WOE TO THE RESERVE ARMY OF LABOR!

The July 1 issue of The New York Times, Economy Section, reports that while American factory owners have been slowly adding jobs to the US economy since the start of the year, the situation gives little relief to the two million workers who have been laid off since the end of 2007. The reason: factory owners are now looking for workers with higher aptitude and technical skills, and only a tiny fraction of laid off workers qualify for these new positions. It’s no longer a question, the Times item adds, of laying off workers and replacing them with cheap labor from abroad. It’s now finding better-qualified workers who will be paid more dollars per hour.

The capitalist game plan has apparently changed. Capitalists no longer take advantage of a reserve army of laid off workers that can be hired at lower rates. These workers have become inutile. The technological sophistication of manufacturing now demands high-skilled technicians to operate, maintain, and improve on new machines to stay competitive at the profit game. The hiring rate for these skilled technicians are higher, of course, and that means greater capital outlay for labor, but the larger sum of salaries will probably pittance compared to the profits to be earned from their labor.

But woe to the reserve army of labor! Already disadvantaged by being the first to be laid off when the recession began, they are now doubly disadvantaged by a new manufacturing order that renders their labor unwanted. One long-term effect will be greater poverty for the unemployed, and eventually, a larger divide between the poor and the rich.

Marx may not have foreseen this double whammy. But he was right on the nose about inequalities growing wider under capitalism. Why I read somewhere that in England, the class gaps in life expectancies have increased in recent years. Looks like Marx is still getting empirical support in the age of high technology.

For The New York Times piece that stimulated this blog, see http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/02/business/economy/02manufacturing.html

FILIPINO WEDDINGS: BEYOND BRIDE AND GROOM

The two weddings I attended this past month again brought home this thought – that a Catholic Filipino wedding ritual has ramifications beyond the union of bride and groom. It’s a celebration of family solidarity, an event to strengthen alliances with friends and colleagues, an occasion to forge community ties, and a time for Holy Mother the Church to make sure the Lord becomes a partner in the couple’s wedded life. But enough of these manifest functions. The wedding ritual also asserts the primacy of heterosexual unions; the primacy of public rituals over private affairs; the indissolubility of marriage (and the distaste for divorce); the desirability of procreation; the superiority of men over women, and the dependence on families of orientation, now with godparents included, for guidance and support. In short, the ritual -- staged in relatively plush settings to symbolize one’s status – affirms the power of family and church to direct the couple’s life and to propagate an ideology that will sustain that power. So much for latent functions. The point is: weddings enable and constrain, and I feel most couples prefer a ceremony that’s more enabling than constraining. The choice of some couples to defray all wedding expenses (as was the case in the two weddings I attended) is a subtle attempt of bride and groom to lessen that constraint, wield a little power, and assert their independence. I wish the couples good luck! The power of social institutions is not as easy to break as the wine glasses we tinkled to get the groom to kiss the bride.

ASCRIBED AND ACHIEVED STATUS

I have a tough time teaching the notions of achieved and ascribed status because often the boundaries between the two concepts can be fuzzy. Sex and nationality are supposedly ascribed statuses but sex-change operations and naturalization procedures give these statuses an achieved quality. And then there’s poverty: is being poor an ascribed or achieved status? Some will argue that poverty is an achieved status since people who are unable to go to school, find work, fight for their rights, lack social capital, or are just plain lazy will most likely become poor. But how about children who are born into poverty and are too young to fend for themselves? Poverty in this case becomes an ascribed status – “a social position,” in John Macionis’ words, “that someone receives at birth or assumes involuntarily later in life.” Can’t we speak of affluence in the same way? And don’t the statuses of disability and terminal illness operate in like manner? How about an artist whose talents may be both inborn and learned? Even England’s royal Princes, ascribed as their statuses may be, still have to learn to behave like royalty. It seems to me that the concepts of ascribed and achieved status are not mutually exclusive, at least most of the time, and it’s probably best to think of social positions, many of them, as having ascribed and achieved qualities.

WAITRESS IN HAWAII

How come a married, middle-class Filipino housewife, adequately supported by her spouse in the Philippines, decides to work in McDonalds Honolulu as a waitress? Her son, a good friend, tells me the pay is good (eight dollars an hour) and for her mother, the job's a great opportunity to earn her own keep – something she hasn’t been able to do in the Philippines. But why didn’t she work in the Philippines instead? And why, of all things, as a waitress, a job associated with the working class? The answer lies in context. In Hawaii, or any foreign country, a lot of native cultural expectations regarding class, gender, and family life can be bracketed so that migrants can survive according to the norms of the host country. Middle-class Mama has found in Hawaii a way to free herself from traditional cultural norms to pursue personal projects and not alienate herself from her family. By working as a waitress in Hawaii, and in the long run, saving enough money to help secure the family income, she finds herself both liberated from oppressive traditional norms while still maintaining social acceptance with the home culture. It’s no wonder many Filipino professionals can manage to work abroad in lower status jobs and with low pay -- at least in dollars, euros, yen, or English pounds. Echoing Bourdieu, when the field changes, so does the habitus, and the individuals or agents who inhabit this habitus are free to craft a creative responses to the altered circumstances of their lives.

WORLD EXPO 2010: SHOWCASING A NATION

Impression management is the name of the game. In the World Expo 2010, staged in Shanghai, each country boasts in its pavilion the best that their nation can show the world – its “idealized self,” so to speak. Forget the backstage of financial woes, corruption, electoral fraud, unemployment, and gross inequalities. It’s time to put the best front stage act a country can muster, and in so doing win the respect and admiration of other nations. Some countries showcase their advances in technology, others their efforts to clean the environment. Still others display their magnificent arts and crafts, and some dwell on its people. Host China has the largest and tallest pavilion, towering over others at the center of the vast Expo grounds, a monument asserting the country’s strength, power, and grace -- a nation reminding the world of its impressive status in world affairs. Indeed, the entire Expo is front stage assertion as well: a league of nations telling the world that diverse countries can work in harmony for the survival of planet Earth. The rhetoric is inspiring but as Goffman points out, these self-assertions are best taken with a little grain of salt.