Social Organization of Work in different types of Society | Sociology UPSC Notes

Social Organization of Work in different types of Society

Industrial Capitalist Society, Slave Society, and Feudal Society

Social Organization of Work:

1. We can describe work, whether it’s paid or not, as the doing of tasks that require mental and physical effort and have a goal, like making goods and services that meet people’s needs. A job or occupation is work that is done for pay on a daily basis.

2. Work is the basis of the economy in every country. The economic system is made up of institutions that make it possible for things and services to be made and sold.

3. One of the most interesting things about the economic systems of modern countries is how complicated the division of labour is. Work has been split into a huge number of different jobs, and people specialise in each one.

4. In traditional cultures, people who didn’t work in agriculture had to learn a craft. Craft skills were usually learned through a long training, and the worker usually did everything from the beginning to the end of the process. For example, a person who works with metal might make the iron, shape it, and put the plough together. With the rise of modern industrial production, most traditional crafts have gone away completely and have been replaced by skills that are used in production on a bigger scale.

5. The place where people work has also changed in modern society. Before industrialization, most work was done at home, and all the members of a family did it together. Changes in industrial technology, like the use of electricity and coal to power machines, helped separate work and home.

6. The factories that entrepreneurs owned became the centre of industry growth. They became home to a lot of machinery and tools, and small-scale artisanship in the home began to lose ground to mass production. People who want to work in companies are taught how to do a specific job and are paid for it. Managers are in charge of keeping an eye on how well their employees do their jobs and putting in place methods to improve worker output and discipline.

7. It is amazing how different the way work is done in traditional and modern cultures is. Even in the biggest traditional societies, there were usually no more than twenty or thirty major craft skills. This is in addition to merchants and other specialised roles. Today, with the industrial system, there are thousands of different jobs.

8. In traditional villages, most people worked on farms and had enough money to take care of themselves. They made their own food, clothing, and other things that people need to live. In comparison, one of the most important things about modern societies is how much their economies depend on each other.

9.The first sociologists wrote a lot about what the division of labour could mean for both individual workers and society as a whole. Karl Marx was one of the first people to think that the growth of modern industry would make a lot of people’s jobs boring and boring. Marx said that the separation of labour takes people away from their work. Marx defines alienation as a feeling of apathy or resentment towards work and the whole system of industrial production in a capitalist society. He said that in ancient societies, work was often hard and tiring. For example, peasant farmers sometimes had to work from dawn to dusk. Still, peasants had a lot of control over their work, which took a lot of skill and knowledge. Many industrial workers, on the other hand, don’t have much say over their jobs. They only make a small part of the final product, and they don’t have any say over how or to whom it will be sold. Marxists would say that for workers like Jockey, work seems like something strange, like a job that needs to be done to make money but isn’t satisfying on its own.

10.Durkheim had a more positive view of the division of labour, but he, too, saw that it could have negative results. Durkheim thought that specialisation of jobs would make communities more socially cohesive. People would no longer live as separate, self-sufficient units; instead, they would depend on each other. Solidarity would be strengthened by relationships of production and consumption that go in more than one way. Durkheim thought this system worked very well, but he also knew that too much change could hurt social harmony. He called this feeling of having nothing to do as a result “anomie.”

The Social Signifence of Work:

Work takes up more time in most people’s lives than any other single activity. In modern countries, it’s important to keep your self-esteem up by having a job. Even if the work environment isn’t great and the tasks aren’t very interesting, people tend to use their jobs to structure their mental makeup and the way they spend their days. Several things about work are important here.

1. Money or Wage: A wage or salary from work is the most important thing that most people use to meet their wants. Without a job, worries about how to get by in everyday life grow.

2. Activity Level: Work is often the place where skills and abilities are learned and used. Even if a person’s job is boring, it gives them an organised place to put their energy to use. Without it, you might not have as many chances to use these skills and abilities.

3. Variety: Work lets you go to places that are different from where you live. Even if the jobs aren’t very interesting, people may enjoy doing something different at work than what they do at home.

4. Structure of time: When you have a regular job, your day is generally built around the pace of work. Even though this can be annoying at times, it gives people a sense of direction in their daily lives. People who are out of work often have a hard time with boredom and become apathetic about time.

5. Social contacts: The workplace is often a good place to make friends and do things together with other people. When a person is not at work, their range of possible friends and acquaintances tends to shrink.

6. Personal identity: People generally value work because it helps them feel like they have a stable place in society. Especially for men, their sense of self-worth is often tied to how much money they bring in to help keep the house running.

When you look at this long list, it’s easy to see why not having a job might make a person feel like they don’t have much value in society.

Economic system of simple societies(Pre-Industrial Society)

Herbert Spencer said that a simple society is one in which all of the parts work together to achieve certain general goals. Work isn’t split up very much in simple societies. Most of the differences in jobs are based on birth, gender, and age. There is no specialised economic group in these countries.

1. The skills for making things are simple, and the output is low. Because of this, these societies can’t support a big population. Most of the adults are involved in tasks to get food.

2. There is little or no extra, so there aren’t big differences between people, and economic interactions happen in an equal way.

3.The system of making things is easy, but the exchange of goods and services is complicated. There are two types of exchange: those that give and take.

4. Some simple societies that live in places with lots of food and other resources like to show off how much they have.

5. The members don’t have a high level of drive to succeed because they don’t care a lot about making money or saving it up.In fact, most economic actions are more about giving than about storing or getting more. There is no private ownership of the means of production.

6. There isn’t a clear line between the home economy and the neighbourhood economy, because they overlap in different ways.

7. The economic system is ruled by ideas that are based on magic and religion.

8. There aren’t many new ideas and things move slowly. Customary practises and rules set rules for how things and services are made and traded.

Some forms of Simple Economic Exchange:

1. The barter system is a direct way to trade things or services for each other.

Silent trade: It was a way for people to trade things without knowing each other directly.

3. The Jajmani system is a way for different castes in villages to deal with their business and social relationships. The customer is called a jajman, and the people who work for them are called kamin.Villages still have a lot of it.

4. Ceremonial exchange is a type of social system in which gifts are given to family and friends on different social events. The main goal is to make sure that everyone gets along with each other.

5. “Potlatch” is a word for a gift. It’s meant to be a public handout of goods to prove certain things about the source and the people who get them. It is based on the idea that people should help each other. With this system, the host lets others know what his state is.

6. Multicentric economy: An economy that uses more than one way to share goods and services.

7.Kula: According to Malinowski, this is a ceremony in which people who live in a small group on Trobriand Island share gifts. It can’t be used for anything or be sold. The exchange method is set up like a ring that can move in two directions. The red shell chains called Soulava go around in a clockwise direction, and the white arm shells called Mwali go around in an anticlockwise direction.When things are given or taken in Kula, there is never any haggling.

(Industrial Society) The economic system of a complicated society.

Complex societies have a lot of division of labour and, as a result, different structures. So, economic activity is a type of social activity that takes place in special institutions and is different from other types of social activity. For example, workplaces, banks, and markets are all examples of different economic activities.

1. A high division of work means that people have more advanced skills, which helps them get more done. The way the economy works makes it easy for a lot of people to live there.

2. Complex societies make a lot of money because they are very productive. They can help people show off how much money they have.

3. Market trading is the most important way to trade, and money is the only thing that can be used to trade anywhere.

4. The people who live in complex societies are very driven to succeed, and their economic behaviour is marked by an intense focus on making and storing extra.

5. The difference between the home economy and the community economy is clear. Domestic units are the units of consumption and fill the community economy with people to work. In the bigger units that are part of the community economy, goods and services are made.

6. The high level of scientific and technological progress in these countries is one way to describe them. Economic action is seen in a neutral way and is based on what makes sense in the real world.

7. A high level of specialisation, fast change, a focus on practicality, and too much mechanisation of production lead to a state of anomie in society and make it harder for workers to connect with the things they make.

Social Organization of Work in Different Types of Society

Slave society:

  1. A slave community is one in which people are divided into masters and slaves, with slaves being the main producers. Slaves were completely controlled and owned by their masters. Slaves, a group of people, were treated as property and ruled by their masters. For more than 500 years, the Roman Empire tried to make a society based on slaves. Rome was a big, semi-feudal state with a lot of peasants and farmers. The farmers’ skills were needed to plant crops, and they had to be loyal to the state to fight as soldiers. When the Roman Empire fell, the idea of a slave society also went away for a long time.
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2. The first Marxist theory: Marx and Engels said that slave society was the first type of class society. It is the worst kind of injustice because it means that some people are owned by other people. The slave owner is in charge of everything, including hurting the slave.T. Hobhouse said that a slave is a person who is considered by law and tradition to belong to someone else. In the worst cases, he has no rights at all.

3. Slaves were in worse shape than free people. The slaves can’t vote or run for office. They didn’t vote for their government and didn’t go to public meetings. People didn’t like them. They had no choice but to work.

4. The system of slavery has been around for a long time and in many places. The Greek and Roman societies, which were built on slavery, and the southern states of the United States in the 18th and 19th centuries are two major examples of slavery.

5. H.J. Nieboer says that the reason for slavery is always economic, because it led to the rise of a kind of elite that lived off the work of slaves. The rise in production in all areas—raising cattle, farming, and making things at home—gave human labour the ability to make more than was needed for its own upkeep. This is why prisoners of war were turned into slaves.

6. Slavery had to stop when the productivity of work, and therefore wealth, went up and its use in production grew. This happened because of the first great social division of labour and the way history worked in general at the time. The first big way that society split into two groups was when feudal lords and slaves were given different jobs.

Feudal Society

1. Feudalism was the form of rule in the Middle Ages, before the modern nation-state was created. In feudal society, a ruler or “lord” gave fighters a “fief,” a piece of land to control in exchange for their armed service.

2. Feudalism made it harder to trade and grow the economy. Serfs were poor farmers who worked the land. They were tied to small plots of land and couldn’t move or change jobs without permission from their owner. The feudal lord could take one-third to one-half of their crops as taxes and fees, and the serfs gave him a certain number of days each year to work in the lord’s fields in exchange for being able to work on their own land. Often, they had to grind their grain in the lord’s mill and bake all of their bread in the lord’s oven. They also had to use roads and bridges that the lord had built. Every time they did this, they had to pay him a toll or some other kind of fee. They couldn’t build their own roads, bridges, mills, or ovens, though, because the lord had a formal monopoly and would take advantage of it.

3. The Middle Ages were a time in history when feudalism was the rule of the land. It was the way that the top nobility class kept the lower classes in line. The Lords ruled this land because they thought they had “divine right” to do so. They thought that God gave them the right to rule, and that this right was then passed down through their families. But there was no way for a king to successfully rule all the land. There was no fast way to communicate, and it often took several days to get from one part of the country to another, even in a country like England that was not very big. Even if it was indirectly, the king had to find a way to keep control of his lands. Over time, these lords’ land was given to their children and grandchildren. The class of lords became a stable group of upper-class people. They thought they were better than the “common” people, who were called serfs. Because of this, the lords were often cruel to their people and expected a lot from them.

4. Like the masters of the manor, church leaders often had a lot of power over the people. A lot of church leaders were also involved in government and politics. The people thought that their afterlife would be better if they worked hard and gave more of their money to the church. They also thought that the more they helped the church, the better their afterlife would be. The church also paid the lord to use the land. This kind of symbiotic relationship between the church and the lord kept them both with a lot of money, while the peasants sometimes died of hunger because they worked too hard and were taken advantage of.

5. The mediaeval society was built for one reason: to keep people safe. The King wanted to be sure that he had control over all of his vast lands, so he had to give power to local governments. The people wanted to be safe from raiders and barbarians from other countries. They also wanted to be safe from troops coming to take over. Because of this, the feudal system and the fief framework almost had to come about. But all of this came at a very high cost to the average person.

6. The land system and feudalism are the same thing. There were three important things about feudal lands.First, they were defined by the law. Each estate had a standing with legal rights and responsibilities, privileges and duties. Second, the farms were a way to divide up the work and were seen as having clear purposes. The nobility was told to protect everyone, the church was told to pray for everyone, and the commons were told to feed everyone. Third, feudal lands were political organisations. The government was run by an assembly of farms. From this point of view, serfs didn’t make up a farm until the 1200s. During this time, the commoners, who were a separate group within the government, came into being. So, the clergy, the nobles, and the common people were like three political groups.

The Industrial Society:

1. Industrialization is the process by which a group of people goes from living in a pre-industrial society to living in an industrial society. It is part of a larger process of modernization, where social change and economic growth are closely tied to technological innovation, especially the creation of large-scale energy and metallurgy production. It is the way an economy is set up in a wide range of ways to make things. Industrialization also brings about a change in the way people think about nature, which is a form of mental change.

2. According to EMILE DURKHEIM, “Division of labour or specialisation” is the process of dividing cooperative work into specific jobs and roles in order to make work more productive in an industrial society. Throughout history, the growth of a more and more complicated way of dividing up work has been closely linked to the growth of total output and trade, the rise of capitalism, and the complexity of industry processes.

3. As workers become more specialised, they may lose general skills and lose interest in their work. This is called “alienation.” Karl Marx added to and improved on this point of view. He called the process “alienation” because workers become more and more specialised and do more and more repetitive work, which leads to total alienation in the end. A lot of the time, labour hierarchies are unavoidable because no one can do everything at once. However, the way these hierarchies are set up can be affected by many different things. People usually agree that the most fair way to place people in groups is based on their true (or proven) competence or ability. This important Western idea of meritocracy could be read as either an explanation or a defence of why work is divided the way it is.

4. The fact that most people work in workplaces has led to the growth of big cities to serve and house the workers. In a capitalist system, investments, distribution, income, production, pricing, and the supply of goods, commodities, and services are all decided by private decisions, generally in the context of markets. In a capitalist state, the rule of law from the government protects private property rights through a limited set of rules.

5. Marx said that the capitalist stage of growth, or “bourgeoisie society,” was the most advanced way of organising society up to that point. But he also thought that the working class would take over the world in a socialism or communist revolution. He thought this would happen when the aristocracy, then the capitalists, and finally the working class would have all ruled the world.

Max Weber said that, in general, Western capitalism was the “rational organisation of work that was once free.” Weber thought that Market Economy was what made up Industrial Society.

Market Economy:

1. A market economy, also called a free economy, is a system in which the way things are used is based on how much people want them. The market forces decide on both production and delivery to make sure there is competition and efficiency.

2. It changes the way established families work. Because of monetisation and the market economy, each member of the family contributes to the family income. This has made it easier for people to move up in society.

3. The number of fields where employees and employers have contracts is growing quickly. Work has become the thing that people trade for money.

4. The growth of markets has led to more trade and business, which has made it easier for the country and different cultures to work together.

5. As the economy grows, jobs become more diverse and more specialised. This has led to a need for schools to offer specialised training, which has led to more schools offering specialised training.

6. Because of development and the growth of the market economy in cities, people now live more for what they can buy.

7. A supply-and-demand market economy is fundamentally unstable. This makes people feel empty, which is typical of city life. Urban markets are also always at risk of being unstable because of inflation.

A new way of organising work in an industrial society

Taylorism and Fordism:

Taylor’s “scientific management,” which he called “Taylorism,” was based on a careful study of how factories worked so that they could be broken down into simple steps that could be timed and organised with great accuracy. (Scientific management became known as Taylorism.) • Taylorism, which is what scientific management became known as, was not just a study in the classroom. It was a system of production meant to maximise industrial output, and it had a big impact not only on the organisation of industrial production and technology but also on workplace politics. • In particular, Taylor’s time-and-motion studies took control of workers’ knowledge of the production process and gave it to management. This made it harder for cart or traditional workers to be independent. (Because of this, Taylorism has been linked to making work less skilled and less valuable.)

Henry Ford, a manufacturer, took the ideas of Taylorism and used them in his own business. Ford’s invention of the assembly line was one of the most important things he did. On Ford’s assembly line, each worker had a specific job to do, like attaching the left-side door handles to the car bodies as they went down the line.Ford was one of the first people to realise that big markets are needed for mass production. He thought that if standardised goods like cars were to be made on a larger scale, there had to be more people who could buy them. In 1914, Ford did something that had never been done before: he raised wages at his Dearborn, Michigan, plant to $5 for an eight-hour day. This was a very generous wage at the time, and it made it possible for working-class people to own cars. This system of mass production and mass market cultivation is called “Fordism.” In some situations, the term has a more specific meaning that refers to a time in the history of capitalism after World War II when mass output was linked to stable work relationships and a high level of unionisation.Under Fordism, companies promised to keep working with the same people for a long time, and pay was closely tied to how well the company did. Collective bargaining agreements, which are formal agreements made between companies and unions about things like wages, seniority rights, benefits, and other working conditions, closed a virtuous circle that made sure workers agreed to automated work systems and there was enough demand for mass-produced goods. Most people think that this system broke down in the 1970s, which led to more freedom and less security in the workplace.

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What Taylorism and Fordism can’t do: [Limitations]

Fordism fell out of favour for a lot of different, complicated reasons. As companies in many different fields started to use Fordist production methods, the system ran into some problems.

• The system can only be used successfully in industries that make standardised products for large markets, like making cars. • Setting up mechanised production lines is very expensive, and once a Fordist system is in place, it is very rigid. For example, to change a product, a lot of money needs to be re-invested.It’s easy to copy Fordist output if you have enough money to set up a plant. But it’s hard for businesses in places where wages are high to compete with those in places where wages are low. This was one of the things that led to the rise of the Japanese car industry (even though wages in Japan aren’t as low as they used to be) and, later, South Korea’s.Some industrial sociologists call the systems that Fordism and Taylorism are based on “low-trust systems.” Management decides what to do and how to do it. Those who do the work are closely watched and don’t have much freedom in how they do their jobs. Employees are constantly watched by a variety of surveillance systems to make sure they stay on task and meet high-quality output standards.This constant supervision, on the other hand, often has the opposite effect of what was meant. This is because workers often lose motivation and morale because they don’t have much say in what they do or how they do it. When there are a lot of low-trust positions at work, it’s normal for workers to be unhappy, miss work, and fight with each other. (In a high-trust system, on the other hand, workers are allowed to decide the pace and even the content of their work, as long as they follow some general rules. Most of these methods are found at the higher levels of business organisations. In the last few decades, high-trust systems have become more popular in many workplaces. This has changed the way we think about how work is organised and done.

Human relations school of work organization: Elton mayo

Mayo’s research at the General Electric Company in Chicago found that group relationships and communication between management and workers were much more important in determining employee behaviour than physical factors (like lighting and noise) and the ways of working that management required. Also, pay levels were not the main reason why most people worked.

In many ways, this work paved the way for a lot of study on employee behaviour, motivation, and other topics that came after.

Elton Mayo’s most important point: After more study, the following ideas about the human relations school were found to be true.

• Most of what employees do at work rests on the social and organisational circumstances.

• The working group’s results depend a lot on the style of leadership, how well the group works together, and how happy people are with their jobs.

• People work better when they have a lot of different jobs to do.

• Standards set by a working group have a bigger impact on how employees think and feel than standards set by management.

• Workers can’t be looked at as individuals; they have to be seen as part of a group.

• The need to be a part of a group is more important to a person than money and good working conditions.

Informal or private groups that form at work have a big effect on the behaviour of the people in them. Managers need to be aware of these “social needs” and meet them so that employees work with the official organisation instead of against it.

The usefulness of the human relations approach:

• The school explicitly acknowledged the role of interpersonal relationships in determining workplace behaviour, and it showed that factors other than pay can motivate workers. • However, the approach may overestimate the commitment, motivation, and desire of many employees to be involved in making decisions.

The post-Fordist theory of work organization:

This word is used to describe a set of changes that are happening not just in the world of work and business, but in society as a whole.

1. In the last few decades, flexible methods have been used in a number of areas, such as how products are made, the work environment, how employees are involved, and how businesses sell themselves. Some people have said that when you look at all of these changes together, they show a big break from the ideas of Fordism. They say that we are now living in a time that is best described as “post-Fordist.”

2. The term “Post-Fordism” was made popular by Michael Piore and Charles Sabel in their 1984 book “The Second Industrial Divide.” It refers to a new era of capitalist economic production in which flexibility and innovation are emphasised in order to meet market demands for different, customised products.

3. Even though the word is confusing, there have been a few clear trends in the world of work in the last few decades that seem to be a clear departure from Fordist practises. These include the “decentralisation of work into non-hierarchical team groups or group production,” the idea of “flexible production” and “mass customization,” the spread of “global production,” and the introduction of a “more flexible occupational structure.”

4. Production by a group: Group production, which uses collaborative work groups instead of assembly lines, is sometimes used with automation to reorganise work. The idea is to increase worker motivation by letting groups of workers work together in team production processes instead of making each worker do the same repetitive task all day, like putting screws in a car door handle.”Quality circles” (QCs), which are groups of five to twenty workers who meet regularly to study and fix production problems, are an example of group production. Workers in QCs get extra training, which gives them the technical information they need to talk about production issues. QCs were They are different from Taylorism’s ideas because they recognise that workers have the knowledge to help define and figure out how to do the jobs they do.Some of the good things that can happen to workers as a result of group production are that they can learn new skills, have more freedom, have less oversight from managers, and feel more pride in the goods and services they make. However, studies have also found a number of bad things that can happen as a result of group production. Even though direct management power is less obvious in a team process, there are other ways to keep an eye on things, such as having other team members watch over you. The American sociologist LAURIE did a study at the Japanese-owned Subaru-Isuzu car company in Indiana, USA, and found that workers were constantly pushed by their peers to be more productive. One of her coworkers told her that she was excited about the idea of working as a team at first, but then she realised that peer control was just a new way for management to try to work people to death. GRAHAM (1995) also found that Subaru-Isuzu used the group-production idea to fight against trade unions. Their theory was that if management and workers were on the same “team,” there shouldn’t be any problems between them. In other words, a good ‘team player’ doesn’t complain.

Sociologists have learned from studies like Graham’s that team-based production methods give workers the chance to do less monotonous work, but the power and control systems in the workplace stay the same.

1. Production that can change and mass customization: In the past few years, the use of computer-aided design and flexible production has been one of the most important changes to the way things are made around the world. While Taylorism and Fordism were good at making mass-produced goods, they were not good at making small orders or goods that were made just for one customer.

2.In his observations, Stanley Davis saw the rise of mass customization. The new technologies make it possible to make a lot of things for specific customers. On a production line, 5,000 shirts could be made every day. Now, you can make each shirt unique just as quickly and for the same price as you could buy 5,000 shirts that are all the same.

• Even though flexible production has been good for consumers and the business as a whole, it has not been all good for workers. Even though workers learn new skills and don’t have to do the same thing every day, flexible production can create a whole new set of stresses. This is because the complicated production process needs to be carefully coordinated and the results need to be made quickly. Laurie Grahama’s study of the Subaru-Isuzu plant showed that workers sometimes had to wait until the last minute for important parts that were needed to finish making the car. So, in order to keep up with the production plan, employees had to work longer and harder without getting any extra pay.

• People who are excited about mass tailoring say that it is nothing less than a new Industrial Revolution, which would be as important as the invention of mass production techniques in the last century. Sceptics, on the other hand, are quick to point out that mass customization as it is now only gives the appearance of choice. In fact, the Internet customer has no more choices than a customer who orders from a mail-order catalogue (Collins, 2000).

3. Production in the world: Changes in industrial production affect not only how things are made, but also where they are made, as we saw with the Barbie doll. During most of the 20th century, the most important businesses were big manufacturing companies that controlled both the making and selling of goods.In the last twenty or thirty years, however, another type of production that is controlled by big stores has become important. In retailer-dominated production, companies like the American retailer Wal-Mart, which was the second largest company in the world in 2000, buy goods from manufacturers, who then arrange for their products to be made by factories that are not owned by the manufacturer.Edna Bonacich and Richard Appelbaum, two American sociologists, found in 2000 that most clothing makers do not hire any garment workers at all. Instead, they use thousands of factories around the world to make their clothes, which they then sell in department shops and other stores.Bonacich and Appelbaum say that this kind of competition has led to a “race to the bottom” around the world, where retailers and manufacturers go wherever they can pay the lowest rates. As a result, a lot of the clothes we buy today were probably made in sweatshops by young people, probably teenage girls, who get paid enough to buy sports shoes that sell for tens or even hundreds of pounds.

Criticisms of post-Fordism:

One common criticism of post-Fordism is that post-Fordist researchers overstate how much Fordist practises have been left behind. What we are seeing is not a complete change, as proponents of post-Fordism would have us think. Instead, some new ideas are being added to traditional Fordist methods. Some people say that we are actually living in a time of neo-Fordism, which means that we are making changes to the standard Fordist methods (Wood 1989).

2. It has been said that the idea of a smooth, linear transition from Fordist to post-Fordist methods overstates the true nature of work at both ends. Anna Pollert argued in 1988 that Fordist methods were never as firmly established as some people would have us think. She also says it’s not true that the age of mass production is over and the age of total freedom has come. She says that mass production is still the norm in a lot of businesses, especially those that sell to consumers. Pollert says that economic creation has never used a single, standard method. Instead, it has always used a variety of methods.

Societies after the industrial age:

Daniel Bell, a sociologist, noticed in 1973 that a new kind of culture was coming into being. He talked about the most important changes that come with the rise of a POST-INDUSTRIAL SOCIETY, which is based on telephones and computers, and not just “big computers,” but also “computers on a chip.”

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There are six things about this new postindustrial society:

1. A service industry so big that most people work in it. 2. A huge amount of extra goods. 3. Even more trade between countries.

4. The normal person can buy more and different kinds of goods.

5. A flood of information

6. A global village where people from all over the world can talk, travel, and deal quickly.

Postindustrial societies are different because, in addition to the technology that goes with them, a large part of the working population works in service, sales, and administrative support jobs. The number of people working in management, professional, and similar jobs has grown by a huge amount. Education is getting more attention as a way to move up in society.

1. This has led to an opportunity: the dominance of intellectual technology based on mathematics and linguistics in the form of algorithms, programmes (software), models, and simulations; the creation of an electronically mediated global communication infrastructure, including broadband, cable, digital TV, optical fibre networks, fax, e-mail, and ISDN; and an economy that is not just defined by the production of goods and labor-saving devices.

2. Jobs in this knowledge-driven, information-based economy include computer programmers, expert writers, financial analysts, market analysts, and customer service reps. The biggest problem in a post-industrial society is people. This is because “the basic experience of each person’s life is his relationship with other people.” In a society that values information and relationships with other people, science and education are at the centre of things.

3. In terms of science, Bell talked about the growth and importance of science-based businesses, which use theoretical knowledge to make money. The businesses of the Industrial Revolution, like steel, cars, and phones, are very different from these ones. Most of these businesses were “founded or created by talented thinkers” who were not part of the scientific establishment.

4. Post-industrial businesses are directly based on what scientists have learned about how nature works and how they have used this knowledge to solve technological problems.

5. Education becomes important for getting around in an information culture, and it is seen as something that happens throughout a person’s life, not just at a certain time or place.

The changing nature of work in an industrial society.

Feminization of labour:

The globalisation of economic output and the spread of information technology are changing the jobs that most people do. As we talked about in Chapter 9, less and less people in industrial countries are working in blue collar jobs. Not as many people work in companies as they used to. In offices and service hubs like supermarkets and airports, new jobs have been made. Women are filling a lot of these new jobs.

Women and Work:

1. Most people in pre-industrial countries (and still many people in the developing world) did both work and housework. Production took place either in or near the home, and everyone in the family worked on the land or made things. Women often had a lot of power in the home because of how important they were to the economy, even though they weren’t allowed to be in politics or fight in wars. Many wives of workers and farmers kept business records, and widows often owned and ran businesses on their own.

A lot of this changed when modern industry made it possible for people to separate their work from their home. Most likely, the fact that production moved into factories with machines was the biggest single driver. Work was done at the speed of a machine by people hired especially for the tasks at hand. Over time, employers started to hire people instead of families.

3. As time went on and industry moved forward, there became a bigger difference between home and work. People started to believe that public and private life should be kept separate. Because men worked outside the home, they spent more time in public and got more involved in things like neighbourhood politics and the market. Women became associated with “domestic” ideals and were expected to do things like take care of children, keep the house clean, and cook food for the family. “A woman’s place is in the home” meant different things to different women at different levels of society. Rich women liked having maids, nurses, and other help around the house. The poorest women had the hardest time because they had to do housework and work in factories to help their husbands make more money.

4. Women of all groups worked outside the home at very low rates until the middle of the 20th century. Most of the women who worked were young and single. When they worked in factories or offices, their bosses often sent their wages straight to their parents. Once they got married, most of them left the job market and focused on their families.

The rise in economic activity by women

1. The number of women who work for pay has gone up more or less steadily over the last hundred years. The lack of people to work during the First World War was a big factor. During the war years, women did a lot of jobs that people used to think were only for men. When the men came back from the war, they did most of those jobs again, but the old routine had been broken.

2. The way men and women divide up work has changed a lot since the end of World War II.

3. The difference between how much men and women work has been getting smaller over the past few decades for a number of reasons. First, the tasks that have usually been associated with women and the “domestic sphere” have grown and changed. Since the birth rate has gone down and the average age at which women have their first child has gone up, many women now work before having children and then go back to work afterward. Due to smaller families, many women no longer spend as much time at home taking care of young children as they used to. A lot of housework can now be done by machine, which has also helped cut down on the time needed to keep the house in good shape. Dishwashers, vacuum cleaners, and washing machines that do the work for you have made housework easier.

4. There are also financial reasons why more and more women are going to work. Only a quarter of British families now look like the traditional nuclear family, with a man who works and provides for the family, a woman who stays home and takes care of the kids. More women are looking for paid work because of economic pressures on the home, such as the rise in male unemployment. Many families find that they need two incomes to live the way they want to live. Other changes in household organisation, such as a rise in single-mother households and the number of women who don’t have children or aren’t married, have also led to more women outside of traditional families going to work, either because they want to or because they have to. Also, new efforts to change welfare policies in both the U.S. and Britain have been made to help women, such as single mothers and married women with young children, get paid jobs.

5. Finally, it’s important to remember that many women have chosen to work because they want to feel fulfilled and because the women’s movement of the 1960s and 1970s pushed them to want equality. After getting the same rights as men in the law, many women have jumped at the chance to use these rights in their own lives. As we’ve already said, work is a big part of modern life, and having a job is almost always a must if you want to live on your own. In the last few decades, women have come a long way towards being on equal footing with men. Increasing economic activity has been a key part of this process (Crompton, 1997).

Gender and inequalities at work

Even though women and men are legally the same, there are still a lot of differences in the workplace.

1. Occupational segregation: Women have generally been more likely to work in low-paying, routine jobs. Many of these jobs are seen as “women’s work” because they are usually done by women. Most secretarial and loving jobs, like nursing, social work, and child care, are done by women, and these jobs are usually thought of as feminine. Occupational gender division is when men and women tend to work in different types of jobs based on what people think is “male” work and what is “female” work.

Concentration of part-time work: Even though more and more women work full-time jobs outside the home, a lot of them still work part-time jobs. In the last few decades, there have been a lot more opportunities for part-time work. This is partly because the service sector has grown and partly because of changes to the labour market that support flexible employment policies. People think that part-time jobs give workers a lot more freedom than full-time jobs. Because of this, women who are trying to balance work and home responsibilities often choose them. In many situations, this can be done successfully, and women who might not have worked before now do. But part-time work has some downsides, like low pay, not knowing if you’ll have a job next week, and few chances to move up.

3. The gap in wages: In Britain, the average pay for working women is much less than that of working men, though the gap has shrunk a bit over the past thirty years. Several things have led to these patterns. One important thing is that more women than ever before are going into higher-paying professional jobs. There are now just as many good jobs for young women as there are for young guys with the same qualifications. Still, this growth at the top of the job market has led to a rise in the number of women working part-time for low pay in the service sector, which is growing quickly. One of the main reasons why there is still a pay gap between men and women is that men and women tend to work in different fields. There are too many women in the more.

Changes in the domestic division of labour

One effect of more women going to work for pay is that some traditional family routines are changing. The “male breadwinner” model is no longer the norm. As women become more financially independent, they are in a better position to move out of defined roles at home if they choose to do so. Women’s traditional roles at home are changing a lot, both in terms of housework and making spending decisions. Many families seem to be moving towards more equal relationships, but women still do most of the housework.

2. Studies show that married women who work outside the home do less housework than other people, even though they almost always do most of the housework. The way they do things is, of course, quite different. They do more cleaning in the early evenings and for longer periods of time on the weekends than full-time housewives.

3. A study done by Warde and Hetherington in Manchester in 1993 found that young couples share housework more equally than older couples. The writers came to the conclusion that gender stereotypes are becoming less true over time. Young adults who grew up in homes where their parents tried to share household chores were more likely to do the same in their own lives.

4. Vogler and Pahl (1994) looked at a different part of the home division of labour: how families make agreements about money. Their study tried to find out if the rise in female work had made it easier for women to get money and make decisions about how to spend it. Through interviews with couples in six different British communities, they found that money was shared more fairly than it had been in the past, but that class problems were still a big part of it. Couples with more money tended to handle their “shared” finances together, and each person had a similar amount of access to money and power over how it was spent. The more a woman gives financially to the household, the more control she has over financial decisions.

5. In low-income families, women were often in charge of managing the day-to-day finances, but they weren’t always in charge of making big choices about budgeting and spending. In these cases, Vogler and Pahl noticed that women often kept their husbands from getting soma eight while they didn’t get any for themselves. In other words, it seemed like there was a disconnect between how much power women had over their money and how easy it was for them to get money.