This week's reading deals with the role of 'labor' in the post-industrial age. Bell argues that in the economy the labor issue will remain, but the sociology and culture will behave otherwise (p.102). True, in a 'information' society where one easily forgets the actual labor issues that go on the way it has always been. However, I think that the interest in community as Bell has hopefully put it is not a genuine one but a mere distraction from the existing class conflicts. The 'post' industrial age still has its feet deep in the industrial age.
Krishan Kumar talks about the continued Taylorism. New technology builds on new division of labor, striving for efficiency. In his sense, information is also a part of the produced goods in the capitalistic system. I agree to the point that the Information society is not a stand-alone ideology, but an extension of (industrial) capitalism with all its social practices. Not only extension, but intensification.
Urry argues that what is viewed as the shift from the industrial to the post industrial is in fact the same old manufacturing society but dislocated by globalization and fragmentation. Labor still has its place, but is somehow put into nostalgia. Those arguments lead me to one important question: Why are people made to believe in the novel post-industrial age, while quickly forgetting the same kind of labor pattern that constitutes one's own life and society? Who are the ideologues and what kind of people are benefitting from this? Moreover, why do the ones that do not benefit from it also easily agree with them? Classic hegemony theories could be of some help, but I'll have to think things over.
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