ABSTRACT
It is the case studies that have mainly driven labour process analysis subsequent to Braverman however. Braverman focused on TAYLOR’s promotion of deskilling through scientific management which “represented the explicit verbalization” (p.86) of capitalism everywhere. The first significant case study evidence to support Braverman’s claim appeared in the edited case studies of ZIMBALIST and represents a good starting point for understanding how deskilling effected paid work at that time. Subsequent case studies challenged this argument and are likewise still important for their conceptual points. This evidence, provided by FRIEDMAN, BURAWOY, EDWARDS, and LITTLER (1982), basically demonstrated that other forms of organization and control exist and that these forms can vary across both time and countries. A first systematic attempt to engage the range of omissions and weaknesses occurred with Labour Process Theory edited by KNIGHTS & WILLMOTT. This book provides chapters on such labour process issues as technology, gender, and the state. One of the more forceful criticisms made here of Braverman is his failure to articulate workers’ subjective experience of control by the managerial agents of capital, and it is this issue that has dominated labour process conference and debate in recent years. One of the post-conference books was explicitly dedicated to this issue (JERMIER, KNIGHT & NORD). However, the insertion of subjectivity by these authors has reduced the analysis to a situationalism that resonates with pre-labour process analysis industrial sociology and its concern with the social relations in production, though now disguised as an examination of individual identity. It also obviates the radical project for the collective emancipation or at least amelioration of the condition of labour advanced by Braverman.
