Labor's End : How the Promise of Automation Degraded Work
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| Title: | Labor's End : How the Promise of Automation Degraded Work |
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| Description: | Labor's End traces the discourse around automation from its origins in the factory to its wide-ranging implications in political and social life. As Jason Resnikoff shows, the term automation expressed the conviction that industrial progress meant the inevitable abolition of manual labor from industry. But the real substance of the term reflected industry's desire to hide an intensification of human work--and labor's loss of power and protection--behind magnificent machinery and a starry-eyed faith in technological revolution. The rhetorical power of the automation ideology revealed and perpetuated a belief that the idea of freedom was incompatible with the activity of work. From there, political actors ruled out the workplace as a site of politics while some of labor's staunchest allies dismissed sped-up tasks, expanded workloads, and incipient deindustrialization in the name of technological progress. A forceful intellectual history, Labor's End challenges entrenched assumptions about automation's transformation of the American workplace. |
| Authors: | Jason Resnikoff |
| Resource Type: | eBook. |
| Subjects: | Occupational training--United States, Labor supply--Effect of automation on--United States, Labor--United States--History, Automation--Social aspects |
| Categories: | HISTORY / General, BUSINESS & ECONOMICS / Labor / General, HISTORY / United States / 20th Century, POLITICAL SCIENCE / Labor & Industrial Relations |
| Database: | eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) |
| Abstract: | Labor's End traces the discourse around automation from its origins in the factory to its wide-ranging implications in political and social life. As Jason Resnikoff shows, the term automation expressed the conviction that industrial progress meant the inevitable abolition of manual labor from industry. But the real substance of the term reflected industry's desire to hide an intensification of human work--and labor's loss of power and protection--behind magnificent machinery and a starry-eyed faith in technological revolution. The rhetorical power of the automation ideology revealed and perpetuated a belief that the idea of freedom was incompatible with the activity of work. From there, political actors ruled out the workplace as a site of politics while some of labor's staunchest allies dismissed sped-up tasks, expanded workloads, and incipient deindustrialization in the name of technological progress. A forceful intellectual history, Labor's End challenges entrenched assumptions about automation's transformation of the American workplace. |
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| ISBN: | 9780252044250 9780252086298 9780252053214 |
