Gail Stewart wrote:
[snip]
> Brad, you say with respect to temp agencies
> > What if they were called labor-pimps?
>
> You make me like the term "flexwork agencies" even better.
[snip]
> While I find your metaphors distasteful
In this case I was indeed guilty of trying to present
something as being distasteful. Of course things are
as usual more complicated, and the notion of
lifetime "paternalistic" employment has been distastefully
likened to paternalistic marriage.
> there is a point I
> want to make. I think you mistake the nature of
> self-directed self-employment.
[snip]
> Their self-directed self-employment
> isn't the isolationist activity that you seem to have in
> mind: it often involves using a variety of services -
> information, networking, research
I could not agree more, and I thought about saying something
about networking, etc., but I figured that would make my posting
too long and rambling. Instead I came across as grossly
"one sided", at best....
> - that are not unlike
> those provided by temp agencies to workers seeking work. If,
> as Charles Brass suggests, the temp agencies were seen and
> saw themselves as working for the workers, this affinity
> would be clearer.
Wasn't the proposal for temp workers to join together
and establish self-managing *cooperatives*? Another great
idea. How to do it?
>
> My purpose in this rather prolonged engagement is of course
> to break up fixed perceptions (my own as much as others -- I
> learn as I write) in such a way as to make us more aware of
> our options.
As has been pointed out, some of us have more options than others.
Working temporarily at something for essentially sociological
research reasons is very different from being stuck there
for real. (I often think, e.g., of Gandhi's voluntary
poverty, and how he also volunteered his family to
enjoy it against their wishes, too....)
> It is our habitual ways of looking at work that
> are holding our habitual and increasingly unsatisfactory
> ways of work in place?
[snip]
Is the invisible hand really a Gestalt psychology
double-reading image (like the duck-rabbit or the
old hag-young girl pictures)? I'm all for
looking again and looking harder to find good
possibilities in the new global/e-economy. But
my hunch is that most opportunities for human
satisfaction in it will take the form of
the kind of things Erving Goffman studied: ways
individuals find to "work the system" (i.e.,
to cheat in ways that don't get caught).
+\brad mccormick
--
Let your light so shine before men,
that they may see your good works.... (Matt 5:16)
Prove all things; hold fast that which is good. (1 Thes 5:21)
<![%THINK;[SGML+APL]]> Brad McCormick, Ed.D. / [EMAIL PROTECTED]
914.238.0788 / 27 Poillon Rd, Chappaqua NY 10514-3403 USA
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