Already the right of each citizen of Detroit to live in a home that has been professionally wired turns the auto-electrician who installs his own plugs into a lawbreaker.
The loss of one liberty after another to be useful when out of a job or outside professional control is the unnamed, but also the most resented experience that comes with modernized poverty. By now the most significant privilege of high social status might well be some vestige of freedom for useful unemployment that is increasingly denied to the great majority.
The insistence on the right to be taken care of and supplied has almost turned into the right of industries and professions to conquer clients, to supply them with their product, and by their deliveries to obliterate the environmental conditions that make unemployed activities useful. Thus, for the time being, the struggle for an equitable distribution of the time and the power to be useful to self and others outside employment or the draft has been effectively paralyzed.
Work done off the paid job is looked down upon if not ignored. Oct 27, Sung Hwan rated it it was ok. This is a dense read. He has some eye-opening insight on commodities and how it paralyzes people, but not all of his ideas are particularly relevant. For instance, his conclusion that people's freedom are inhibited mainly by the needs created by the professionals, and therefore are made market dependent, are big assumptions that seems largely unsubstantiated. While it is true that professionals contribute to the rise in market dependance, isn't it the economic system and the employment condition This is a dense read.
While it is true that professionals contribute to the rise in market dependance, isn't it the economic system and the employment conditions that prove to be stronger shackles for people? His call for more rights to be taken away from the league of professionals back to the people, so that the people might enjoy the freedom and satisfaction from autonomous actions are vastly underestimating the benefits of professionalism and the dangers of certain actions not being regulated by law or governed by experts, both to the people and the society as a whole.
A good example would be the rise of anti-vaccination movement and the threat it poses to society. People do not always act rationally, nor do they always have perfect information. Experts mentioned in the book such as gynecologists, electricians, and morticians are there to supervise certain activity to ensure that the society runs smoothly. Surely the solutions to freeing the people from market dependance lies not in changing people's behavior, but by completely revolutionizing the economic system?
However Illich does not provide any concrete solutions to his supposed problems. The last chapter of his book does seem to lean towards a fairer share of rights and resources, but whether through more state interference or by changing people's behavior, it doesn't say.
How to take away power from the professionals or more specifically, how to do it when they have the three main measures of defending themselves, as the author mentions later in the book , and how to deal with its aftermath? What are the potential issues of that? Maybe I missed something, but the answer to these questions seems unanswered. I will have to re-read it on a later date to find out, but this is my response to finally reading the book for the first time.
Aug 30, Chee Kiat rated it it was ok. A true Hipster book. I was hoping he would write more about the benefits of useful, non GDP generating activities or DIY activities, but he goes even further than that, to renounce capitalism altogether, over vague notions like 'Ethical Austerity' and 'Shaming disabling professions' for submitting themselves to the conspiracy of lifelong teaching, consumerism, medicine etc. In fact some of them border upon infringing human rights over supposed 'equity'.
He is too readily favoring going out of his way to punish 'academic elites' and the 'greedy gullibility of their victims. If his vision comes true, who will make the products that people are willing to buy?
Can everyone build their own house, make their own chairs, fish for their own food? These next step questions are conveniently not answered. However, and this is important, i can see that the changes he wanted to see, are right now occuring because of the age of internet, where people can see that they can do away with many professional services because they would know better- Something that is unthinkable in the 70s when this book was conceived Aug 02, Affad Shaikh rated it liked it.
While it is thought provoking, I am not completely convinced with the radical reconstruction of society on the tools of conviviality, in particular the reconstitution of useful unemployment. The idea of market forces is as organic as the development of a mercantilist society from which Illich draws many of this ideas.
I am however interested in the idea of developing countries creating a modern poverty, where individuals who are self sufficient and capable of self su the argument is interesting.
I am however interested in the idea of developing countries creating a modern poverty, where individuals who are self sufficient and capable of self subsistence are institutionalized into poverty and made incompetent to earn for themselves a living.
Also the idea of "useful unemployment" is incredibly interesting. I found it appealing because it challenges the social anathema toward unemployment and possibly introduces the idea of skills development. Jun 14, Jessica rated it liked it Shelves: non-fiction , philosophy-and-politics.
While I didn't necessarily reach the same conclusions Illich argues here, I do appreciate the criticisms he provides to things I've never questioned before. No idea why he felt the need to crap on sex workers in the making of some of those points, those sections were really weird. Dec 06, Matthew rated it it was ok. This seems a bit more of a muddle than his other books that I've read. How did I hear of this book? I need to put this on pause since my ILL is due shortly.
It is tough going but seemingly brilliant so far. Jul 21, Cynthia L'Hirondelle rated it it was amazing Shelves: recommend-nonfiction. From his Guardian obit: "A polymath and polemicist, his greatest contribution was as an archaeologist of ideas, rather than an ideologue.
He analysed the corruption of institutions which, he said, ended up by performing the opposite of their original purpose. Well worth wading through his sometimes heavy writing style for his fresh contrarian take on many crucial topics learning, health, lit I highly recommend checking out ALL of Ivan Illich's books. Well worth wading through his sometimes heavy writing style for his fresh contrarian take on many crucial topics learning, health, literacy, work and more.
However, this short book is an easy read and does much to help redefine work in a way that makes sense for the health of people and the planet. He was featured on many CBC Ideas radio programs. Mar 31, Suzammah rated it it was ok. Bits of ideas I was on board with but not as convincing or as well thought out as his take on education. I think I need to read Tools for Conviviality to truly grasp his argument and see how much of it I want to pursue.
Nov 25, Sionna L added it. Economics has been developed as propaganda for the takeover by large-scale commodity producers. All over the world, one can see the rapid encroachment of the disciplined acquiescence that characterizes the audience, the client, the customer.
Its elegance was interpreted as naivete Just as the legendary inquisitor refused to look through Galileo's telescope, so most modern economists refuse to look at an analysis that might displace the conventional centre of their economic system.
The first enslaving illusion is the idea that people are born to be consumers and that they can attain any of their goals by purchasing goods and services. This illusion is due to an educated blindness to the worth of use-values in the total economy. In none of the economic models serving as national guidelines is there a variable to account for non-marketable use-values any more than there is a variable for nature's perennial contribution.
An active woman who runs a house and brings up children and takes in those of others is distinguished from a woman who 'works', no matter how useless or damaging the product of this work might be. Activity, effort, achievement, or service outside a hierarchical relationship and unmeasured by professional standards, threatens a commodity-intensive society.
These ideas are relevant to contemporary conditions, however his critique and proposed solutions have problematic aspects and areas of ambiguity. Illich identifies technology as the primary tool in the increasing commodification-of-everything, and in this way, his critique of commodity-culture assumes a rejection of technology. He seems to value a mode of production where people make things themselves, and therefore, much of The Right to Useful Unemployment reads as neo-luddite nostalgia for pre-industrial modes of production and community.
His critique of the professionalisation of all roles in society aptly interprets a phenomenon that builds hierarchy, market dependence, and decreases convivial modes of living.
But, for whom is this possible? Surely unemployment is only feasible for the wealthy classes. Is this not overly optimistic? How will individuals be convinced that unemployment is desirable, or, more desirable? His yay-revolution-esque tone seems dated. It may have resonated with a culture of optimism at the time, but today it reads as unconvincingly hopeful. However, the solutions he offers add a level of complexity.
Through his hopes and critiques, is he simply glorifying a version of the past-that-never-was? Is any of this possible and practical, or are these overly idealised visions that cannot be activated in the present social, economic, and political web of circumstances that we face today?
0コメント