Alienation, autonomy, and ideology
Not long ago, I watched a LinkedIn video that defined a ‘thought leader’ as “a person who helps people make difficult choices by being a decision leader.” As a philosopher, I wasn’t too impressed with this display. And as a definition of ‘thought leader,’ that’s about as unhelpful as it gets.
But I think it shows us a few things about business jargon and the nature of the ‘business intellectual.’ What does it show us?
I often make the point that the left should target a broad working-class coalition. Every now and then to the point of sounding like a broken record. This includes an approach from multiple vectors – not only people on the job, but also unemployed people and the precariat. But while I often talk about race and about tenants unions, I don’t talk as often about gender. I’ll do that here by looking at the feminization of work.
Readers who know me might be surprised that I haven’t written as much about gender. After all, I have a background in feminist philosophy and activism. So, in that spirit, I’ll use this post to share one key data point on the feminization of work. I think it addresses why it’s so important for leftists to address issues of gender, especially in the world of work.
As we enter our second pandemic winter, I’m reading a wide range of things. Some baseball. Some nostalgia. And some science. If you’re interested in some new reads this winter, continue on for the full list.
From time to time, I sort employees into three categories: those who suffer from angst, those who suffer from ennui, and those who suffer from neither. As readers might expect, I’m suspicious of that latter group. But this time, I’ll do something a bit different with the topic. I’ll say a bit about how all this relates to the ‘Great Resignation.’
For anyone living under a rock, lots of people quit their jobs this year. More than any other year on record! Are they bored? Did a collective brush with mortality last year push them to make a change? Or are workers simply getting tired of low wages and inadequate benefits?
So, what’s going on with the workforce? What spurred the Great Resignation? And does Striketober represent a reaction to the forces of the Great Resignation?
By now I’m sure many of us know that the choices we make are far more complex than popular debate suggests. Almost everyone agrees on the need for consent, on at least some notion of ‘consent.’ But whether and how we consent – and what kind of consent we need – remains less clear.
I might approach these issues in a million ways. But here’s one way. I recently re-read a blog post on Feministing. The post covered a 2014 study in Psychology of Women Quarterly on gender and choices about body hair. It turns out that a woman’s decision to remove (or not remove) body hair is a pretty complicated one. In particular, the social pressures involved cloud the matter of whether and how women consent and make choices.
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