Skill saturation: Rationalization and post-industrial work

Theory and Society

Volumn 30, Issue 3, 2001, Pages 363-396

  Aneesh, A ^a  

^a RUTGERS UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 0035538796     PISSN: 03042421     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1023/A:1017567412100     Document Type: Review

References (70)

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30. Another important issue that could not be discussed in this article is gender and its relation to skill transformations, as demonstrated by a vast literature on gender and technology. I did not think it possible - within the framework of this study - to do justice to the gender component of information technologies, which requires another set of arguments and literature review.
31. This statement relates to the central concern of the critical theorists of the Frankfurt School, which may be expressed as the critique of the domination of instrumental reason in modern life, as contained in the School's earlier works Dialectic of Enlightenment. The School's early thinkers, viz., Max Horkheimer, Theodor Adorno, and Herbert Marcuse, for instance, agreed with Max Weber that the emergence of instrumental reason must be traced to pre-capitalistic ideas and modes of life, that the advance of instrumental reason led to disenchantment (particularly after Enlightenment) and to the undermining of traditional world views. But they adopted a Marxist approach to show how capitalism provided an impetus to the further development of instrumental reason.
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43. A comparison with Michael Burawoy's (1979) critique of the labor process as a shop floor game can be made here. Explaining his idea of manufacturing consent, Burawoy notes that the workers are first compelled to play the game; then they ironically proceed to defend its rules. In the case above, however, the game has a narrower context, as it was not developed or encouraged by the establishment.
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