Re: middle class/intellectual labor

From: Paul Dillon (dillonph@northcoast.com)
Date: Thu Jan 27 2000 - 08:34:21 PST


Pete,

Your post captured perfectly what I was trying to say . Additionally,
however, I think that Star and Bowker's discussion of the function of
classification, and what i've called classification work (they refer to
"coordinating work" in their book) can add to our analysis of the question
of intellectual work. For one thing it allows us to look at the product of
intellectual work (systems of classification) in the same way we could look
at any technology. How many specialists do we have working on the design of
vacuum tubes nowadays? How many catechists do we have studying foreign
languages so as to create better confessional manuals? In the same way as
Marx, and more than 140 years of marxist analysts, looked at the individual
capital (specific branches of production) within the process of the global
circulation of capital, so we can begin to approach the issue of "class
consciousness" through examining the specific systems of classification to
which specific intellectual labor is ascribed. What is the class content
of white collar electronic engineers? Look at how their knowledge
articulates to the reproduction of capital as a whole. This would enable
us to situate the production of intellectual products in the broader process
of capital reproduction and not limit it to the less clearly articulable
interpretations of "ideological content."

Paul H. Dillon



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