Week 1 Flashcards
How did “primitive” people used to measure time?
“Primitive” people measured time by relating it to familiar processes in the cycle of work and family life.
What are the three aspects of “primitive” time?
- Seems more natural.
- Often in societies with a somewhat loose relation between work and life.
- Seems quite wasteful to people accustomed to our way of measuring time.
Why is the concept of “industrialization” too simple?
- The types of manufacturing before industrialization took place can sometimes hardly be called pre-industrial.
- Not merely a shift in how labor is performed but an entire cultural shift, shift towards industrial capitalism.
What changes to the orientation to time does employment and selling labor comes paired with?
- There is an expected amount of labor within a certain time.
- Time becomes a form of currency, which must be effectively spent by the employer.
- A distinction arises between a persons own time and their time at work.
What was enforced through various measures of socializing laborers into this new system of time management?
- Anti-loitering practices attempting to limit the amount of time laborers spend without producing.
- Systems of clocking in and out and accurate time-management.
- Moralist discourse arises emphasizing the effective spending of time: Poor demonized as lazy and unproductive.
- Schools encouraged to socialize children into the industrial rhythm.
- Employers cheat this system by lying about the time to squeeze as much labor as possible out of laborers.
What effects did these measures of socializing laborers into the new system of time management have?
- Laborers socialized into this time framework, start to bargain from within it. Argue for longer breaks or shorter working hours for instance.
- In 19th century intensified: Leisure time should also be used productively, to cultivate the self.
- Often framed within discourse as an inevitable process/requirement paired with industrialization, instead of the product of intense conflicts that is actually is.
- Resistance through “wasting” time, think of beatniks. In automated future ways of spending time that aren’t “using” time must be found, returning to old ways of leisure.
Means of production
The arsenal of materials and instruments used in the production which facilitates the production, and the capacities or abilities, of people to do and make “things”.
Relations of production
The sum total of all relations that people must enter into in order to survive.
Mode of production
A specific combination of means of production (productive forces) and relations of production (social and technical relations). A type of society or system.
Historical materialism (Marx’s theory)
The mode of production shapes the kind of society we live in, the way we experience our society, the ways we relate to each other. It is a research-based theory that studies Humankind in order to find patterns, laws.
Primitive communism (hunter-gatherer society)
- Low division of labor.
- Communal ownership of tools and land.
- No classes but a strong religion-based authority.
Ancient slave mode of production (Ancient Greece, Mesopotamia, Rome)
- Family-based economy based on agriculture.
- Class-structured society: Free men and women, and slaves, property of free men.
- Humans are instruments of production.
Feudalism (medieval Europe)
- Local communities and social hierarchy:
- Small communities formed around the local lord and the manor.
- Society was organized into a hierarchical system based on local administrative control and land distribution. - Land ownership and feudal relations:
- The lord owned the land and granted portions of it, called fiefs, to vassals. In exchange for the fief, the vassal pledged loyalty and service to the lord. - Forms of payment and obligations
- The vassal’s payment to the lord typically came in the form of: Military service, regular payments in produce or money. - Labor and economic organization:
- Serfs (peasants) were bound to the land and worked for the lord.
- Guilds organized skilled labor in towns, managing workshops and trade.
What is production?
Production is a social activity. At its heart is cooperation - a relationship. But in different epochs production is organized differently. Therefore, relationships are organized differently.
Guild
A group of skilled craftsmen (confraternities: brothers helping one another) in the same trade managing their monopoly and maintaining craft standards. The guilds ensured that quality and standards were maintained and young apprentices were trained.
“Cottage industry”: transition to capitalist economy
- Took place in a single small house (cottage) where work and life went simply in different rooms. The working unit - a family.
- A land attached to the cottage worked by the family. Farming supplemented profits of spinning and weaving.
- Novelty: Became possible with the improvement of the spinning wheel (a technology).
Homo laborans
Our “species being” - essence of human nature.
What is the hidden abode? What is the secret of of profit making?
Inside the factory, synchronicity is part of the secret (doings things in time, on time).
When does historical changes happen?
When economic systems reach internal contradictions. Capitalism produces wealth but also creates poverty and crisis. Material contradictions force a shift to a new economic order.
Despotism
Oppressive dominance of one class over another, which disable the development and revolution of the latter. It is exercised through mental and physical threats of working at the pace.
How are labor, work and production eseential to human beings?
- Production is a social activity
- At its heart is cooperation, a relationship.
- In different epochs production is organized differently therefore relationships are organized differently.
- Different modes of production (specific economic system) shapes different types of society.
How do epochs and societies differ?
They differ based on how productive forces fit and relate to productive relations.
