Work and Leisure

The ‘Brazilianization thesis’: Ulrich BeckPostmodern work and leisure 59Prima facie, deregulation has created conditions in the labour market whichare reminiscent of work experience at the height of the Victorian era. Acutepoverty, unemployment, migratory work patterns, social dislocation and isolationare prominent features of the social and economic landscape at thepresent time, as they were for much of the nineteenth century. Yet, if pushedtoo far, the analogy wears thin. Victorian deregulation applied to nationalmarkets and was combated by national collective bargaining and the establishmentof the welfare state. Deregulation now applies to the global labourmarket, with unions often pitched in fierce competition with one another tosave or gain jobs, to flexible accumulation at the global and national level,and to a weak or declining welfare state.Instead of regarding the current condition of the labour market as areprise of nineteenth century trends, Beck (2000) has introduced the ‘Brazilianizationof the West’ thesis. In semi-industrialised Brazil, Beck argues, theeconomically active population employed in full-time paid employmentconstitute only a minority of the working population. The majority aremigratory workers involved in low wage, multi-activity employment. Untilnow this form of employment has been a feature of mainly female patterns ofwork in the West, but deregulation and globalisation are now coalescing tomake this pattern a significant feature of the overall labour market. Labourmarket flexibility is attractive to the state because it redistributes risks awayfrom the public purse and transfers them to the individual. However, itcomes with great social costs, notably insecurity, low pay, intermittent workexperience and social dislocation.Beck’s thesis provides a nice counterpoint to the post-industrial societytheorists of the 1960s and 1970s (e.g. Dumazedier 1967; Bell 1973; Kerr et al.1973). These writers operated on societal-wide levels. They proposed thatautomation would increase productivity and reduce the demand for humanlabour. As a result, they concluded that Western society must rapidly moveinto the condition in which machinery produces a perennial, exponentialsurplus and therefore reduces the need to work. On the whole, an overoptimisticattitude was adopted in relation to the question of the socialconsequences of this change. It was assumed that workers would welcomebeing unchained from repetitive and psychologically and socially unrewardingwork. Protests at job losses would be insignificant because graduatedwork arrangements and welfare support would alleviate distress and leisurewould be recognised as a compelling social benefit. Kerr et al. (1973) predictedthe emergence of ‘pluralistic industrialism’ in which post-work stratadevelop enriching cultural and aesthetic activities and the cultural and socialstock of society appreciates in value. This line of argument enjoined that ‘theleisure society’ is a viable alternative to industrial capitalism. The ‘leisuresociety’ was seen as a social form in which work is rationally planned and