Working and Educating for Life

Feminist and International Perspectives on Adult Education

Mechthild Hart

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9780429855375
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Pedagogía
• Subtopic: Educación de adultos

Originally published in 1992, this book presents an alternative view of adult education. The author moves the analysis from the usual focus in adult education literature on skills and skill deficits, and concentrates instead on the educational potential of work itself. By linking issues of gender and the developing world, an alternative concept of work and productivity is formulated, serving as the basis for new approaches and paradigms in adult education. The book draws on two decades of studying critical social, political and economic, educational and feminist theory and examines the link between the international and sexual division of labour, and at the relationship between work, nature and technology.

Part I

SEXUAL AND INTERNATIONAL DIVISION OF LABOUR

1
THE NEW INTERNATIONAL DIVISION OF LABOUR

INTERNATIONAL ECONOMIC REORGANIZATION

The so-called ‘third technological revolution’ came about within the context of a reorganization of the international division of labour.¹ Beginning in the late 1960s, and becoming more apparent in the 1970s, the post World War II period of expansion was coming to an end (Frank 1983: 188). Safa (1986: 63) lists six major economic conditions that led to a reorganization of the old international division of labour:

(1) full employment, particularly during the economic boom of the 1960s; (2) a dwindling supply of immigrant labour, particularly after the passage of the Immigration Act of 1965, which greatly limited the admission of unskilled immigrants; (3) high wages, brought on by a scarcity of labor and the increasing strength of unions and of the working class in general - workers’ demands for fringe benefits such as paid vacations, sick leave, and medical insurance drove labor costs even higher; (4) growth of the welfare state, which provided members of the reserve labor force, particularly women, with an alternative to poorly paid, manual labor [Santa Cruz Collective on Labor Migration 1978]; (5) technological changes, which facilitated the development of a cheaper and faster international cargo transportation system; and (6) the de-skilling of work (or the ‘massification of labor’) through relatively simple stages, each performed by a different operator.

In the industrialized countries a decline in investment and the rate of profit was met with a variety of deflationary measures aimed at lowering the costs of production. These monetary austerity policies led to a reduction of real wages (especially in the US and in Great Britain), and a deterioration of the welfare state (Frank 1983: 190). Another major strategy - which is at the core of the New International division of Labor (NIDL) - was the promotion of ‘export-led growth’, a new model worked out by the OECD (Mies 1986: 113, Frank 1983: 190). Particularly labour-intensive industries (textiles and garments, shoes, toys, electronics) moved their production to Third World countries offering ‘cheap labour’, but also a number of other benefits like ‘tax-holidays’ (especially in the Export Processing Zones), as well as ready-made infrastructures including:

ports, airports, railways, cheap electricity, cheap water, and free land, among other things, and often they [national governments] even build the factory buildings and lend international capital the money or guarantee private loans to them in order to set up production in their countries to export to the world market — in competition with other countries that bid to do the same.

(Frank 1983: 191)²

‘Run-away shops’ exported jobs especially to small countries (which had fewer possibilities for import substitution, or small, limited domestic markets) but also to larger countries like Mexico (Safa 1986: 62-3).

Although these new world market factories constitute a partial industrialization of the countries of the Third World they offer them little control. As Fernandez-Kelly (1983: 100) pointed out, these plants are not ‘factories in the traditional sense of the term. Rather they are departments belonging to large corporations which (because of the fluidity of contemporary investments), can be relocated’. These global factories constitute a transfer of stages of production where raw material and unfinished parts are shipped to Third World countries where the products are assembled and then exported. Aside from the multinationally owned global factories of the export-processing zones, similar arrangements of production for export in Third World countries come in the form of joint ventures with nationally owned subcontracting firms, and foreign owned subsidiaries and branches. Furthermore, the term ‘run-away shop’ directly refers to the current high mobility of capital which would be impossible without the new information and communication technologies (Bluestone and Harrison 1982). As Bluestone described it in an interview with Working Papers, labour-saving technology may be less threatening to working people than the new ‘technology of management’, i.e. ‘the revolution in the technology of transportation and communications, and its consequences for the mobility of capital’ (‘An interview with Bennett Harrison and Barry Bluestone’ 1983: 43). Harrison and Bluestone are here referring to a different but closely related phenomenon: parallel production or the production ‘of identical products in plants in different locations’ (Haas 1985: 19). Ford’s ‘world cars’ strategy, for instance, combines parallel production with ‘outsourcing’ or ‘subcontracting to multiple suppliers’: ‘The Ford Escort uses parts, plants and assembly operations in 15 countries outside of the US including Austria, Belgium, Canada, England, France, Italy, Japan, Northern Ireland, Spain and West Germany.’ (Haas 1985: 19)

In cases like these, advanced technology provides a mechanism for keeping wages low, ‘undermining union leverage by maximizing its ability to pit workers in different factories against each other and minimizing its vulnerability to strikes’ (Haas 1985: 19).

‘Capital mobility’ refers not only to a world-wide fragmentation of the production process (including the dispersion of location and stages of production), but also to the increasing orientation of large corporations, particularly conglomerates, towards short-term fiscal rather than long-term production decisions. For instance, businesses whose rate of profit falls below an acceptable ‘hurdle rate’ are ‘traded in’ instead of being reinvested with capital as an effort to improve productivity (Haas 1985: 22). US Steel is the most prominent example of an entire branch of manufacture being disinvested because ‘US Steel is not in the business of making steel. It is in the business of making money’ (Chairman Roderick to Business Week, quoted in Haas 1985: 24; see also Bluestone and Harrison 1988).

However, even purely fiscal manouvres and decisions ultimately depend on something being produced somewhere - and hopefully under the most cost-saving conditions. Thus, whether parallel production, outsourcing, or the establishment of free trade zones, the ultimate motive is to find labour which is as cheap as possible. Only this constant search for cheap labour can explain the frequent shifts and relocations that continue to occur, where US companies may even ‘come home’ again once products are developed enough to ‘lend themselves to cost-saving automation’ as reported in the Chicago Tribune, (22 November 1987). As the same article states, ‘routine, labor-intensive assembly continues to be pulled abroad’.

The effects of the new international division of labour on the majority of the working population seems to be twofold: the spatial division of labour has seriously undermined the bargaining power of the traditional industrial working class in the industrialized countries, i.e. has generally ‘cheapened’ wage labour. A concomitant phenomenon is the growing importance of the so-called informal sector of the economy (see Ferman et al. 1987). Secondly, the new international division of labour ‘has included a sharp re-constitution of gender for certain ages and social classes in specific countries [Froebel, Heinrichs and Kreye, 1980]’ (Momsen and Town-send, 1987: 79). This reconstitution of gender takes on seemingly contradictory forms: on the one hand women are heavily drawn into paid employment, especially in the global factories of transnational capital (thus creating an entirely new industrial female work force), on the other hand women are pushed out of traditional productive functions and increasingly deprived of any access to cash. In the following, all these trends will be discussed from the perspective of underlying unifying dynamics provided by the mechanisms of the world market into which all kinds and forms of work and work relations are increasingly integrated.

HOUSEWIFIZATION OF LABOUR

A group of West German sociologists at the Bielefeld Center for Sociology of Development uses the term ‘housewifization’ of labour to draw attention to the changes in the nature of all work relations (male as well as female), and to the fact that behind all these changes lies a systematic utilization of the sexual division of labour to cheapen both male and female labour.³ As I shall discuss below, this also means that despite the continuing impoverishment of growing numbers of people all over the world, the forms of labour as well as exploitation that comprise survival production are nevertheless distinctly different for men and women.

The particular achievement of the theories and analyses represented by the ‘housewifization thesis’ lies in the deliberate attempt to see trends and phenomena in their relation to each other, i.e. to see the structural and historical links between First and Third World, paid and unpaid work, market and non-market production, men and women, Black and White. Consequently, when seen in relation to each other the common ground of these varied phenomena becomes visible: their integration into a ‘world capitalist system’ (Wallerstein 1974) which subjects them to the same underlying dynamics. True to this dialectical method of analysis, the characterization of femalized labour is therefore seen less in terms of specific tasks or kinds of labour, but in terms of work relations. Thus, the housewife is considered above all a structural category, making it possible to see the underlying organizing principle of the (capitalist) sexual division of labour behind male labour as much as behind female labour although both retain fundamental differences.

Furthermore, when seen within the overall context of political, economic, and social theory, the housewifization thesis overcomes the limitations and theoretical shortcomings of mainstream as well as Marxist analyses. In so-called ‘general’ social science, discussions of female labour, or the sexual division of labour, are almost entirely absent The exceptions are only proving the rule. Apart from feminist scholars who are by definition outside the main stream, there have been a handful of writers who specialize in women’s work as a separate issue deserving special attention but not representing the general case. In most cases, however, the category ‘women’ suffers from theoretical-analytical neglect.⁴

Marxist analyses of capitalism, especially of capitalist exploitation exclusively focus on the waged worker and thus consider wage labour the only kind that is exploited under capitalism (and therefore worthy of analysis). However, the Bielefeld theorists give detailed analyses and descriptions of major trends in industrialized and underdeveloped countries which reveal that it is the housewife and not the wage labourer who is the paradigm of exploitation under capitalism (see the contributions in Mies, Bennholdt-Thomsen and von Werlhof 1988).

Earlier I noted the rapid growth of so-called ‘precarious work relations’ in the industrialized nations. This phenomenon is frequently although inadequately called the growth of the ‘informal sector’. In underdeveloped countries a similar phenomenon is usually referred to as ‘marginalization’. In the most general terms marginalization refers to the overall worsening of life conditions of large and growing numbers of people, i.e. to conditions of poverty, ill health, unemployment, etc. The term generally does not refer to work although in reality poverty or unemployment signify a wide range of work activities. These may include illegal labour, contract-based labour, homework, credit-based production, migrant, seasonal, temporary, and part-time labour as well as small trade and other forms of self-employment. To this we have to add subsistence labour and housework. All these activities are precarious in the sense of being unprotected by contracts or legal regulations, highly unstable, characterized by hazardous work conditions, and, above all, by their minimal or non-existent cash value.

Although ‘descriptively telling’, the concepts of the informal sector and of marginalization have ‘little explanatory value’ (Momsen and Townsend 1987: 56). The observation that many of these forms mentioned above are non-waged carries more promise, although it also misses important dimensions of informal labour activities (see Smith 1984). The summary term ‘non-waged labour’ is unable to explain, for instance, the mechanisms underlying the general trend towards marginalization of all labour, including wage labour. The characteristics of certain kinds of wage labour are often similar to certain kinds of non-waged labour precisely because of the same underlying dynamics (see below).

Let us first consider ‘normal’ wage labour which traditionally has been associated with good pay (or a family wage), a labour contract, union organization, stability, promotional opportunities, and a number of legally regulated protections. Historically, the prototype of the wage earner (the proletarian in Marxist, the middle class family man in mainstream sociologist literature) has been classified as ‘free’ in a double sense: he is free from the means of production and therefore free to sell his labour power on the market. Secondly, as a legal person or free subject he can freely enter a labour contract with the owner of the means of production.

The typical wage earner is of course the result of a prolonged and multi-layered historical process, including the struggles of the workers themselves for the freedom to vote (i.e. to become full legal citizens), to form trade unions, to be paid a family wage, to have working conditions which comply with government regulations, and, finally, to receive a number of benefits such as social security, unemployment benefits or health insurance. These are all ingredients of conventional assumptions about a decent working life and modern standards of living. Although they are typical for a numerically rather small group of mostly white and mostly male workers in industrialized countries, they have traditionally been taken as the norm, as representing the essence of capitalism or the free enterprise system. The creation and spread of such waged work conditions has therefore also been the traditional concern behind Third World development efforts.

In contrast with normal wage labour, abnormal or marginal wage labour has no job stability or security, no union support, no promotional opportunities, no benefits, no access to training and education. Instead of being stable, long-term and legally or contractually protected, abnormal or informal labour activities are frequently illegal, never stable, with wages paid below subsistence minimum, and often ‘unfree’ in a double sense: the workers are often not free from the means of production (e.g. the homeworker knitting on her own knitting machine, the peasant with her/his own little plot), nor free in the sense of entering a labour contract as the latter is replaced by forms of direct or indirect coercion. In the US, the most prominent examples of this type of work can be found in the sweatshops of the garment industry (see New York Times, 16 November 1987) where many undocumented workers are employed, the conditions of agricultural migrant labour, but also in programmes like ‘workfare’ (see Kuttner and Freeman 1982).

Informal labour is the counterpart of formal or normal wage labour just as the housewife is the counterpart of the male breadwinner. The formal economy has always had an informal underside. It is one of the major theoretical breakthroughs of the ‘Bielefeld approach’ to see housewife and proletarian, unpaid subsistence worker and industrial wage labourer as the two extreme poles on a continuum of forms of work under capitalism. Both, free wage labour as well as the many different forms of unfree and un-remunerated labour are recognized as ‘pillars’ of capitalism (von Werlhof 1988a). In other words, the (in the classic sense) free wage labourer is no longer considered the normal base line from which all other forms of labour and production must inevitably be classified as abnormal or deviant, not ‘really’ capitalist, perhaps ‘precapitalist,’ or ‘not-yet’ capitalist.

As the term ‘housewifization’ indicates, the labour and work relations of the housewife are considered exemplary, or prototypes for all those work relations that cannot be subsumed under the normal case. According to the Bielefeld theorists, the housewife becomes an analytically important category when both, the formal characteristics of housework as well as the housewife relation (or the work relation within whose parameters housework takes place) are considered prototypes of unfree labour under capitalism. This means, among other things, that housewifization can affect men’s as well as women’s labour.

CAPITALIST UNFREE LABOUR

In what sense is housework unfree labour, and in what sense is it the prototype of capitalist unfree labour? First of all childbirth and the raising of children can be considered the most importan...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Original Title Page
• Original Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction: Adult Education and the Future of Work
• Part I Sexual and international division of labour
• Part II The divided curriculum: careers and jobs
• Part III Work and the relationship to nature
• Part IV Skills and knowledge
• Part V Working and educating for life
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index