The Work of Methodologies: Seminar 2

7/30/2019 The Work of Methodologies: Seminar 2

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The Work of Methodologies:

Seminar 2John Schostak

[email protected]

http://mmu.academia.edu/JohnSchostak
mailto:[email protected]:[email protected]


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Work as a central concept of radical

research

Christophe Dejours reconceptualises Arendtslabour, work and action division of the keyhuman activities

Arendt: each activity hierarchically organised Labour meeting biological needs

Work using tools, creating a world of artifacts

Action political decision making about what kind ofworld to be created

Dejours: each activity included in work in arelation of equality

Work as a place for the aggregation of powers


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Reconceptualising work (Christophe

Dejours)

The accomplishment of work requires co-operationand the communication of points of view as to itsorganisation, the solution of problems, the purposesof the work

Thus there is a need for a space of discussion

This prefigures public space(democratic)

Work is a form of cooperative living togetherand

prefigures democratic practice

HOWEVER..


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Key theme: creating the good society

but how defined? Creating the public through our powers of

work

Triangulation of voices involved in co-working, which leads to

Legitimisation of forms of organisation, validity and generalisation ofwhat is produced as acts that are characterisable as

Co-relationist (Meillasoux) or as intersubjectivitly shared worlds ofconsciousness (Husserl)

Crossroads of liberalism creates a point of crisis

Inter-view (gaps appear in the view of the real) Intentional networks

Intentionality: directedness towards .. Inscribing Architectures of the social, to produce

The real(s) of social life as a stable structure?


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Anti-democratic strategies managing

theworkof the real Prescribed organisation ofwork

Management by objectives, performance indicators,algorithms, schedules of procedures, measurement ofoutcomes .. new managerialism in the UK public sector

Realities of work precarity and resistance Filling in the gaps taking on responsibility at own risk

Overcoming problems

Threat of the work to rule: manifesting realities of work

The gap between prescription and reality is typically a

source of pain, suffering as work becomes intensified,risky, precarious, results in

The Phantom Public (Lippmann 1927); BehaviouralInsight Unit (UK)


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Body techniques & education

In all these elements of the art of using the human body, the facts ofeducation were dominant. The notion of education could be superimposedon that of imitation. For there are particular children with very strongintuitive faculties, others with weak ones, but all of them go through thesame education, such that we can understand the continuity of the

concatenations. What takes place is prestigious imitation. The child, theadult, imitates actions which have succeeded and which he has seensuccessfully performed by people in whom he has confidence and whohave authority over him. The action is imposed from without, from above,even if it is an exclusively biological action, involving his body. Theindividual borrows the series of movements which constitute it from the

action executed in front of him or with him by others.(Mauss 1973 :73)


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The ideal structure (closed)

From: Schostak, J.F. (2002) Understanding, Designing and Conducting QualitativeResearch in Education. Framing the Project. Open University Press


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The war of the Private and the Public

Neoliberalism dominance of the private Banality of evil Everyday toleration of the intolerable

Crisis of the public Destruction of collective action

Destruction of community under the name of

Big Society

The phantom public (Lippmann 1927)

Theres class warfare, all rightMr Buffett said, but its myclass, the rich class, thats making war, and were winning.

Warren Buffett, was at the time, 3rd richest person in the world

The critical focus is on the role of work in society, inparticular, the dirty work of hard decision makers, machomanagement.


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Co-option of Research and Theory

Economic

Market ideology (greed, competition)

Evolutionary, survival of the fittest

Political

Friend-enemy: Capitalism, Socialism

Enemy within

Socio-psychological

Public relations and the manufacture of consent


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When George Osborne linked the sickening case of Mick Philpott

now jailed for the manslaughter of six of his own children in a

house fire he started to the state of Britain's benefits system, he

knew what he was doing. A student of US politics, he wasdeploying a favoured technique of the American right, honed

during the decades-long culture wars. Dip your hands in the slime

of an episode that stirs revulsion and smear it all over your

opponent. In the role ofWillie Horton the rapist notoriouslyused by Bush the elder to discredit Michael Dukakis enter

Mick Philpott. Message: if you hate him and what he did, then you

ought to hate the "benefits culture" and the Labour party that

supports it.

(Freedland 2013; Guardian,

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/apr/05/labour-

draw-sting-welfare-or-lose-2015 )
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Io9KMSSEZ0Yhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Io9KMSSEZ0Y


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Evaluation and the plurality of

Pictures in the mind

Lippmann advocated the manufacture of consentby working on peoples pictures of the world thatthey held in their heads. Drawing on this, Bernays

believed:

Ours must be a leadership democracy administeredby the intelligent minority who know how to

regiment and guide the masses.

(Bernays 1928: 127)


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Dirty work of management

Making hard decisions Cutting corners

Pressuring workers

Making redundancies/lay-offs

Requiring:

Virility (macho management in taking hard desions) notcourage

Toleration of the intolerable Thus a particular kind of subejctivity, subjugation and becoming a

subject-of, is created

What is the dirty work of research, theory and theprofessional? Creating the conditions for predictablebehaviour


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The real structure: a stealth architecture

From: Schostak, J.F. (2002) Understanding, Designing and Conducting Qualitative

Research in Education. Framing the Project. Open University Press

Competing interest

groups

Alternative

practices

Different

resourcing

Unpredictable

outcomes


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Architecture of the social

The Work of Methodologies: Seminar 2

Documents