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The Jobless Future Sci-Tech and the Dogma of Work Stanley Aronowitz and William DiFazio |
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Essential reading for those seeking solutions to the new jobless economy. "Jobs jobs jobs!" went the cry during the 1992 presidential election. If the slogan seems empty now, there is good reason, as the authors illustrate. The "jobless recovery" we're seeing today is no temporary hitch on the way to good times; it is, Stanley Aronowitz and William DiFazio contend, simply part of a profound shift in the world economy. The Jobless Future challenges beliefs in the utopian promise of a knowledge-based, high-technology economy. Reviewing a vast body of encouraging literature about the postindustrial age, Aronowitz and DiFazio conclude that neither theory, history, nor contemporary evidence warrants optimism about a technological economic order. Instead, they demonstrate the shift toward a massive displacement of employees at all levels and a large-scale degradation of the labor force. As they clearly chart a major change in the nature, scope, and amount of paid work, the authors suggest that notions of justice and the good life based on full employment must change radically as well. They close by proposing alternatives to our dying job culture that might help us sustain ourselves and our well-being in a science- and technology-based economic future. One alternative discussed is reducing the work day to fewer hours without reducing pay. "Imagine a Brave New Work World in which unemployment is so rampant that more than a third of the adult population can't find a job and millions of others have stopped looking. Another third works only part-time, or at temporary or dead-end jobs. Meanwhile, the number of those still holding full-time positions steadily diminishes, their wages depressed because of the premium placed simply on having a job. 'People need to start thinking about a jobless future,' insist [Aronowitz and DeFazio]. The authors attribute rising unemployment to economic stagnation coupled with revolutionary technological change that has fostered workplace trends such as downsizing, re-engineering, with part-time jobs, temporary jobs and job-sharing replacing full-time work." —Washington Post "Looks beyond the shadow play of welfare politics to the real source of that anxiety-the modern workplace. Aronowitz and DiFazio are quite right to look beyond the dismal realities of today's workplace and envision a society that uses the fruits of technology to abolish-or at least diminish-what the left used to call wage slavery." —The Nation “The Jobless Future is an energetic and intellectually stimulating book.The book seeks to build bridges among activists, and it makes an impressive case for reinvigorating class analysis within critical theory and social movements. The Jobless Future makes us reconsider this rationale and forces us to conceive of a world with a limited number of jobs. As that shift occurs, appropriate changes in economic development, housing land use, and transportation policy must follow.” —Journal of the American Planning Association “In this thoroughly researched and very readable volume, Aronowitz and DiFazio take the reader from present popular constructions of the relationships between science, technology, and work to their picture of a more socially just economic existence. For teachers who believe that teaching is more than content and schedules, and who wish to develop stronger connections between subject matter and their students’ aspirations for the future, The Jobless Future is an essential read. For educators interested in how education is linked to jobs from a point of view outside of the current hegemonic socioeconomic frame of reference found in the popular press, Aronowitz and DiFazio propose an alternative framework for understanding our positions as educators in relation to work.” —Harvard Educational Review “Stanley Aronowitz and William DiFazio, offer a dazzling integration of cultural critique and political economy that draws upon both their original ethnographies of computer aided design and laboratory science, and a keen grasp of the sociologies of science, work, politics, film, education, stratification and social movements. Both a wakeup call from the slumber of anxiety, and an invitation to a different vision than those of exclusion and apocalypse that haunt the imagination at the end of the century. The book is essential reading for those of the left, as well as those who are not yet there. The text provides a comprehensive view of contemporary society, and in its pedagogical, political and organizational richness, a crucial discursive link between the classroom, policy debates and social movements.” —Socialism and Democracy “The heart of The Jobless Future is about changes resulting from technological innovation in the workplace. Surveying this economic terrain, Aronowitz and DiFazio reach a provocative conclusion: Paid work can no longer viably remain the defining activity of human existence. The chapter on teaching should be required reading for all graduate students contemplating an academic career. Aronowitz and DiFazio remind us that politics as rational discourse can exist only with social and economic emancipation. At the same time, by radically redefining the nature of work, they challenge us to consider a fresh approach toward a more just future.” —Contemporary Sociology “In the end, the value lies not in their proposed solutions, but in their brilliant, systematic exposition of the cataclysmic economic changes underway in society.” —Survival News “Aronowitz and DiFazio’s argument for a jobless future is convincing. It’s recommended reading for those trying to get a handle on the changing workplace and its social fall-out.” —Otherwise “Aronowitz and DiFazio dismiss the lingering expectation that the high-tech era will ultimately provide more employment.” —The New Leader “The Jobless Future is compelling reading for educators who are charged with preparing students for their journeys into a confusing job market. It cautions us to broaden the goals and objectives of our program designs, to study economic trends with greater diligence and to think more thoughtfully before supplying pat answers to our students.” —New York State Tech Prep News “These books are important contributions to our understanding of the great forces at work in the new global economy. Trade unionists, environmentalists and anyone else engaged in social movements should buy, bundle, pass around and discuss these books. Together, they speak to the activist and the intellectual in every serious social justice advocate.” —Environmental Action “With the common sense of the common man and woman, Aronowitz and DiFazio find that high technology and its consequent automation make life worse for the worker, not better.” —San Diego Review “Aronowitz and DiFazio’s argument for a jobless future is convincing. It’s recommended reading for those trying to get a handle on the changing workplace and its social fall-out.” —CPU: Working in the Computer Industry Stanley Aronowitz is professor of sociology at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. His books include Science as Power, Paradigm Lost, The Crisis of Historical Materialism, and Postmodern Education. William DiFazio is professor of sociology at St. John's University 408 pages | 6 x 9 | 1995 |
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$26.00 Paper