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The Re-composition of Class Relations: Neoliberalism, Precariousness, Youth and Education
Abstract
The starting point for the chapter is a critique of meritocracy. Whilst many leftist analyses seek to critique and move beyond meritocracy by implicating social structures in the reproduction of inequality, this can lead to a re-shuffling of social positions rather than a fundamental transformation of social relations. The chapter locates the argument within a context of financialisation of capital, lodged under the sway of neo-liberalism. It addresses the re-composition of class through a consideration of youth, labour and precariousness, whereby class relations are being restructured. The result is that formerly more privileged sections of the youth labour market encounter increased insecurity and precariousness.
... Wir könnten nun bei der Analyse der "notwendigen" Theorien und Konzepte wieder entlang der zuvor genutzten Ebenen von Bronfenbrenner vorgehen und würden erkennen, dass auf der obersten Ebene soziologische und politische Theorien für die Analyse dominant sind und sich der Bogen spannt von strukturfunktionalistischen Betrachtungen über Systemtheorien und volkswirtschaftliche Modelle bis zu klassenanalytischen Ansätzen (Avis 2018). Je nach Fokussierung der Thematiken werden soziologische oder ökonomische Konzepte dominieren. ...
Die Berufsbildung ist unabhängig von ihrer historischen und regionalen Verortung ein so komplexes gesellschaftliches Gestaltungsfeld der sozialen und institutionellen Interaktion mit hoher Bedeutung für die individuelle Entwicklung, dass ihr nur unzulänglich mit einer Theorie forschend begegnet werden kann. Erfolgt demnach ein eindimensionaler Zugang, dann setzt Teilblindheit gegenüber nicht erkannten Phänomenen ein oder neudeutsch ausgedrückt: Limitationen und Einflussfaktoren geraten aus dem Blick. Der Beitrag erfolgt aus deutscher Perspektive und möchte die Interdependenzen in der beruflichen Bildung in der Forschung berücksichtigt wissen. Er ist somit ein Plädoyer für Methodenvielfalt und „Theorietriangulation“. Hierfür deckt er zunächst das Phänomen der Teilwahrnehmung auf, systematisiert die unterschiedlichen Ebenen der zu untersuchenden Phänomene der beruflichen Bildung und entwirft schließlich ein Orientierungsmodell. Dabei entstehen, bei einem solchen weiten Bogen notwendigerweise Verkürzungen – verkürzte Stippvisiten, die der exemplarischen Erläuterung dienen sollen. Der Beitrag verdeutlicht, dass es keine objektive Wissenschaft und Berufsbildungsforschung gibt. Sie ist eingebunden in gesellschaftliche Praxis und trifft notwendigerweise Entscheidungen sowohl hinsichtlich des eingesetzten Forschungsinstrumentariums, seiner Fragestellungen und der Gegenstände, denen sie sich zuwendet.
... We might now, in an analysis of the 'necessary' theories and concepts, proceed once more along the Bronfenbrenner levels we used before. Then we would recognise the predominance of sociological and political theories for the analysis at the top level and that the spectrum ranges from structural-functionalist considerations, system theories and economic models to approaches within class analysis (Avis 2018). Sociological or economic concepts will feature most largely of all, depending on the thematic focus. ...
Irrespective of how it is rooted in history or regions, VET is such a complex field of social and institutional interaction and so significant to personal development that any approach based solely on research will inevitably prove inadequate. A one-dimensional approach would then produce partial blindness to unrecognised phenomena, or to put it another way: limitations and influential factors remain largely neglected. This article is written from a German perspective and calls for the consideration of interdependencies in VET. It is hence a plea for methodological diversity and ‘theory triangulation’. To this end, it starts by investigating the phenomenon of partial perception, systematises the various levels of vocational education phenomena that should be explored and finally drafts an orientation model. Given this broad scope, it will necessarily rely on shortcuts – touching briefly on subjects that are intended to provide model explanations. The article underscores that objective science and the VET research do not exist. Instead they remain embedded in social practice and will, as a matter of necessity, make decisions in regard to the selection of research tools, the issues at hand and the subjects it intends to address.
Verantortliches Forschen und die Berücksichtigung theoretischer Grundlagen hierbei.
The chapter sets the discussion within the broader socio-economic context in which further education teachers’ labour, one characterized by underemployment and over-qualification, precariousness and the prevalence of ‘rotten jobs’. In this context, educational workers are subject to high levels of surveillance rooted in regimes of performativity and institutional risk aversion. Paradoxically these practices rest alongside what Glazer (2014) describes as ‘busy-work’ – meaningless activities that distract us from interrogating the nature of our labour. The previous processes are facilitated by the digitalization of work and carry significant social justice implications which are averred to in conceptualizations of immaterial labour, digital capitalism and cognitive capitalism. Whilst digitalization has enabled work to penetrate our entire lives appropriating what could be described as free labour, we should nevertheless avoid an overly technicist and determinist analysis. Digitalization not only carries with it oppressive possibilities but also provides a site of struggle that can be mobilized in the pursuit of social justice. The chapter explores these tensions in relation to the work of further education teachers.
In line with interest in varieties of capitalism, one might expect to find varieties of austerity. This is confirmed by the historical record – austerity has different origins, dynamics and effects in different periods – and by comparisons in the same periods. Another source of variation is how (and how far) pursuit of austerity rearticulates the economic and political in terms of policy, politics and polity. This chapter explores these issues through cultural political economy (CPE). This heterodox theoretical approach takes the cultural turn seriously but not one-sidedly in the critique of political economy. It can be said to combine interest in the economic, political and social imaginaries that shape capital accumulation and state projects with a critical analysis of the changing articulation of the economic and political in capitalist social formations. After brief comments in these terms on austerity policies in the ‘golden age’ of Atlantic Fordism, the analysis concentrates on post-Fordist accumulation regimes. To illustrate the variegation of austerity policies, politics and political transformation in this context, the US and UK serve as exemplars of neoliberal finance-dominated accumulation. Attention then turns to economic and fisco-financial crises in Continental Europe as organised in the shadow of a German-led neo-mercantilist bloc. European efforts to address contagion effects from the North Atlantic Financial Crisis (NAFC) as well as the Eurozone's sui generis crisis dynamics involve other forms of austerity policies and politics. This is illustrated from Germany and Greece. The conclusion considers the limits to neoliberal austerity and the catastrophic equilibrium of forces that is blocking efforts to overcome them.
Cultural political economy
CPE posits that, since the world is ungraspable in all its complexity, individual and collective agents must resort to simplified understandings in order to be able to ‘go on’. What actors construe as significant in this enforced selection is not cognitively hardwired or otherwise preprogrammed. It depends on sense-making systems that give ‘meaning’ to some aspects of the world and to their own and others’ place within that world. While any construal may be as good as any other for internal meaning-making purposes, matters change when we ask which of many alternatives gets translated into effective social practices. To paraphrase Orwell, while all construals are equal, some are more equal than others. That is, some are more powerful than others in structuring personal, organisational and inter-organisational interaction, institutional and inter-institutional dynamics, and the wider social order.
Guy Standing's immensely influential 2011 book introduced the Precariat as an emerging mass class, characterized by inequality and insecurity. Standing outlined the increasingly global nature of the Precariat as a social phenomenon, especially in the light of the social unrest characterized by the Occupy movements. He outlined the political risks they might pose, and at what might be done to diminish inequality and allow such workers to find a more stable labour identity.His concept and his conclusions have been widely taken up by thinkers from Noam Chomsky to Zygmunt Bauman, by political activists and by policy-makers.
This new book takes the debate a stage further-looking in more detail at the kind of progressive politics that might form the vision of a Good Society in which such inequality, and the instability it produces is reduced.
A Precariat Charter discusses how rights - political, civil, social and economic – have been denied to the Precariat, and at the importance of redefining our social contract around notions of associational freedom, agency and the commons. The ecological imperative is also discussed – something that was only hinted at in Standing's original book but has been widely discussed in relation to the Precariat by theorists and activists alike.
This book brings together in one volume the contributions made to the public debate around the Kilburn Manifesto - a porject that seeks to map the political, economic and cultural contours of neoliberalism. The manifesto opens with a framing statement and each essay then analyses a specific theme or issue - race and immigration, gender and class, the relational society, energy and so on. The contributors call into question the neoliberal order itself and find radical alternatives to its foundational assumptions.
In the five years since the first edition of Injustice there have been devastating increases in poverty, hunger and destitution in the UK. Globally, the richest 1% have never held a greater share of world wealth, while the share of most of the other 99% has fallen in the last five years, with more and more people in debt, especially the young. Economic inequalities will persist and continue to grow for as long as we tolerate the injustices which underpin them. This fully rewritten and updated edition revisits Dorling’s claim that Beveridge’s five social evils are being replaced by five new tenets of injustice: elitism is efficient; exclusion is necessary; prejudice is natural; greed is good and despair is inevitable. By showing these beliefs are unfounded, Dorling offers hope of a more equal society. We are living in the most remarkable and dangerous times. With every year that passes it is more evident that Injustice is essential reading for anyone concerned with social justice and wants to do something about it.