Redivisions of Work

Manufacturing Labor and Training in Switzerland's Knowledge Economy

Bibliographic Data

ID3000368
AuthorsJohanna Mugler (0000-0002-1115-537X, University of Bern Bern Switzerland, corresponding author)
Year2025
Volume46
Issue2
Publication date2025-09-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueAnthropology of Work Review (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0883-024X • E-ISSN: 1548-1417
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/awr.70011
OpenAlexW4413900428
LanguageEN
Citations received1
References cited34

The promise of knowledge society is clean, creative, and expressive work. Technological advancements would relieve humans from the tedium and hardship of labor, and access to knowledge and expansion of higher education would diminish the existing social inequalities of industrial society. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in Switzerland's mechanical and electrical engineering industry, this article illustrates how the work experiences of apprentices challenge the image of labor in a knowledge society ostensibly freed from all forms of material, technological, and social constraint. I demonstrate that the persistence of the tedium and potential danger of industrial work, of organizational hierarchies, the decreasing social validation of mechanical and manual labor, and expectations and aspirations to singularity make youth increasingly interested in other kinds of employment and training. The article takes the work and learning relations in the Swiss mechanical and electrical engineering sector as a symptom of emerging tensions around the division of labor and valorization of different forms of skills, and the meaning and motivations of work in late capitalism. I argue that future anthropological studies of work and education in de-industrialized settings might do well to examine the social critique of industrial work in concert with its aesthetic critique

Business · Economics · Economy · Geography · Knowledge economy · Labour economics · Training (meteorology · Work (physics · Digital Economy and Work Transformation · Engineering · Labor Movements and Unions · Political Economy and Marxism · Mechanical Engineering

Tools

Open DOI