Europäischen Währungsunion erfahren, mit dem bis dahin nur ein relativ kleiner Kreis von Experten vertraut gewesen war. Es handelt sich um den spread, das heißt die Zinsdifferenz, zwischen deutschen Bundesanleihen und langfristigen Staatsanleihen anderer Mitgliedsstaaten der Euro-Zone. Hatten Experten die Konvulsionen dieser Zinsdifferenz traditioneller Weise zum Gegenstand kühler ökonomischer Analyse gemacht, veränderte sich die Natur des spread in dem Moment, da er die Öffentlichkeit erreichte. Er ist zu einem Fokus emotional aufgeladener Debatten geworden, deren binäre Logik einen agonalen Kampf zwischen Ordnung und Chaos, zwischen Gut und Böse auf den Plan ruft und nicht einen abgeklärten Austausch zwischen Experten über ökonomische Angelegenheiten.
The evidence which has accumulated regarding the impact of contracting-out and the implementation of measures designed to increase ‘efficiency’ in NHS domestic ancillary services suggests that the circumstances of the jobs concerned have sharply deteriorated. But what are the repercussions of this process, in which employment opportunities have been radically restructured, on the profile of the workforce itself? Have there been any significant changes in the workforce composition as a result of the changes in working conditions and employment opportunities? The research presented in this paper suggests that with the restructuring of domestic ancillary employment, in particular, the increased reliance on part-time work, the profile of the workforce has changed significantly. Existing studies investigating the dynamics of the ‘flexibility drive’ and of job degradation, however, have essentially ignored these questions, and instead have largely conceptualized the problem in a way that accords primacy to economic variables and ‘demand-side’ factors. In contrast, the research presented here suggests that the primary significance of so-called ‘background’ characteristics of incumbents must be recognized in order to more fully understand the dynamics of the flexibility drive and the nature of employment restructuring.
The debate over economic globalization has reached a fever pitch in the past decade and a half with Western governments and multinational corporations trumpeting its virtues and a multitude of activists and developing-world citizens vociferously denouncing it. Both sides would agree that globalization is a recent development that is changing the way people and nations do business, but in Globalization Unplugged, Peter Urmetzer questions whether national economies are losing their sovereignty and whether the topic of globalization merits as much discussion as it receives. Urmetzer’s focus is specifically on Canada and he demonstrates that current levels of trade are not unprecedented and, further, that as the economy becomes more service oriented, it will also become less trade dependent. He points out that only a relatively small percentage of Canada’s wealth is owned by foreign investors and likewise, only a small portion of the country’s wealth is located outside of its borders. Disputing claims that the nation-state is weakening or disappearing altogether, Urmetzer shows how the welfare-state side of government spending - conveniently ignored in the anti-globalization literature yet arguably the most significant development in the political economy of the nation-state in the twentieth century - remains remarkable stable. Written with precision and skill, Globalization Unplugged will spark controversy on both sides of the globalization debate and help deflate the rhetoric of both advocates and detractors.
Sociologists rarely study the determinants of real wage growth, even though it affects core sociological concerns such as social stratification and income inequality. Using data from 14 countries over a 38-year period, this study assesses the multifaceted determinants of real wage growth in the manufacturing sectors of advanced capitalist societies. On this topic, neoclassical economics suggests that wages should track labor productivity, but sociological theories of class conflict suggest that both firms and workers use ‘power resources’ to shape distributional outcomes in their favor. Drawing on these ideas and others, the author argues that real wage growth is loosely related to productivity growth but strongly related to the power resources of workers. This argument is tested with panel regression techniques. The results provide strong support for a power resource theory of wage determination. The study ends by considering possible reasons for the weak effect of labor productivity on real wages.
This book is a genealogy of the idea of productivity, from early economic theory and the development of statistical measures of productivity to the uptake of productivity as an objective for government economic policy. It examines how the productivity concept was used and defined in three historical contexts: in the development of the National Accounts in the Dominion Bureau of Statistics (known today as Statistics Canada), in the short-lived and little-known National Productivity Council (1960-3), and in the establishment and evolution of the Atlantic Canada Opportunities Agency (1986-present). Drawing these cases together with sociological and political theory, Karen R. Foster argues that there is a productivist ideational regime guiding government policy in Canada and elsewhere that is based on several cultural assumptions, the foremost being that more productivity, regardless of its impact on employment or environment, is good in and of itself. Also dominant and closely related is the stubborn assumption that economic productivity fully or partly determines standards of living and prosperity. Systematically questioning and critiquing these two most fundamental assumptions, Productivity and Prosperity destabilizes the myth that economic growth has made us happier and richer and is indeed essential for our quality of life.
Der Sammelband fragt nach den Konjunktionen von Finanzmarkt und den Krisen der modernen Gesellschaft, und zwar unter dem Aspekt von Öffentlichkeit beziehungsweise unterschiedlicher Finanzmarktpublika. Denn es sind insbesondere Öffentlichkeit und Publikumsstrukturen, in deren Wandel sich das Paradigmatische von Finanzmärkten für allgemeine Mechanismen der Integration, Kohäsion und Imagination moderner Gesellschaften zeigt. Finanzmarktpublika sind Szenerien der Konstitution der (Un-)Moralität der Finanzmärkte, Austragungsorte gesellschaftlicher und finanzökonomischer Krisen und zugleich Projektionsflächen nicht nur ökonomischer, sondern gesellschaftlicher Teilhabe. Solche Momente finanzmarktlicher Paradigmatizität werden auf der Grundlage konzeptioneller Überlegungen und empirischer Befunde zu Verhältnissen zwischen Operationsweisen von Finanzmärkten, der Konstitution von Öffentlichkeiten und der Strukturierung moderner Gesellschaften freigelegt und zur Diskussion gestellt.
Der Inhalt
• Finanzmarktpublika und Moralität
• Finanzmarkt-, Gesellschafts- und Repräsentationskrisen
• Finanzmarktpublika und imaginierte Teilhabe
Die Zielgruppen
Wirtschafts- und FinanzsoziologInnen
Die Herausgeber
Dr. Andreas Langenohl ist Professor für Soziologie mit Schwerpunkt Allgemeiner Gesellschaftsvergleich an der Justus-Liebig-Universität Gießen.
Dr. Dietmar J. Wetzel ist Seniorfellow am DFG Forschungskolleg „Postwachstumsgesellschaften“ und Privatdozent an der Friedrich-Schiller-Universität in Jena.
The U.S. federal government has played a growing role in setting nationwide education policy since the passage of the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA) in 1965. This Act, along with the ‘Equality of Educational Opportunity’ report commissioned by the 1964 Civil Rights Act, led the U.S. Office of Education to pursue a policy agenda focused on equalizing access and ameliorating poverty through the education system. Despite the promotion of equity serving as the officially stated goal of federal policy, expert evaluations of the government’s efforts incorporated technical assumptions from the field of economics that prioritized maximizing efficiency between inputs and outputs in the education system. When the ESEA was reauthorized in 2002 as No Child Left Behind, significant ‘policy drift’ had occurred such that the evaluation of teacher quality – which was the subject of a large literature in economics on the ‘education production function’ – was incorporated as a key component of the education system’s flagship anti-poverty initiative, Title I.
The advent of mass schooling played a pivotal role in European societies of the later nineteenth century, transforming rural peasants into national citizens. The late-twentieth-century global expansion of higher education ushered in new transformations, propelling societal rationalization and organizing, and knitting the world into a more integrated society and economy. We address four key dynamics: (1) Higher education sustains the modern professions and contributes to the rationalization of society and state. (2) The supranational and universalistic orientation of higher education provides elites with shared global cultural frames and identities, facilitating globalization. (3) Consequently, tertiary education provides a foundation for major global movements and sociopolitical change around diverse issues, such as human rights and environmental protection as well as potentially contentious religious and cultural solidarities. (4) Higher education contributes to the reorganization of the economy, creating new monetarized activities and facilitating the reconceptualization of activities distant from material production as economic. In short, many features of the contemporary world arise from the growing legions of people steeped in common forms of higher education. Panel regression models of contemporary cross-national longitudinal data examine these relationships. We find higher-education enrollments are associated with key dimensions of rationalization, globalization, societal mobilization, and expansion of the service economy. Central features of modern society, often seen as natural, in fact hinge on the distinctive form of higher education that has become institutionalized worldwide.
Social actors are drawn to ideological formulations that justify a defense or expansion of their own autonomy and power. Changes in distributions of power can close some avenues of ideological autonomy and open others; thus actors will have varying degrees of control over different issues within a given ideology. In response to the rise of liberal states in 19th-century Europe, the papacy was forced to avoid sociopolitical issues if it was to avoid persistent church-state conflict. Gradually reformulating Catholic ideology within the limited structural autonomy they had, popes subordinated sociopolitical issues to more purely religious and moral issues while constructing a new ideological opposition to liberalism.
A central concern of political theorists has been the relationship between the state and the economy, or more specifically, how political power gets translated into economic power. Recent debates have been shaped around critiques of the corporate liberal thesis, which contends that class-conscious capitalists manipulate the polity so that government comes to pursue policies favorable to capitalism. Alternative theories suggest that the state is capable of transcending the demands or interests of any particular social group or class. The Social Security Act of 1935, which represented the beginning of the welfare state in the United States, was a conservative measure that tied social insurance benefits to labor force participation and left administration of its public assistance programs to the states. In this paper the Social Security Act is used as a case study to adjudicate between several competing theories of the state. The analysis demonstrates that the state functions as a mediating body, weighing the priorities of various interest groups with unequal access to power, negotiating compromises between class factions, and incorporating working-class demands into legislation on capitalist terms.
Slowdown of productivity growth in developed countries during the 1970s is viewed as a combined effect of three forces: 1) a long- term deterioration in the efficiency and flexibility of basic mechanisms of the economic and political systems of these countries; 2) the fading away of a number of favourable circumstances for productivity growth during the '60s and '70s; and 3) the exposure of these economies to unusually severe macroeconomic disturbances in the '70s.-from Author