Conclusions

2020 ◽  
pp. 134-146
Author(s):  
Alex J. Wood
Keyword(s):  
Bargaining Power ◽  
First Century ◽  
Valuable Insight ◽  
Future Of Work ◽  
On Demand ◽  
The Future ◽  
Progressive Form ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
Employment Rights ◽  
Insight Into

This concluding chapter explains that the findings from ConflictCo and PartnershipCo suggest that a form of flexible despotism is key for understanding workplace control of workers in the twenty-first century. It considers how the form that flexible despotism takes is modified by the differing levels of bargaining power of workers. Specifically, the chapter looks at how the provision of greater employment rights and union protection leads to a more progressive form of flexible despotism—but one in which precarious scheduling nonetheless remains central to workplace control. This account of power at work provides a valuable insight into the experiences of control of a large number of postindustrial workers in the on-demand economy. The chapter then reflects on the implications for the future of work in the on-demand economy and assesses the forms of workplace control that are likely to achieve prominence as the century progresses.

The future of the doctrine of economic duress in South African contract law: The influence of Roman-Dutch law, English law and the Constitution of the Republic

Acta Juridica ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 2021 ◽  
pp. 107-140
Author(s):  
D Bhana
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
South African ◽  
Bargaining Power ◽  
Contract Law ◽  
First Century ◽  
The Future ◽  
English Law ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
The Republic ◽  
Normative Content

In England, the contractual doctrine of economic duress is an important mechanism for curbing abuses of superior bargaining power. In contrast, in South Africa, the courts are yet to articulate a definitive doctrine. In this article, I argue for a twenty-first century South African doctrine of economic duress that is delineated primarily in terms of South Africa’s foundational constitutional value of equality. For this purpose, I consider English contract law and show how it is a concern for ‘equity’ that has been central to its treatment of economic duress. I then highlight the normative limitations of the English doctrine, but argue that the English legal experience of economic duress remains valuable for corresponding developments in the modern South African commercial context, especially in light of the latter’s post-apartheid constitutional framework, which provides the normative content of baseline standards that must inform its doctrine of economic duress.

The Younghusband-Waddell Collection and Its People: the Social Life of Tibetan Books Gathered in a Late-colonial Enterprise

Inner Asia ◽  
2012 ◽  
Vol 14 (1) ◽  
pp. 131-171
Author(s):  
Hildegard Diemberger
Keyword(s):  
Digital Technology ◽  
Social Life ◽  
First Century ◽  
The Political ◽  
Academic Institutions ◽  
Cultural Biography ◽  
The Social ◽  
Twenty First Century ◽  
New Perspective ◽  
Insight Into

AbstractIn this paper I follow the social life of the Tibetan books belonging to the Younghusband-Waddell collection. I show how books as literary artefacts can transform from ritual objects into loot, into commodities and into academic treasures and how books can have agency over people, creating networks and shaping identities. Exploring connections between books and people, I look at colonial collecting, Orientalist scholarship and imperial visions from an unusual perspective in which the social life and cultural biography of people and things intertwine and mutually define each other. By following the trajectory of these literary artefacts, I show how their traces left in letters, minutes and acquisition documents give insight into the functioning of academic institutions and their relationship to imperial governing structures and individual aspirations. In particular, I outline the lives of a group of scholars who were involved with this collection in different capacities and whose deeds are unevenly known. This adds a new perspective to the study of this period, which has so far been largely focused on the deeds of key individuals and the political and military setting in which they operated. Finally, I show how the books of this collection have continued to exercise their attraction and moral pressure on twenty-first-century scholars, both Tibetan and international, linking them through digital technology and cyberspace.

Pietro Basso,Modern Times, Ancient Hours: Working Livesin the Twenty-first Century. London: Verso, 2003. pp. 275. $27.00 cloth.

2005 ◽  
Vol 68 ◽  
pp. 134-136
Author(s):  
Gerd-Rainer Horn
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Working Time ◽  
First Century ◽  
Recent Past ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
Modern Times ◽  
The Future ◽  
Twenty First Century

For some time now, sociologists, economists and assorted futurologists have flooded the pages of learned journals and the shelves of libraries with analyses of the continuing decline of industrial and other forms of labor. In proportion to the decline of working time, those social scientists proclaim, the forward march of leisure has become an irresistible trend of the most recent past, the present and, most definitely, the future. Those of us living on planet earth have on occasion wondered about the veracity of such claims which, quite often, appear to stand in flat contradiction to our experiences in everyday life. The work of the Italian sociologist Pietro Basso is thus long overdue and proves to be a welcome refutation of this genre of, to paraphrase Basso, obfuscating hallucinations.

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