Comments on: The future of work is consumption

By: deepa

deepa — Fri, 11 Mar 2016 16:03:09 +0000

Michael, thanks for that thoughtful comment. The "customer service" demand and consumer identities are still not as generalized across classes and domains in a place like India as they might be in the United States, I think. The reverence toward educators and education in general, for example, means that domains such as those are still comprised of fairly traditional guru-student and/or patron-client relationships. That said, changing expectations of how governance should happen, technologically mediated in forms of eGovernance, or how relationships with government agencies should be forged, or even how corruption should be addressed—as we saw in the protests over the Lokpal Bill in 2011, about which Aalok Khandekar and I have written—suggest clear parallels, yes. Although these are quite middle-class-specific, still. Workers in the Nokia case were largely returned to a state of being non-customers with the factory closure--and their recourse to leveraging political patronage to address their condition would appear to underscore their distance from the consumerist identities and modes of operation that had been so far within reach. Though of course it's also very much the case that the status of "consumer" and "customer" across classes delivers a qualitatively different sort of equalizing empowerment from what decades of reservations (affirmative action-type reforms) have attempted to, and that's an immensely attractive ideal that does not disappear just because a job does and purchasing power reduces. So, if I could claim to peer into the future somewhat :), I suspect there'll be other parallels that emerge for other classes before long.

By: Political Arrangements | Savage Minds

Political Arrangements | Savage Minds — Thu, 10 Mar 2016 15:01:05 +0000

[…] about work that stands out most, reading through enthusiastic future forecasts on the one hand and stories of worker distress after the Sriperumbudur Nokia manufacturing plant closure on the other, is how one context obscures the political arrangements that make work possible, […]

By: Michael Powell

Michael Powell — Thu, 10 Mar 2016 14:22:22 +0000

Deepa, interesting article here. Do you see this consumption/consumer-orientation toward work and employment impacting other dimensions or domains of life in this fieldsite? You make mention, for example, of “the presence of trousers, cutlery, camera phones, televisions, shops selling fruits (more expensive than vegetables), and these days “pencil pants” (the local equivalent of “skinny” jeans)” — all of which are consumer goods and products. I’m thinking about how one trend among younger workers in America seems to be an expectation that “customer service” be applied to other domains, such as education, and I hear professors complain about this a lot–“students” want to be treated like “customers”. Are there any parallels here?

By: Jim

Jim — Tue, 08 Mar 2016 20:47:44 +0000

Hi Deepa, yes that definitely helps! It’s a matter of perspective it would seem. The title makes much more sense in the light of your explanation. Look forward to the next post!

By: deepa

deepa — Tue, 08 Mar 2016 07:09:15 +0000

Jim, Thanks for the comment. While it’s true that much of this is reiteration of what we know about how capital works, two things: first, this is a short version of what’s soon to appear in the journal ephemera. Stay tuned and see that version for more perhaps? Also, second, I think what’s often not accounted for enough is that these old insights have very new value for the communities I’m writing about. We’re past it all, and tend to want to move beyond. We’re living in their far futures, so to speak, but it is still a future to come, and one that carries with it immense hope, a framework of possibility. Perhaps I wasn’t clear enough about it in an already overlong post, but for me that point is critical: critiques of what we know about capital already cannot so easily dismiss this fact, or try to replace it with revitalized ideas from the (largely failed) left, or try to deny what matters about this future to those who see it now as a sign of progress that must trickle down–the effects of it all on the biosphere notwithstanding. If we know it all already and yet can see its logics invariably playing out, what do we do? is somewhere the question I’m toying with. I’m also building toward an argument that’s developed more in the next post about the political infrastructures of such aspirational frameworks.. So all in a way of saying, there’s more to come — though you’ll have to tell me whether any of that satisfies, or not 🙂

By: Jim Kasper

Jim Kasper — Tue, 08 Mar 2016 02:47:58 +0000

Thanks for writing, Deepa. As I read this, though, I couldn’t help but feel that the title you chose is misleading: I felt it was less about the future of work than a reiteration of what we already know of MNC capitalism in the flesh. This is fine, but I was really hoping to glean some new, unique insights that I’d not considered before – work as consumerism, mainly! Am I missing something? Thanks for writing!