马克思劳动和劳动价值论的现代阐释——兼论科技工作和经营管理是劳动的重要形式

马克思关于劳动和劳动价值论面临着一系列的挑战。我们今天所处的时代与马克思建立劳动和劳动价值论基本理论的时代有着很大的不同。在社会主义市场经济条件下,面对知识经济和经济全球化趋势,深化对劳动和劳动价值论的认识以及正视科技工作和经营管理是劳动的重要形式是时代的需要。     

解释的递进:中国马克思主义哲学解释“实践”的几种模式

在社会理论意义上,以“劳动”作为“实践”是中国马克思主义哲学实践观的历史选择和基本看法。生活世界理论和生存—实践论开始意识到其中的矛盾张力,但仍致力于弥合。而认识论意义上把“实践”解释为反教条的经验累积论在中国也根深蒂固。着重强调人与人关系(而非原来的人与自然关系)并凸现自由、伦理、人文、审美等价值维度的“实践”日益受到重视。但从人人关系维度看,“实践”内含的各种张力、矛盾、复杂、多元、异质等都凸现出来,使实践智慧论和实践自悖谬论成为日益受关注的问题,理论与实践统一、知—信—行的统一开始受到反思,而实践和生存的内在反讽性或许更凸现了哲学实践观的复杂内涵,以及区分不同层次的必要性。     

Labour and international accounting standards: A question of social justice

As the international guardian of social justice, the ILO is witnessing a global revolution in accounting, which has culminated in international accounting standards (IAS-IFRS). Previously, accounting measured the economy in relation to the capacities and responsibilities of workers and their employers. Today, the exact opposite is the case: the IAS-IFRS no longer measure work and enterprises, referring instead to the abstract concept of a cybernetic entity capable of constant restructuring, at the cost of unprecedented inequality. The author points to the incoherence of this system and to the need to restore the full carrying value of labour.     

Freedom of association in the Bangladeshi garment industry: A policy schizophrenia in labour regulation

The right to freedom of association is fundamental for the establishment of labour unionism as an institution. While the Government of Bangladesh requires enabling legal provisions for unionization in its garment industry, regulation to ensure the right to freedom of association has proved ineffective in upholding labour unionism. This article highlights the need for legislation capable of drawing on the complementary skills and resources of the Government, factory owners, labour unions and global brands to secure a sustained commitment and contribution towards the socio-economic and political dimensions of labour relations in Bangladesh's ready-made garment industry.     

Regulation and the future of work: The employment relationship as an innovation facilitator

Digital transformation and the reorganization of the firm have given rise to new forms of work that diverge significantly from the standard employment relationship. Advocates of digital disruption suggest that the existing legal framework cannot accommodate “innovative” working templates and business models. This article, however, argues that labour regulation can continue to facilitate innovation, presenting the employment relationship as a flexible instrument, and standard forms of employment as the means of achieving efficiencies and cost advantages. First, they allow for the full exercise of managerial prerogative and attendant internal flexibility in workforce deployment, and, second, they constitute an effective device to deliver training and develop skills.     

Why is the gender revolution uneven and stalled? Gender essentialism and men's movement into ‘women's work'

Men's limited movement into female occupations has been identified as a key barrier to future declines in occupational sex segregation and achieving greater gender equality. So why are men so reticent to enter jobs normatively regarded as female? Drawing from qualitative interviews with multiple stakeholders in four female‐dominated occupations in Australia, this article documents the processes that influence men's employment in gender‐atypical jobs. Gender essentialism is central to many processes that generate and/or stall changes in men's representation in female‐dominated occupations. While gender essentialism's role in producing and reproducing occupation sex segregation is well known, its role in reducing occupational sex segregation is a critical process which has previously received limited attention. The article details gender essentialism's integrative function.     

Having it all overseas: Aid workers and the international division of reproductive labour

This article examines the dynamics of power and privilege at work in international development through the prism of domestic service for expat aid workers in developing countries. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork amid aid workers and their domestic staff in Dakar, Senegal, I argue that access to affordable care work greatly enhances the lives of women who work overseas in development. The postcolonial underdevelopment and poverty that aid work addresses is paradoxically critical to the aid workers' own access to affordable care, family balance and the means to do their jobs. I put this insight into the larger scholarly conversation about domestic work and global inequality, including on the Global Care Chain.     

Compensation or competition: Bias in immigrants' access to active labour market measures

Whether participation in active labour market programmes (ALMPs) pushes individuals back into employment depends on the programme's characteristics. On the basis of encompassing registry data that allow us to control for usually unobserved employability, we find evidence of a systematic access bias whereby jobcentre caseworkers in Switzerland assign unemployed persons to activation measures based on a competition logic that is mainly driven by an economic rationale and the jobcentre's performance evaluation. This practice seems problematic because it results in an overrepresentation of immigrants in measures with little efficacy rather than in measures that could compensate for employability disadvantages. Conversely, Swiss citizens are more likely to enter beneficial human-capital-intensive measures. It is plausible that this discrepancy in programme participation amplifies the general labour market disadvantages of immigrants.     

Giving birth after caesarean: Identifying shared preferences among pregnant women using Q methodology

BackgroundCaesarean rates are rising worldwide, the main contributor being the elective repeat caesarean. During the past decades, rates of vaginal birth after caesarean dropped considerably. This requires insight in women’s preferences regarding giving birth following a previous caesarean.AimTo gain a better understanding of women’s values and preferences regarding the upcoming birth following a previous caesarean. Using Q methodology, this study systematically explores and categorises their preferences.MethodsQ methodology is an innovative research approach to explore and compare a variety of viewpoints on a certain subject. Thirty-one statements on birth after caesarean were developed based on the health belief model. Thirty-six purposively sampled pregnant women with a history of caesarean ranked these statements from least to most important. By-person factor analysis was used to identify patterns which, supplemented with interview data, were interpreted as preferences.FindingsThree distinct preferences for giving birth after a caesarean were found; (a) “Minimise the risks for me and my child”, giving priority to professional advice and risk of adverse events, (b) “Seek the benefits of normal birth”, desiring to give birth as normal as possible for both emotional and practical reasons, (c) “Opt for repeat caesarean”, expressing the belief that a planned caesarean brings comfort.ConclusionsPreferences for birth after caesarean vary considerably among pregnant women. The findings help to understand the different types of information valued by women who need to decide on their mode of birth after a first caesarean.     

Becoming cosmopolitan: encountering difference in a city of mobile labour

ABSTRACT

Many who move countries today do so for work, and labour mobility – both temporary and permanent – is the mechanism by which countless people (both movers and stayers) come into contact with cultural difference. The domain of mobile labour is thus an important context through which to consider the transformative possibilities of encounters with racial and cultural difference. Situated within debates on everyday multi-culture and vernacular cosmopolitanisms, this essay considers the question of intercultural encounter at work in relation to the layered histories of race and variegated citizenships of mobile labour in Singapore. Exploring the micro-nature of cosmopolitan practices, the paper considers under what labour conditions might an outward-looking cosmopolitan sensibility and a convivial openness to otherness emerge among migrant workers, as against a set of survival-based intercultural capacities. I reflect specifically upon two cases of ‘incongruous encounter’ in workplaces reliant on precariously employed migrant labour: a mainland Chinese man and a Filipina woman who, because of Singapore’s racialised system of work visas, find themselves working in South Asian restaurants in Singapore’s Little India. They both engage ‘cosmopolitan practices’, yet their sensibilities differ sharply. Their stories highlight how, in a place like Singapore, the ‘encounter’ needs to be understood within a regime of mobile labour, situated racial hierarchies, and a highly stratified system of work visas. I further suggest that situational factors such as the nature of work including its spatial and temporal qualities, the mixture of co-workers, and recognition relations with superiors all mattered in framing the affective atmospheres of encounter. In a context of forced encounter, I argue that learnt capacities to function and interact across difference should not necessarily be romanticised as a cosmopolitan sensibility.