scholarly journals Working in Time: From Barbarism to Repetition

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (8) ◽  
pp. 565
Author(s):  
Amber Bowen
Keyword(s):  
Human Experience ◽  
Clock Time ◽  
For Profit ◽  
Spiritual Dimension ◽  
Experience Of Time ◽  
Human Labor ◽  
Michel Henry ◽  
Unit Of Measurement ◽  
Post Industrial ◽  
Industrial Societies

The task of ethicists, philosophers, and theologians to restore the dignity of human labor and vocation in a (post)industrial, techno-driven society is motivated by an often unacknowledged concern to restore the underlying spirituality of the human experience of work. Due to its ability to interrogate the range of givenness in human experience, phenomenology is a method particularly suited to explore this spiritual dimension. In this essay, I offer a phenomenological analysis that attends to the way our experience of time either suppresses or discloses the underlying spirituality of work. (Post)industrial societies reduce time to “clock time”, or an objective unit of measurement of production. Since increased production per unit of time is necessary for profit, we live and work in a society that is continually racing against the clock, and we find ourselves existentially pitted against it. I diagnose this reductionistic perspective of time, and its ensuing consequences, as a form of what Michel Henry calls “barbarism”. Setting aside the assumption of time as exclusively “clock time”, I then attend phenomenologically to other ways in which time gives itself to consciousness, namely, in cuisine, music, and craftsmanship. Finally, while Henry is helpful in analyzing the spiritual destitution of such an approach to time (and, consequently, to work), ultimately I turn to Kierkegaard’s account of temporality, specifically as articulated in the philosophical category of repetition, to disclose time as constitutive of our work and thus to demonstrate the spiritual significance of human vocation.

Working Time on Mars

KronoScope ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 159-178 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zara Mirmalek
Keyword(s):  
Natural Phenomenon ◽  
Clock Time ◽  
Effective Work ◽  
Work Support ◽  
Organizational Infrastructure ◽  
Industrial Organizations ◽  
Time Work ◽  
Standard Clock ◽  
Temporal Rhythm ◽  
Post Industrial

AbstractThe constancy of clock time as an effective work support technology has made it almost impossible to imagine a modern organization where time, specifically standard clock time, is not a component of the organizational infrastructure. Demonstrating the degree to which clock time has become embedded within the organizational sphere are the ways in which clock time operates as though it were a natural phenomenon, rather than a human-built technology (Adam, 1990; Anderson, 1964; Bluedorn, 2002; de Grazia, 1964; Zerubavel, 1981). The naturalization of clock time within organizations is evidenced by the reified assumption technology of clock time is fixed and cannot be modified to support contextually based temporal rhythms of work. The opportunity to challenge particular notions about the relationship between time and work is found in the organization of NASA's Mars Exploration Rovers mission (MER). In addition to standard clock time, the MER mission employed an extra-terrestrial version of standard clock time, known as “Mars time,” to track the presence and absence of sunlight on Mars. Drawing on empirical data, I foreground the inadequacies of the time support technologies that led me to question the use of standard clock time as a way of ordering the experience of time on Mars. I argue that the naturalization of clock time within post-industrial organizations contributed to this occasion in which the scientific exploration of Mars was conducted according to an agrarian era temporal rhythm but for which work support was organized around an industrial era time/work relationship.

Post-Industrial model of Society, Education and science in Philosophical concepts of Radical Pedagogy in the context of Globalization for the Sustainable Development

2021 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-6
Author(s):  
Viktor Zinchenko ◽  
Nataliia Krokhmal ◽  
Оlha Horpynych ◽  
Nataliia Fialko
Keyword(s):  
Critical Theory ◽  
Self Determination ◽  
Theory Theory ◽  
The Sustainable Development ◽  
Security Education ◽  
Theory Of Education ◽  
Socially Excluded ◽  
Post Industrial ◽  
Industrial Societies

Critical theory of education should be based on a critical theory of society, which is conceptually analyzes the features of actually existing industrial and post-industrial societies and their relations of domination and subordination (oppression), conflict and the prospects for progressive social change and transformative practices that make projects more complete, freer life and democratic society. Criticality theory means a way of seeing and understanding, building categories, making connections, reflection and participation in practice theory, theory of withdrawal of social practice.This term contains an element of emancipation, liberation and self-determination of the oppressed and exploited masses, recognizing that people are socially excluded from the material security, education and decision-making can share vidrefleksuvaty their situation, realize that it is unauthorized again, and realize that they must organize themselves in order to change the structure of society.

Disappointing poverty trends: is the social investment state to blame?

2011 ◽  
Vol 21 (5) ◽  
pp. 450-471 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frank Vandenbroucke ◽  
Koen Vleminckx
Keyword(s):  
Social Inclusion ◽  
Resource Competition ◽  
Social Investment ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
The Social ◽  
Working Age ◽  
Per Se ◽  
Post Industrial ◽  
Industrial Societies ◽  
The Eu

Should we explain the disappointing outcomes of the Open Method of Co-ordination on Inclusion by methodological weaknesses or by substantive contradictions in the ‘social investment’ paradigm? To clarify the underlying concepts, we first revisit the original ‘Lisbon inspiration’ and then relate it to the idea of the ‘new welfare state’, as proposed in the literature on new risks in post-industrial societies. We then discuss two explanations for disappointing poverty trends, suggested by critical accounts of the ‘social investment state’: ‘resource competition’ and a ‘re-commodification’. We do not find these explanations convincing per se and conclude that the jury is still out on the ‘social investment state’. However, policy-makers cannot ignore the failure of employment policies to reduce the proportion of children and working-age adults living in jobless households in the EU, and they should not deny the reality of a ‘trilemma of activation’. Finally, we identify policy conditions that may facilitate the complementarity of social investment and social inclusion.

Self and Body

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roberta Sassatelli
Keyword(s):  
Material Culture ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
The Body ◽  
Contemporary Society ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
Specific Configuration ◽  
Post Industrial ◽  
Industrial Societies ◽  
Late Modern

This article investigates the historical formation and specific configuration of a threefold relation crucial to contemporary society, that between the body, the self, and material culture, which, in contemporary, late modern (or post-industrial) societies, has become largely defined through consumer culture. Drawing on historiography, sociology, and anthropology, it explores how, from the early modern period, the consolidation of new consumption patterns and values has given way to particular visions of the human being as a consumer, and how, in turn, the consumer has become a cultural battlefield for the management of body and self. The article also discusses tastes, habitus, and individualization.

scholarly journals TRUSTED MACHINES? MACHINE LEARNING, MORE-THAN-HUMAN SPEED AND DEAD LABOR IN PLATFORM CAPITALISM

2019 ◽  
Vol 2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sy Taffel
Keyword(s):  
Machine Learning ◽  
User Interfaces ◽  
High Frequency ◽  
Social Inequalities ◽  
Creative Industries ◽  
Binary Opposition ◽  
Media Archaeology ◽  
For Profit ◽  
Software Studies ◽  
Human Labor

Decision making machines are today ‘trusted’ to perform or assist with a rapidly expanding array of tasks. Indeed, many contemporary industries could not now function without them. Nevertheless, this trust in and reliance upon digital automation is far from unproblematic. This paper combines insights drawn from qualitative research with creative industries professionals, with approaches derived from software studies and media archaeology to critically interrogate three ways that digital automation is currently employed and accompanying questions that relate to trust. Firstly, digital automation is examined as a way of saving time and/or reducing human labor, such as when programmers use automated build tools or graphical user interfaces. Secondly, automation enables new types of behavior by operating at more-than-human speeds, as exemplified by high-frequency trading algorithms. Finally, the mode of digital automation associated with machine learning attempts to both predict and influence human behaviors, as epitomized by personalization algorithms within social media and search engines. While creative machines are increasingly trusted to underpin industries, culture and society, we should at least query the desirability of increasing dependence on these technologies as they are currently employed. These for-profit, corporate-controlled tools performatively reproduce a neoliberal worldview. Discussing misplaced trust in digital automation frequently conjures an imagined binary opposition between humans and machines, however, this reductive fantasy conceals the far more concrete conflict between differing technocultural assemblages composed of humans and machines. Across the examples explored in this talk, what emerges are numerous ways in which creative machines are used to perpetuate social inequalities.  

scholarly journals An impact of the distance on grandparental childcare: A comparative study conducted in Russia, the United States, and Brazil

2021 ◽  
pp. 139-152
Author(s):  
Olga Vladimirovna Semenova ◽  
◽  
Marina Lvovna Butovskaya ◽  
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Quantitative Data ◽  
The United States ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Online Surveys ◽  
R Software ◽  
Grandparental Childcare ◽  
Post Industrial ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Industrial Societies

We tested this prediction on data collected in three cultural contexts of modern post-industrial societies. Quantitative data on the frequency of grandparental involvement in childcare were collected via a set of online surveys conducted in 2019 in Russia, the United States, and Brazil (N= 1531) and analyzed in R software. The current research was also focused on the analysis of the impact of the distance between households on the frequency of kinship assistance in childcare. Results. We found significant cross-cultural universalizes: 1) the distance between households negatively affects the frequency of help; 2) the care of the maternal grandparents is significantly higher than the care of the paternal grandparents. Discussion. In this study we found that the distance between households and family kin side have stable significant impact on the grandparental help cross-culturally. At the same time, it was shown that grandparental help in childcare is significantly reduced in Brazil compared to the other two studied countries. The phenomenon of reduced kin help in Brazil is an important finding and requires further research by evolutionary psychologists, anthropologists, and sociologists.

An unlevel playing field: national income estimates and reciprocal comparison in global economic history

2012 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 107-128 ◽  
Author(s):  
Morten Jerven
Keyword(s):  
Economic History ◽  
National Income ◽  
Global History ◽  
Playing Field ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The World ◽  
Per Capita ◽  
Post Industrial ◽  
Industrial Societies

AbstractIf we take recent income per capita estimates at face value, they imply that the average medieval European was at least five times ‘better off’ than the average Congolese today. This raises important questions regarding the meaning and applicability of national income estimates throughout time and space, and their use in the analysis of global economic history over the long term. This article asks whether national income estimates have a historical and geographical specificity that renders the ‘data’ increasingly unsuitable and misleading when assessed outside a specific time and place. Taking the concept of ‘reciprocal comparison’ as a starting point, it further questions whether national income estimates make sense in pre-and post-industrial societies, in decentralized societies, and in polities outside the temperate zone. One of the major challenges in global history is Eurocentrism. Resisting the temptation to compare the world according to the most conventional development measure might be a recommended step in overcoming this bias.

Obesity: An Evolutionary Perspective

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robin I.M. Dunbar
Keyword(s):  
Body Size ◽  
Evolutionary Perspective ◽  
Long Time ◽  
Human Adults ◽  
Human Brains ◽  
Time And Energy ◽  
Post Industrial ◽  
Industrial Societies ◽  
The Brain ◽  
Late Palaeolithic

The brain consumes about 20 per cent of the total energy intake in human adults. Primates, and especially humans, have unusually large brains for body size compared with other vertebrates, and fuelling these is a significant drain on both time and energy. Larger-brained primates generally eat fruit-intense diets, but human brains are so large that a reduction in gut size is needed to free up sufficient resources to allow a larger brain to be evolved, placing further pressure on foraging. The early invention of cooking increased nutrient absorption by around 30 per cent over raw food. Increasing digestibility in this way perhaps inevitably leads to risk of obesity when food is super-abundant, as it is in post-industrial societies. However, obesity has clearly been around for a long time, as suggested by the late Palaeolithic Venus figures of Europe, so it is not a novel problem.

The Making of the Information Society

2015 ◽  
pp. 1-24
Author(s):  
P.E. Thomas
Keyword(s):  
Information Society ◽  
Knowledge Workers ◽  
Knowledge Society ◽  
Spatial Relations ◽  
The Other ◽  
Industrial Service ◽  
Post Industrial ◽  
Industrial Societies ◽  
Transitional Phase ◽  
Dominant Phase

Unlike the decisive occupations which facilitated the unambiguous naming of the agricultural and industrial societies, the present one which is tagged with an array of groupings—Post-Industrial, Service, Knowledge, Post-modern, Wired/Networked, Artificial, so on and so forth—can hardly ever be viewed from the perspective of a single occupation. With technology in the forefront working as the driver of information and knowledge, it supports and causes the rampant changes in the provinces of economy, occupation, spatial relations, and culture. And, together they signify the arrival of the ‘Information Society'. The obvious shift of a considerable population from the landed labour to industrial labour to knowledge workers marks the transitional phase of the society from agriculture to manufacturing to knowledge society. Hence, this chapter proposes that the dominant phase of a society is not to be visualised as an independent system that is divorced from the other two, but to be understood as an extension of its past.

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