Jobless Future: Sci-Tech and the Dogma of Work [Paperback]

Stanley Aronowitz (Author), William DiFazio (Contributor)

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Sociologists Aronowitz and DiFazio contend that scientific and technological advances have resulted in "too many workers for too few jobs, and even fewer of them are well paid." The authors proceed to pose questions regarding the effect this "progressive destruction of high-quality, well-paid, permanent jobs" will have on the meaning of work and its relationship to the concept of "self." Inexplicably, they salt this otherwise scholarly and well-researched work with detailed movie plot lines and wordy quotations from disgruntled workers. Replete with such futuristic concepts as cybernetics, technoculture, deskilling, and informatics, this book is as timely as today's headlines announcing the latest round of layoffs and downsizing. The hyperbolic title notwithstanding, this is an important and thought-provoking work that will be of primary interest to economists, sociologists, business leaders, and public policy-makers.
Alan Farber, Northern Illinois Univ., DeKalb
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Paperback: 408 pages
• Publisher: Univ Of Minnesota Press (June 22, 1995)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0816621942
• ISBN-13: 978-0816621941
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 5.9 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,212,783 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

4.0 out of 5 stars Good book, reads like a textbook or instructions though and less like an editorial, October 24, 2011

By 

Jeff Moore "Non-Buster" (Philly, PA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

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This review is from: Jobless Future: Sci-Tech and the Dogma of Work (Paperback)

Has been a good book although can be a bit bland and alliterated. This is the dated version written @ 1995, give or take a year.
As stated in the subject reads like a college textbook, that may have even been its original purpose for composition. However, it is hard to argue with the author's hypotheses.

5.0 out of 5 stars And it is coming about, January 11, 2010

A Kid's Review

This review is from: Jobless Future: Sci-Tech and the Dogma of Work (Paperback)

This is a distressingly prescient book written more than a decade ago, it could be an analysis of today's headlines regarding joblessness, under employment and temp employment replacing the work situation we have all known in better times.
For your own sake, read this book!

0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Leftist tripe, October 6, 2011

By 

Mrs. Davis - See all my reviews

This review is from: Jobless Future: Sci-Tech and the Dogma of Work (Paperback)

Based on the five star reviews, I thought this might be an interesting read. But within 20 pages it was clearly leftist academic nonsense. I should have noticed that Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought "Why Marx was Right".

The authors were able to see that automation would displace low skill workers and that globalization would reduce wages for those low skill workers still employed and over time these effects would be felt further up the ladder as the world wide labor pool became more skilled. They were not alone.

But for prescience try this from the 1994 edition: "Layoffs at General Dynamics and other major defense contractors, combined with the depression in oil prices that has virtually wiped out domestic drilling, has plunged Texas into an unprecedented decline."

Their prescription is the six hour work day, no doubt with the same pay for 75% of the work, publicly financed multi-family rental housing, free child care, like Europe, and free post-secondary education, not surprising from two academics.

If you think ten pages of movie reviews on Do the Right Thing, Working Girl and Last Exit to Brooklyn is instructive for analyzing labor market trends, this may be the book for you.