Workers and Narratives of Survival in Europe

Trenchju

Description

Workers and Narratives of Survival in Europe explores the growing problem of job uncertainty in Europe at the end of the twentieth century. The management of professional precariousness is reconsidered against the backdrop of far-reaching social, economic, and political changes in Europe in recent decades, including: the instability of the traditional family; the emergence of new forms of parenthood; globalization of the economic sphere; attempts to impose a uniform pattern of culture; and the breakdown of borders with former Communist countries. The contributors utilize extensive field studies in both Western and Central Europe to understand the meaning of professional uncertainty, as perceived by its victims, and the strategies they develop to face it.

Acknowledgments

Introduction
Angela Procoli

Part I. Identity and the Experience of Work

1. The Hazards of Overemployment: What Do Chief Executives and Housewives Have in Common?
Sandra Wallman

2. Secret Enterprise: Market Activities among London Sex Workers
Sophie Day

3. The Political Economy of Affects: Community, Friendship, and Family in the Organization of a Spanish Economic Region
Susana Narotzky

Part II. Liminality and the Narrative of Survival

4. Manufacturing the New Man: Professional Training in France—Life Stories and the Reshaping of Identities
Angela Procoli

5. Passages to No-Man’s-Land: Connecting Work, Community, and Masculinity in the South Wales Coalfield
Richard-Michael Diedrich

6. Unemployed and Hard Workers: Entrepreneurial Moralities between "Shadow" and "Sunlight" in Naples
Italo Pardo

Part III. Continuity or Discontinuity with the Past?

7. Productivity and the Person: From Socialist Competition to Capitalist Mission in Eastern Europe
Birgit Müller

8. Redefining Work in a Local Community in Poland: "Transformation" and Class, Culture, and Work
Michal Buchowski

9. Working in the West: Managing Eastern Histories at the German Labor Market—The Case of Russian German Immigrants
Regina Römhild

Contributors

Index

Sujets

• History of Europe
• Europe

Informations

• Publié par: State University of New York Press
• Date de parution: 01 février 2012
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780791485118
• Langue: English

Extrait

Workers and Narratives of Survival in Europe

The Management of Precariousness at the End of the Twentieth Century

Angela Procoli

Workers and Narratives of Survival in Europe

SUNY series in the Anthropology of Work

June C. Nash, editor

Workers and Narratives of Survival in Europe

The Management of Precariousness at the End of the Twentieth Century

Edited by Angela Procoli

S T A T E U O FN I V E R S I T Y N E W Y O R K P R E S S

Published by State University of New York Press

© 2004 State University of New York

All rights reserved

Printed in the United States of America

No part of this book may be used in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means including electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.

For information, address State University of New York Press, State University Plaza, Albany, NY 12246

Production by Kelli Williams Marketing by Micheal Campochiaro

Library of Congress CataloginginPublication Data

Workers and narratives of survival in Europe : the management of precariousness at the end of the twentieth century / edited by Angela Procoli. p. cm — (SUNY series in the sociology of work) Revised versions of papers presented at the fifth and sixth meetings of the European Association of Social Anthropologist (EASA), held respectively in FrankfurtamMain, Germany, in Sept. 1998 and in Krakow, Poland, in July 2000. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0791460851 (alk. paper) 1. Structural unemployment—Europe. 2. Labor market—Europe. 3. Industries—Social aspects—Europe. 4. Europe—Economic conditions—1945– I. Procoli, Angela. II. European Association of Social Anthropologists. III. Series.

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Acknowledgments

Introduction Angela Procoli

Contents

Part I. Identity and the Experience of Work

1. The Hazards of Overemployment: What Do Chief Executives and Housewives Have in Common? Sandra Wallman

vii

1

15

2. Secret Enterprise: Market Activities among London Sex Workers 31 Sophie Day

3. The Political Economy of Affects: Community, Friendship, and Family in the Organization of a Spanish Economic Region Susana Narotzky

Part II. Liminality and the Narrative of Survival

57

4. Manufacturing the New Man: Professional Training in France— Life Stories and the Reshaping of Identities 83 Angela Procoli

5. Passages to No-Man’s-Land: Connecting Work, Community, and Masculinity in the South Wales Coalfield 101 Richard-Michael Diedrich

6. Unemployed and Hard Workers: Entrepreneurial Moralities between “Shadow” and “Sunlight” in Naples Italo Pardo

v

121

vi

Contents

Part III. Continuity or Discontinuity with the Past?

7. Productivity and the Person: From Socialist Competition to Capitalist Mission in Eastern Europe Birgit Müller

8. Redefining Work in a Local Community in Poland: “Transformation” and Class, Culture, and Work Michal Buchowski

9. Working in the West: Managing Eastern Histories at the German Labor Market—The Case of Russian German Immigrants Regina Römhild

Contributors

Index

149

173

197

217

221

Acknowledgments

Most of the chapters in this volume are revised versions of papers read at the fifth and sixth meetings of the European Association of Social An- thropologists (EASA), held respectively in Frankfurt-am-Main, Germany, in September 1998 and in Krakow, Poland, in July 2000. Some of them were presented in the two workshops I convened on these occasions. The general topics of the two meetings were, respectively, “The End of Work, Illusion or Reality, Nightmare or New Utopia: What Do Anthropologists Have to Say About It?” and “Extreme Situations: Case Studies in Survival.” Susana Narotzky, Sophie Day, and Italo Pardo could not attend the EASA conferences but they have prepared chapters for this collec- tion that significantly enhance its range and value. I would also like to thank those in attendance who made a significant contribution to our discussions, although they have not written chapters for this volume. I am also grateful to the Wenner-Green and the Deutsch Forschung Gesellschaft foundations and to the Laboratory of Social Anthropology in Paris for financially supporting my two workshops. My thanks to the organizers of the EASA meetings, to the EASA ed- itorial board, and, particularly, to Marilyn Strathern for her excellent advice. I am grateful to Jocelyne de Vir y and to my husband François Rochet—had it not been for their assistance, I would never have dared to attempt to write this book in English.

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Introduction A P NGELA ROCOLI

The purpose of this book is to describe, from an anthropological stand- point, how work has evolved in contemporary European society. Particu- lar stress will be placed on the trend to greater precariousness, which has emerged in “affluent” Europe (i.e., the north and center of the commu- nity) against a backdrop of radical changes involving the world of work and employment: the economic crises of the 1970s and 1980s; the tech- nological revolution involving manufacturing activities, which is driving millions of jobs to redundancy; globalization, at an ever-increasing pace of financial services, production, markets, strategies, and firms; changes have occurred in the pattern of society (decline of the working class, weakening of the middle class, a higher proportion of older people). The crisis in the welfare state (the United Kingdom was the first country to experience it) has brought about a radical change in the social land- scape of western Europe. Full employment polices have been dropped; unemployment benefits have been reduced. As employment becomes more precarious and as layoffs are on the rise, newfangled forms of work appear (part-time, limited intime, interim, subcontracting on a large scale, and so forth) so that firms can meet the demands of free trade and the logic of competitiveness, cutting down on production and manpower costs (Gruppo di Lisbona 1995). As work undergoes such changes and becomes a “rarer commodity,” the following issue emerges in the debate among intellectuals: Is work, up to now a core value in Western society, about to fade from the scene? As in any time of crisis, a feeling that the future is uncertain fosters the emer- gence of utopias. Thus, in the mid-1990s the eschatological concept of the “end of work” finds its way to a number of media-friendly philosophical and sociological essays. This blooming utopian literature forecasts a soci- ety in which man would be freed from the slavery of work, as Karl Marx imagined (Rifkin 1995). It mirrors the so-called global economic model

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