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How can we strengthen the contributory logic of work?

Lisa Herzog

The crisis has made clear that there is a logic of work that differs from the market logic and has long been overshadowed by it. You could call it a contributory or functional logic: what do individuals in certain occupations contribute to society, which function does their job fulfill? We now see this very clearly in the notion of “systemically relevant jobs” and also in the public recognition of nurses, supermarket staff, and garbage collectors (see also my article "What does the corona crisis teach us about the value of work?").

The question I am asking myself is: how can this contributory logic be strengthened, so that we don’t fall back into the pure logic of supply and demand, with wages determined according to bargaining power, after the crisis? We certainly need to regulate some labor markets better and pay higher wages in some areas of public employment. But how exactly should this be done, what criteria can we use? I am not optimistic that we could ever find a perfect matrix that would evaluate and compare the contributions individuals make. But could we, for example, use the capability approach, developed by Sen and Nussbaum, for thinking about the relative importance of different jobs? Maybe we could at least get rid of certain clear injustices, even though we may never reach perfect justice!

The philosopher Alasdair MacIntyre has introduced the distinction between practices and institutions: practices are oriented towards values that they want to realize, while institutions are the outward shells in which practices take place, but in which individuals orient themselves towards power, money, or status. What I mean by contributory or functional logic is related to MacIntyre’s notion of practice. But practices cannot exist in vacuo; they need institutions to host them. How can institutions be homes for practices without crowding out the contributory logic? How can institutions such as hospitals, schools, and maybe even businesses be organized around it?


ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Lisa Herzog is Associate Professor at the Faculty of Philosophy and the Center for Philosophy, Politics and Economics of the University of Groningen, Netherlands. She is a former fellow (2017/2018) of the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin and one of the coordinators of the “Working Futures” Network at Wiko.

More articles of the series "Wiko Briefs - Working Futures in Corona Times" can be found here.

 

  • Interviews
  • Publications
    • Shifting Categories
    • Wiko Briefs - Working Futures in Corona Times
      • The digital transformation of work. COVID-19 as a taste of things to come?
      • Thinking the Global Rise of Forced Labor: Old, New, and Changing Forms of Labor Exploitation in Times of Crisis
      • Rearticulating globalization, solidarities, and work in Ethiopia
      • The future of shopping - Corona as a catalyst for the transformation of work
      • The End of the Pandemic of Productivism?
      • Covid and Looking for the Exit
      • Who or what is being tested in pandemic times?
      • The Crisis as Beginning of a New Relationship to the Professional World?
      • Controlled Avalanche – A Regulated Voluntary Exposure Approach for Addressing Covid-19
      • Caring about what we hold dear and the final purposes of work
      • How does the Corona crisis affect the future of work and our view of it?
      • "Useful", "indispensable", “essential”: Is the health crisis changing the categories with which we consider professional activities?
      • The Corona Crisis Reveals the Struggle for a Sustainable Digital Future
      • The Need for De-Integration in Pandemic Times
      • The COVID 19 crisis accelerates structural change in the world of work
      • How can we strengthen the contributory logic of work?
  • Events
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