Taylorism, the European Science of Work, and the Quantified Self at Work

2016 ◽  
Vol 42 (4) ◽  
pp. 600-621 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher O’Neill
Keyword(s):  
Quantified Self ◽  
Management Consultants ◽  
Discursive Analysis ◽  
European Tradition ◽  
European Science ◽  
Social Rhythms ◽  
Accurate Comparison ◽  
The Rich ◽  
Working Day ◽  
Mode Of Production

While the Quantified Self has often been described as a contemporary iteration of Taylorism, this article argues that a more accurate comparison is to be made with what Anson Rabinbach has termed the “European Science of Work.” The European Science of Work sought to modify Taylor’s rigid and schematic understanding of the laboring body through the incorporation of insights drawn from the rich European tradition of physiological studies. This “softening” of Taylorist methods had the effect of producing a greater “isorhythmia” or synchronicity between the bodily rhythms of workers and those of the mode of production itself and was embraced by employers as a way to dampen worker militancy. Through a discursive analysis of the promotion of sensor analytics by management consultants VoloMetrix and Humanyze, I argue that the contemporary quantification of the workplace represents a similar project of “soft domination,” as the intimate, bottom-up mode of surveillance it fosters seeks to more closely mold workers’ physiological and social rhythms to the structure of the workplace and the working day.

scholarly journals Integrative Aspects of Non-verbal Cultural Communication in Europe. Case Study – Pantomime

2021 ◽  
pp. 137-155
Author(s):  
Mirella Kurkowska
Keyword(s):  
Local Governments ◽  
Cultural Exchange ◽  
Street Art ◽  
Cultural Communication ◽  
The European Union ◽  
European Tradition ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
The Rich ◽  
Characteristic Features ◽  
Mainstream Culture

This article touches on the integrative aspects of non-verbal cultural communication as exemplifi ed by diverse pantomime genres in modern Europe. The starting point being the characteristic features of this form of art, as well as its genesis and functions in the Eastern and Western parts of the globe. Festivals, which have been rapidly developing in the world of pantomime and street art since the beginning of the 1970s, play an exceptional role in European cultural exchange. They are, however, generally ephemeral projects, often placed besides institutionalised mainstream culture, with no aspirations to become part of the EFA for example. Nonverbal cultural communication in Europe is still poorly integrated and yet maintains a remarkable diversity of genres and multi-colour forms. Such decentralisation is also the source of its strength manifested by its ease in reaching an incredibly diverse audience, the ability to obtain feedback from mass audiences, its expansiveness (taking up various spaces), its flexible approach in its quest for answers – but at the same time respecting the rudiments of the rich, native European tradition of popular culture. It seems that EU institutions nowadays notice the signifi cant role of this type of intercultural communication, as evidenced by, for example, the Commissioner Gabriel’s statement regarding a meeting with EFA representatives on 22nd June 2021. The European Union has no harmonisation competences in the area of culture, but rather solely complementary and supporting functions with regards to Member States’ activities – one can count on EU sectoral support funds from the Creative Europe Programme. The subsidisation of festival, confrontation, and meeting movements related to non-verbal cultural exchange can take place (and does take place) through regions, local governments, or cultural institutions.

scholarly journals The discovery of surplus value: Karl Marx and Senior’s ‘last hour’

2017 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 41-54
Author(s):  
Kenneth Smith
Keyword(s):  
Political Economy ◽  
Karl Marx ◽  
The Other ◽  
Surplus Value ◽  
Capitalist Mode ◽  
Oxford University ◽  
University Professor ◽  
Working Day ◽  
Capitalist Enterprise ◽  
Mode Of Production

This essay claims to discover the point at which Marx worked out his theory of surplus value sometime during the 10-year period between 1857 and the publication of Capital Vol. I in 1867. This, it is claimed, was due to his reading of a well-known pamphlet by an English Oxford University professor of political economy, Nassau W. Senior. Senior had claimed that capitalist manufacturers made all of their profit during the last hour of the then normal 12-hour working day. Marx knew that this was incorrect since, if Senior was right, the capitalists might just as well employ their workers for this 1 hour alone and not bother with the other 11 hours of the working day. The workers must then have been doing something else which was of value to the capitalists over and above merely producing their profit. This something else Marx realised was nothing less than the renewal of the worn out fabric of the capitalist enterprise and hence, along with this, the recreation year after year of the capitalists claims to be the legitimate owners of the enterprise. This essay then also claims to have identified two letters by Marx written just 11 months apart which might help to further date the discovery of surplus value, in the first of which, written in 1862, Marx gives Senior’s incorrect view of surplus value as profit and in the second of which, written in 1863, he gives his mature view of surplus value as profit plus the recreation of the capitalist mode of production itself. Having made this theoretical breakthrough by 1863, Marx finally stopped making notebooks and threw himself into the writing of Capital Vol. I in 1864, the year in which by chance Nassau Senior died.

scholarly journals DOOR MEANINGS AND SYMBOLISM IN EUROPEAN TRADITION

2007 ◽  
Vol 31 (3) ◽  
pp. 149-156
Author(s):  
Edita Riaubienė
Keyword(s):  
Ancient Egypt ◽  
Protective Measure ◽  
Christian Tradition ◽  
Cultural Space ◽  
Architectural Element ◽  
European Culture ◽  
European Tradition ◽  
The Rich ◽  
Double Nature

The paper is focused on the main architectural element – the door. The aim of this analysis is to reveal the door functions and its relations to the meanings and also the rich symbolism of the doorway. The research is done in the European cultural space, analysing its beginnings (Ancient Egypt, Greek, and Roma) and Christian tradition. The door is an object of a double nature that performs two contrary functions – to connect and separate – and at the same time it belongs to different substances – space and partition. The isolating function of the door conditions its protective meaning, and the function of connecting spaces implicates the communicative meaning. The dualistic character of the door indicates a rather complicated and diverse symbolism. As the door is an umpire between different and even reverse characters, it points to the weak place of a partition that must be protected not only by physical, but also symbolical means. The analysis reveals that petition, offerings and red coloring are prevailing as a protective measure in the European culture. The door acts as the symbol of crossing a boundary, the place of great changes, and this is very expressive in the Christian tradition. The symbolism of transformation is of great importance in the monotheistic religion, where the aim – God - is identified with the door. Durų reikšmės ir simbolika Europinėje tradicijoje Santrauka Remiantis architektūros sudėtinių dalių analizės principu dėmesys sutelkiamas ties pirminiu ir vienu iš svarbiausių architektūrinių elementų – durimis. Akcentuojamos glaudžios durų reikšminio lauko sąsajos su jų paskirtimi ir ypač gausi įėjimo vietos simbolika. Taikant chronologinį principą durų simbolika analizuojama Europos kultūrinėje terpėje, išskiriant Vakarų kultūros ištakas ir krikščioniškąją tradiciją. Durys yra dvejopos prigimties objektas, atliekantis dvi priešingas funkcijas – sujungimo bei atskyrimo – ir priklausantis dviem skirtingoms substancijoms – erdvei ir atitvarai. Izoliavimo paskirtis lemia apsauginę durų reikšmę, o erdvių sujungimo funkcija byloja apie jų komunikacinę reikšmę. Kaip architektūrinis elementas durys atlieka erdvės organizavimo ir informacijos teikimo paskirtį. Dualistinė durų prigimtis, leidžianti jungti ir skirti, lemia ypač turtingą ir sudėtingą jų simboliką. Durų buvimas tarpininku tarp priešingų charakteristikų erdvių implikuoja silpnąją atitvaros dalį, kurią reikia saugoti, stiprinti ne vien fizinėmis, bet ir simbolinėmis priemonėmis. Vakarų kultūrinėje tradicijoje tam daugiausia skiriamos maldos, aukos ir naudojamos raudonos spalvos apsauginės priemonės. Durims būdinga įveikimo, esminių pasikeitimų vyksmo vietos simbolika ryškiai skleidžiasi krikščioniškoje plotmėje. Transformacijos simbolika ypač reikšminga monoteistinės religijos tradicijoje, kur pati siekiamybė (Dievas) tapatinama su durimis.

Normative und rechtsstaatliche Kapitalismuskritiken und ihre Verdrängung bei Marx

2018 ◽  
Vol 66 (4) ◽  
pp. 429-465 ◽  
Author(s):  
Georg Lohmann
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
French Revolution ◽  
Public Law ◽  
Private Law ◽  
Equal Rights ◽  
Capitalist Mode ◽  
Human Equality ◽  
Critical Revision ◽  
Working Day ◽  
Mode Of Production

Abstract The essay is a critical revision of various of Marx’s approaches in his analysis of capitalism in “Das Kapital”. One can distinguish immanent, normative critiques from transcendental and objectivistic ones. The review of the normative standards used in each case leads to the questions of how Marx determined and used the relationships of justice and law and the capitalist mode of production. Orthodox Marxist views (most recently C. Menke) claim that Marx did not criticise capital as unjust and understood the law of capital only as private law that stabilised domination. Against this, it is shown that he certainly bases his “critical presentation” on an (almost Kantian) constitutional (“rechtsstaatliches”) concept of private law and public law. Thus the “popular prejudice” of “human equality”, defined by Marx as an epochal and systematic condition of the capitalist exchange of goods, becomes apparent as a covert reference to the historical (America, French Revolution), public-law declarations of human rights. And in the chapter “Struggle for the length of the working day” Marx presents the decisions of this dispute between “equal rights” first and foremost in the systematic historical actions of the constitutional powers (legislature, executive and judiciary). At the same time, however, he attempts to ironise and defame this public-law and deliberative, democratic dispute and then to misinterpret it as a violent “civil war”. Because Marx in his further presentation ignores this legal-democratic dispute, including a potential human-rights critique and (possible!) future regulation of capitalism, focussing instead on objectivist concepts of history and development, he can only insufficiently grasp the still challenging relationship between democracy and capitalism.

Of Pigs and Parchment: Medieval Studies and the Coming of the Animal

PMLA ◽  
2009 ◽  
Vol 124 (2) ◽  
pp. 616-623 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bruce Holsinger
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Jorge Luis Borges ◽  
Ancient World ◽  
Local Color ◽  
Medieval Studies ◽  
European Tradition ◽  
Literary Art ◽  
Western European ◽  
The Rich ◽  
The Way

For Jorge Luis Borges, local color was overrated. In “the argentine writer and tradition” (1951), borges responded to the charges of critics who valued indigenous traditions and themes above all else; for Borges, just as Shakespeare could draw on Scandinavian history and Racine from the memories of the ancient world, so the Argentine writer should be permitted to mine the veins of the Western European tradition for the rich ore of literary art (Frisch 43). When the national writer does wish to produce a “truly native” text, he suggests, this should be accomplished with great subtlety, even to the extent of obscuring altogether the indigenous hues of local color in favor of an unspoken affiliation with the authorial homeland. A prime example of this technique, he avows, can be found in the Koran:A few days ago, I discovered a curious confirmation of the way in which what is truly native can and often does dispense with local color; I found this confirmation in Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. Gibbon observes that in the Arab book par excellence, the Koran, there are no camels; I believe that if there ever were any doubt as to the authenticity of the Koran, this lack of camels would suffice to prove that it is Arab. It was written by Mohammed, and Mohammed, as an Arab, had no reason to know that camels were particularly Arab; they were, for him, a part of reality, and he had no reason to single them out, while the first thing a forger, a tourist, or an Arab nationalist would do is bring on the camels, whole caravans of camels on every page; but Mohammed, as an Arab, was unconcerned; he knew he could be Arab without camels. I believe that we Argentines can be like Mohammed; we can believe in the possibility of being Argentine without abounding in local color. (181)

Poor and Hidden Among the Rich and Not So Rich

PsycCRITIQUES ◽  
2006 ◽  
Vol 51 (49) ◽  
Author(s):  
Patricia M. Berliner
Keyword(s):  
The Rich

Institutional Theory of Endless Redistribution

2005 ◽  
pp. 4-18 ◽  
Author(s):  
K. Sonin
Keyword(s):  
Property Rights ◽  
Institutional Theory ◽  
Growth Rates ◽  
Rent Seeking ◽  
Economic Institutions ◽  
Wide Spread ◽  
Grass Roots ◽  
Protection Systems ◽  
Private Protection ◽  
The Rich

In unequal societies, the rich may benefit from shaping economic institutions in their favor. This paper analyzes the dynamics of institutional subversion by focusing on public protection of property rights. If this institution functions imperfectly, agents have incentives to invest in private protection of property rights. The ability to maintain private protection systems makes the rich natural opponents of public protection of property rights and precludes grass-roots demand to drive the development of the market-friendly institution. The economy becomes stuck in a bad equilibrium with low growth rates, high inequality of income, and wide-spread rent-seeking. The Russian oligarchs of the 1990s, who controlled large stakes of newly privatized property, provide motivation for this paper.

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