'Use-Value' and the Re-thinking of Skills, Learning and the Labour ...

Journal of Industrial Relations 48(5)defined, measured, and evaluated for someone else’s purposes… But I will argue herethat it [also] has the effect of disorganizing vocational activity for the purposes of theindividuals whose ‘need’ is to master it as a form of practical action. (Jackson, 1994:344)The key issues raised by Jackson, for our discussion, are (i) the dearth ofconceptual means to draw distinctions between managerial/designer basedunderstandings of vocational knowledge and the actual, practical work, skilland knowledge activity, (ii) the persistent, fundamental epistemological denialof the acting and knowing subject, and finally (iii) the socially reproductiveeffects that these dominant presumptions actually have in ‘disorganizing’ thepotential of workers to individually/collectively work, learn and develop intheir own terms. Influenced by the Marxist-feminist sociology of DorothySmith, Jackson argues for an analysis that recovers people as subjects of theirlabour, rather than merely objects of control. She concludes by advocating avariety of socio-cultural schools of thought – among them Cultural HistoricalActivity Theory – as an important foundation for more adequate analysis ofskill and knowledge development.While not a comprehensive response to the issues raised by Jackson, onehopeful contribution toward a substantive model of skill itself is found in workof A. Aneesh where it’s argued that,[t]here is a need to reconceptualize [Braverman’s] thesis about skills and develop newcriteria for the understanding of skills. I seek to lift the debate out of the de-skillingvs. re-skilling confusion, developing an alternate set of analytical tools to makesense of skills, especially in view of the transformations associated with informationtechnologies. I attempt to focus on deeper structures of skills independent of thequestion of whether de-skilling plagues all industries… The concept of skill saturationseeks to evaluate skills solely on the basis of their grammar and structures… It does notallude to the consciousness – obscure or obvious – of the manager or the worker, nordoes it refer skills to the will of the work designers… (Aneesh, 2001: 365–6)This analysis of saturated versus unsaturated skill is well-worth noting. Skillsaturation is defined by Aneesh as the closure of the space for play leading topredictability of procedure and outcome ‘resulting from the exhaustive orderingof various components of skill and the elimination of all irregular spaces ofwork’ (2001:363–4). Unsaturated skills, on the other hand,…tend to contain multiple bonds with the job and certain unanalyzed dimensionsto allow enough room for action to take place, an action based on long and intuitiveunderstanding. It implies engagement that is implicit, inherent, and defies clearvisibility. Michael Polanyi’s concept of ‘tacit dimension’ may allow us to understandhow the unqualified process of the formalization of skills leads to completepredictability, and eliminates the elements of creative freedom and discovery. Polanyiexplained tacit dimension as something that remains unanalyzable in action…. Manycreative skills are performed and learned by ‘indwelling’ and ‘interiorization,’ ratherthan by explicit, formalized knowledge. (Aneesh, 2001: 373–4)Importantly, Aneesh’s model helps us break open some of the contradictoryclaims that permeate the up-skilling/de-skilling impasse, providing a means602