The first time I saw a pager, in 1994, I though it was a pretty clever device. You page me, I see your number, and I find a landline and give you a ring. It’s a very effective way of being contactable when you’re out and about but still on-call. It’s hard to believe, though, that given the ‘communications revolution’ of mobile telephones and wi-fi internet, that the pager is still the device of first resort when a doctor needs to be called to a patient’s bedside. And it’s not hard to believe that the pager isn’t that effective in getting through to the right person.

source: http://handihealth.me/2012/03/18/bleep-bleep-stone-age-technology-in-the-21st-century-nhs/

The handihealth account tells us of all the contingencies and uncertainties that might get in the way of this working well, from not being able to find a phone lines that’s free, to not knowing if you’ve got in touch with the right person. It’s stressful and it takes time in cases where speed really matters. It’s hard to imagine that the bleeper is the best technology to make the work happen. But it’s cheap to run, and it’s well embedded in working practices, so perhaps it’s stuck.

As Froud et al (2011: 6) comment, ‘Governments decide value for money by considering only price and quality on an individual purchase basis’, and by this reckoning, a bleeper’s pretty cost effective. This concern with upfront price frames all forms of economic action in the language of microeconomics — simple markets and individual buyers — and hence applies simplistic understandings of ‘value for money’ to very complex practices of providing care. Thinking about the unit price for individual purchase gets in the way of more subtle (but not so subtle as to be invisible to even a half-awake mind) thinking about what is worth spending money on to make care possible. (The outrage earlier this year at the headline cost of the Metropolitan Police’s use of the speaking clock (£35,000 a year!) is a good comparison. Personally, I’d rather not be the copper waiting to start the raid whose watch was a minute fast.

I remember some time ago watching a television programme which sent the boss back to the shopfloor. A ‘top’ manager in a major supermarket chain went to work on the till, and discovered just how fiddly it was to remove discount stickers in order to scan the barcode beneath. The sticker glue was later changed. I have a childish idea to remove first the secretarial support and then the mobiles of Andrew Lansley, David Nicholson, the heads of various private healthcare companies competing for a share of the NHS pie, and their managerial subordinates. Instead, each can have a pager and shared access to a landline to get some insight into the challenges of care in an old-tech world.

Reference

Froud, J., Johal, S., Law, J., Leaver, A. and Williams, K. (2011) ‘Knowing What To Do? How Not to Build Trains’. CRESC Research Report . Open University/University of Manchester.

George Perec’s The Art and Craft of Approaching your Head of Department to Submit A RequestFor A Raise tells the tale of a man’s decision and indecision as he worries and wonders and wanders around his office looking for the right time and the right way to ask Mr X for a pay raise. He visits Ms Wye at times. He pays attention to what was on the cafeteria menu. He hopes Mr X’s daughters are well and don’t have measles. He circumperambulates the office waiting for the right moment. This comes at “the two hundred and fifty-fifth bid” (2011:79) and it isn’t an instant success.

What I love about this piece is how all those moments of uncertainty that make up organisational life, all the things that go through your mind when you’re at work but not working, the posturing and the wondering and the positioning are brought into a formula of no/yes, 0/1, recursion and slight development. The book’s about the systems that lie within the messiness of living and working. It is prefaced and inspired by a flowchart illustrating computerised decision making produced by Perec’s fellow Oulipian, Jacques Perriaud. Perec makes ‘real’ the grey media of the flowchart adding the uncertainties, false steps and coincidences that make up a working life. Almost real: it’s a story with just one full stop.

Play the game yourself theartofaskingyourbossforaraise.com

Reference

1. Perec, G (2011) The Art and Craft of Approaching your Head of Department to Submit A Request For A Raise, trans David Bellos. London: Vintage Books.

At Loch Coire nan Arr, just up from the photographic opportunity provided by Russell Burn, there’s a water management system that drains from a reservoir down to a loch that’s farmed for salmon. On this August day, the water was low.

The unspoiled wilderness of the tourist brochures turns out to be a highly managed environment, with walkways and raft.

It’s managed by solar panel and radio control, though there are a few signs that human intervention is needed: the wheel can be turned when there’s someone there who knows the padlock combination.

Watch him concentrate. The saw moves. The wood moves. The body moves. But his head? His head, his eyes, they scarcely shift. Just once, he looks down. This reiterates the stupidity of a separation between mental and manual labour; he is concentrating on the wood and the saw to keep them steady; it cannot be done without thinking. For the material to move, and his body with it, the gaze must be still.

And the new Fordism? Well, Santos has left the US army and gone to work for Ford. Santos checks how much work a body can manage on the production line. How many tyres can he unload in the heat before he collapses? Can he turn far enough to pick up that tool? Does that hurt? How long can he work for? But don’t worry, this Santos isn’t having his physical limits tested in some hot maquiladora. Santos isn’t a person. Santos is cyborg: software given human form to produce a “dynamic evaluation” of what sort of strain a person would be able to take. Understanding strain, say the research team at the University of Iowa, lessens the risk of injury to assembly line workers, and improves efficiency.

The body is modelled, its joint flexibility measured, its strength assessed and quantified. The fleshy materiality of a body is transposed into data, data, data. And in the end this will change the experience of working on the line. It will standardise work schedules and restrict movement — because science will have generated the best way of doing work. And I’m all in favour of saving strain and lessening damage. But I’m not quite sure this is what Santos will do; Santos-data enhances Taylorism; it treats the body as a machine and makes no allowances for what it is to be a working man on that line. To be tired one day, to feel.

It seems commercial sex in a striptease culture (McNair, 2002) is mainstream. The liberalisation of sexual behaviour reflects a particular conceptualisation of modern subjectivity as individualised and commodified (Livingston, 1998). This perspective acts as a powerful moral pull in favour of the normalisation of the right to a range of sexual behaviours that might formerly have lain in the domain of the abject. This liberalisation, even a compulsion to speak of sex, retains a hint edge of moral taint, though. In the case of commercial sex, from the everyday erotic labour of bar staff (Boyle, 2007) to market exchange of sexual intercourse, there is a tension between tolerance and taint. On one hand is a powerful drive towards tolerating or accepting sexual practices where those who engage are seen as making legitimate choices as agents in modern society. On the other are arguments that such practices are invariably degrading and inappropriate, either because sex – like other intimacies – ought not be marketised, or because those selling sex cannot make a ‘free’ choice to self-exploit (Barry, 1995). And even those who feel empowered by a (postfeminist) right to speak and act as a sexual subject are, for McRobbie, being interpellated into a dominated subject position (McRobbie, 2009).

What sort of work is this webcam performing? Well, such Live Sex Acts (Chapkis, 1997) might be ways in which workers can maximise the returns from what Hakim calls ‘erotic capital’ (2010): sex appeal, charm, social skills and all-round phwoarness. Prostitution, classically understood is not advertised by JobCentre plus. It is morally outside the pale as it involves the transgression of corporeal boundaries. The webcam performer, however, though their corporeality is central, seems to escape this outsiderdom. They and the customer (the webcam wanker) are engaged in a cyborg reality of sex work. Sight and sound are the senses that matter, not touch and smell and taste. The body is seen and heard; consumed like a tv programme, not consumed like a cake.

© Cammie Touloui, from Lusty Ladies series

The ad says that the job involves “explicit sexual dialogue which may cause embarrassment to some people”. This interests me: the nudity is present in a matter of fact way, it’s the talk that is problematic and may provoke an emotional response. In the exhibition at Tate Modern Exposed: Voyeurism, Surveillance and the Camera there are several photographs that explore dimensions of the sex industry. Susan Meiselas’s pictures of strippers and Cammie Toloui’s remind us that there is nothing passive, nothing safe, nothing disembodied about ‘just looking’.

References

1. Barry, K. (1995) The Prostitution of Sexuality. New York: New York University Press.
2. Boyle, K. (2007) ‘The mobilisation of sexuality: an ethnography of the sexualised labour process in the style bar industry.’ Paper presented to the 25th International Labour Process Conference.
3. Chapkis, W. (1997) Live Sex Acts: Women Performing Erotic Labour Routledge.
4. Hakim, C. (2010) ‘Erotic Capital’ European Sociological Review doi:10.1093/esr/jcq014 .
5. Livingston, J. (1998) Modern subjectivity and consumer culture, in Strasser, S., McGovern, C. & Judt, M. Getting and Spending: European and American Consumer Societies in the 20th Century: 413–430. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
6. McNair, N (2002) Striptease Culture: Sex, Media, and the Democratization of Desire. London: Routledge.
7. McRobbie, A. (2009) The Aftermath of Feminism Sage.
   ]]> http://nowaytomakealiving.net/post/1027/feed 0 http://nowaytomakealiving.net/post/932 http://nowaytomakealiving.net/post/932#comments Wed, 26 May 2010 11:37:55 +0000 Mark Harvey http://nowaytomakealiving.net/?p=932 After my father died, I discovered a film he had directed in 1938 for the historically famous GPO (General Post Office) film unit. It was called The Islanders, and in it, to my amazement, was a short section about Guernsey and the once-renowned Guernsey tomato. The film shows how tomatoes were grown in sterilised soil and glasshouses, heated by coal and how tomatoes were graded and standardised, to be shipped to mainland wholesale markets. You can see the boxes with names of traders in Manchester and Birmingham. There is an incredibly snooty trader, acting as intermediary between the growers and the English market, taking and making orders daily and hourly by phone. The tomatoes are then shipped to the mainland and taken by train, in return for an inflow of Kellogg’s Cornflakes, Lyons Cakes, timber to make the boxes for the tomatoes, and coal.

   
   The Islanders (1939) dir Maurice Harvey. Permission of Royal Mail Film Archive.

   In Exploring the Tomato: transformations of nature, economy and society (Mark Harvey, Steve Quilley and Huw Beynon, 2002), there is a chapter called ‘Broken Glass’, describing the extraordinary economic and social organisation of small growers (including part-time postmen), the Guernsey Tomato Marketing Board, and glasshouses made from the skeleton-frames of up-turned boats. It told of the system of English wholesale markets, and how the Guernsey ‘Potentate’ tomato (a powerful hybrid) had to endure a clunky two-week journey from grower to consumer, and of the standardisation and ‘process of qualification’ of tomatoes for mass consumer markets. This transitory world was shattered by the twin forces of competition from Dutch, North Sea Gas-warmed tomatoes and the growth of supermarket chains in the UK. The book was written nearly five years before I discovered the film – but could there have been some subliminal connection? A transmission of a kind of interest in the world?

   The film transports us into a world as seen 65 years ago. One of many in a revolutionary genre of documentary films — Night Mail being the most famous —  The Islanders shows how the world was made rather than consumed. Social realist vision uncovers the work of world-making. So we see mostly men, mostly smoking, engaged in manual labour of producing, lifting and transporting tomatoes; the work of picking and grading; the work of making sales, of intermediating, and regulating. We are told only that restaurants demand regular, middle-sized, good-coloured tomatoes. The consumer as such is an absent figure. Further, this and many of the films from the GPO stable, unsurprisingly present a communications revolution, economies now made possible by radio and telephone, worlds connected, ships at sea rescued, letters delivered, telegrams sent, undersea cables laid. As today, the sense of a world being transformed by then revolutionary technologies of communication, wired social and economic organisation, is tangibly and visually exciting. The work of communication, of creating the infrastructures, occasionally at risk to working lives, is explored through stark and resolutely modernist imagery. The island dissolves into the planet, the planet into the universe, the film ends.

   Orbiting the tomato: A door to a hidden-to-me dimension of my father. A refracting prism of past and present worlds. A society of proud production, now disappeared from visual representation (a genre documentary now dead) and buried by new forms of supermarket-dominated, consumer-oriented social and economic organisation. Work losing its core sociological reputation, and attempts to recover and re-visualise the tomato in the round, through its multiple presences. Such a simple fruit.

   References

   1. Harvey, M., Quilley, S. and Beynon, H. (2002) Exploring the Tomato: Transformations of Nature, Economy and Society Edward Elgar.
   ]]> http://nowaytomakealiving.net/post/932/feed 0 http://nowaytomakealiving.net/post/193 http://nowaytomakealiving.net/post/193#comments Tue, 13 Oct 2009 08:59:57 +0000 Lynne Pettinger http://nowaytomakealiving.net/?p=193 There are forms of work which are unamenable to technological change. The question of technology replacing labour is an ongoing story in the study of work (see Braverman on deskilling, or Sennett on the loss of craft skills). Some accounts of service work suggest that these are the least ‘vulnerable’ to replacement, although researchers at Saitama University is developing robots to provide elder care (Kobayashi et al, 2009). Against this tale of decline and alienation might be a story which celebrates technological replacement of manual effort. The washing machine and the vacuum, for example, may produce More Work for Mother (Schwartz Cowan, 1989), but they do save me the drudgery of dolly tub and posser that my Grandma dealt with, to my intense pleasure. This entry is on a theme of unreplaceable labour, and I refer to the postman.
   

   photography by Lynne Pettinger

   The idea of post — something that comes directly to your doormat for 39p that someone else pays — is pretty amazing. We used to get milk and eggs on the doorstep, maybe dusters and cleaning equipment courtesy of the travelling salesman. Now though, its only the post that arrives like this. It is a daily triumph that the post comes to me direct (even as I get mostly bills, marketing and letters to families who have long since moved out of my house).

   The postman’s job is unreplaceable, but it is affected by technologies. The bicycle and the delivery van; the rubber band, the sack and the street storage boxes; the uniform and the letter box in my front door are all parts of this. And that is without thinking about the technologies of collection, sorting and movement. The fundamental job of the postman, though, is to move from door to door, up my street and down yours. It requires body work and an engagement with the material cultures of people’s homes and their private and public messages. There is no way of not having a postman if the post is to be delivered. So thank you postman. I think you have a romantic job.

   Though booming internet shopping might keep some postmen in work, even as Royal Mail loses the contract to deliver Amazon parcels, his job isn’t quite as romantic as once it was. Gone are the days of daily letters or postcards, and even bills are now delivered online. That seems like a loss to me, I like getting and sending postcards. So please send me a letter. Send me the pillow you dream on. Send in the clowns. Send me birthday cards, sympathy cars, a postcard from your holiday and a thank you for dinner. Let the postman make me happy.

   References

   1. Braverman, H. (1974) Labor and Monopoly Capital; the Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century. New York, Monthly Review Press.
   2. Kobayashi, Y., Kuno, Y., Niwa, H., Akiya, N., Okada, M. Yamazaki, K. and Yamazaki, A. (2009) ‘Assisted-Care Robot Initiation of Communication in Multiparty Settings’. Chi 2009 conference, Boston MA.
   3. Schwartz Cowan, R. (1989) More Work for Mother: the Ironies of Household Technology from the Open Hearth to the Microwave. London: Free Association.
   4. Sennett, R. (2008) The Craftsman. London : Allen Lane.
   ]]> http://nowaytomakealiving.net/post/193/feed 3 http://nowaytomakealiving.net/post/41 http://nowaytomakealiving.net/post/41#comments Thu, 10 Sep 2009 14:24:32 +0000 Lynne Pettinger http://nowaytomakealiving.net/?p=41 The nurse tells the receptionist there’s no toner left in the photocopier. The receptionist asks admin who says she doesn’t know, she’ll ask Michelle, but she knows that Carol’s good with the photocopier. The receptionist calls Michelle, but Michelle’s not there until the afternoon and the receptionist is due to leave at 12.30, so the message needs passing on. Who knows where Carol’s got to? No-one can sort it, no-one feels like they’re good with machines. They are nurses, not technicians after all.
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