Education and Development
Lecture 2.2
Globalziation and Education:
Global-Informational Capitalism and Its Educational Consequence
A. The Advent of Informational-Global Economy and the End of Capitalism? Statement of the
Problem
1. The proponents:
a. Bill Gate’s thesis of Friction-Free Capitalism
b. Peter Drucker’s thesis of Post-Capitalist Society
i. Industrial revolution: Knowledge applied tools, process, and products
ii. Productivity revolution: Knowledge applied to work
iii. Management Revolution: Knowledge applied to knowledge
2. The opponents:
a. Another stage, if not the highest stage, of capitalism
b. Historical outline of the development of capitalism
i. Mercantile capitalism: 1500-1800
ii. Industrial capitalism: 1800-1940
iii. Organized capitalism: 1950-1970
- Fordism
- Welfare-state corporatism
iv. Informational-global capitalism
B. Explication of Basic Conceptual Tools
1. Informational and the information Technology Paradigm (Castells, 1996)
a. Information is the raw material and technologies are used to act on information.
b. Information and information technology rise to the central and primary position in enhancing
productivity and generating wealth
c. The pervasiveness of effects of IT
d. The permeation of the network logics
“The Atom is the past. The symbol of science for the next century is the dynamical Net …
Whereas the Atom represents clean simplicity, the Net channels the messy power of
complexity. …The only organization capable of nonprejudiced growth, or unguided learning
is a network. All other typologies limited what can happen. A network swarm is all edges
and therefore open ended any way you come at it. Indeed, the network is the least
structured organization that can be said to have any structure at all. …In fact a plurality of
truly divergent components can only remain coherent in a network. No other arrangement –
chain, pyramid, tree, circle, hub – can contain ture diversity work as a whole.” (Kelly, 1995,
p.25-27 quoted in Castells, 19976, note71, p. 61-62)
e. The flexibility of processes, organizations and institutions
f. The converging and integrative capacity of IT system
2. Capitalism: As a mode of production characterized by the following features:
a. Domination of capital over other means of production, including labor
b. Labor power is bought and sold by money wages
b. Production for sale rather than for own use; production for exchange value rather use value
c. Commoditfication as the primary dynamics of the mode of production: MCPC’M’,
i.e. Money capital  Commodity (i.e. labor and the means of production)  Production 
Commodity (products)  Money
e. Competition among capitalist
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C. From Fordist-Keynesian Capitalism to Informational Global Capitalism
1. The crisis of Fordistic production process (Tony Smith)
a. Crisis in factor inputs
i. High raw material costs (especially oil)
ii. High inventory costs
iii. Inflexibility of set-ups of machinery and assembly line
b. Crisis in circulation time and cost
i. Lengthy delivery times between suppliers and assemblers
ii. Extended interruptions in production due to the need to retool
iii. The length of time required to make decisions with an extensive corporate bureaucracy
iv. The time required to correct quality problems
v. The time demanded to work off previous inventories
vi. The length of time required to institute innovation, due to separation of design
engineers and production personnel
c. Crisis in capital / labor relation
i. Mounting unproductive expenses connected with supervison of the workforce
ii. Worker resistance at the point of production in overt and indirect form (strike and
absenteerism, respectively)
iii. Wage increases not match by productivity advances due to collective bargaining
through unionism
iv. Quality control stemming from the separation of quality control to a separate
department
d. Crisis in capital / consumer relation
i. Inability to respond promptly to shifts in consumer demands
ii. The mass production of standardized products prevented from producing customized or
customer-designed products
2. Italian and Japanese initiations to the crisis of Fordism
a. The third Italy model
b. Toyotism
i. The Just-In-Time (JIT) model
ii. Total Quality Control (TQC) model: Assumption of five zeros (zero defect in the parts,
zero mischief in the machines, zero inventory, zero delay, and zero paperwork)
iii. Involvement of workers and emphasis on multi-functional specialization and teamwork:
Quality circles
D. The constitution of the Informational-global economy
1. Constitution of global division of labor
a. Producers of high value, based on informational labor
b. Producers of high volume, based on low-cost labor
c. Producers of raw materials, based on natural endowment
d. Redundant producer
2. Constitution of global production network: Microelectronic and computer as examples
a. R&D, innovation, and prototype fabrication in “Technopolis”
b. Skilled fabrication in branch plants in newly industrializing areas in core countries
c. Semi-skilled, large-scale assembly and testing work in offshore newly industrialized
countries
d. Customization of device and aftersales maintenance and support in regional centers
throughout the globe
3. Constitution of global finance network: Capital and information flows around the globe via hubs
and nodes, i.e. international financial centers
4. Constitution of global distribution of consumer goods and services, via global metropolis
5. The constitution of the Informational-global capitalism:
“It is informational because the productivity and competitiveness of units or agents in this
economy (be it firms, regions, or nations) fundamentally depend upon their capacity to
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generate, process, and apply efficiently knowledge-based information. It is global
because the core activities of production, consumption, and circulation, as well as their
components (capital, labor, raw materials, management, information, technology, markets)
are organized on a global scale either directly or through network of linkages between
economic agents.” (Castells, 1996, p. 66) “It is an economy is an economic system “based
on the capacity of IT to be able to work as a unit in real time on a planetary scale.” (Castells,
1996, p.92)
E. The constitution of the network enterprise
1. Internal organization form of network enterprise: Horizontal corporation
a. Flexible specification and multi-functional workers
b. Flat and networked hierarchy
c. Team management
d. Autonomous but accountable teamwork and/or quality circle
e. Measuring performance by customer satisfaction
f. Reward based on team performance
g. Maximization of contact with suppliers and customers, and swift responses to feedbacks by
retooling or even reengineering
h. Information, training and retaining of workers
2. External organization of network enterprise
a. Multidirectional networking with small and medium business
b. Licensing-subcontracting
c. Corporate strategic alliance
3. Manuel Castells characterizes network enterprise as ”specific form of enterprise whose system
of means is constituted by the intersection of segments of autonomous system of goals. Thus,
the components of the network are both autonomous and dependent vis-a-vis the
network. …The performance of given network will then depend on two fundamental attributes to
the network: its connectedness, that is its structural ability to facilitate noise-free
communication between its components; its consistency, that is the extent to which there is
sharing of interests between the network’s goals and the goals of its components.” (1996,
p.171)
F. The transformation of work and employment: Debate on Jobless society
1. Automation and computerization will cause rise of unemployment and even a “jobless future
(Aronwitz & DiFazio, 1994)
2. Carnoy (2000) and Castells (1996) argue that the jobless thesis is too simplified and misleading.
Castells (1996, p. 228-9) characterize the transformation of employment and occupational
structure as follows
a. The phasing out of agricultural employment
b. The steady decline of traditional manufacturing employment
c. The rise of both producer services and social services, with the emphasis on business
service in the first category, and health services in the second group
d. The increasing diversification of service activities as sources of jobs
e. The rapid rise of managerial, professional, and technical jobs
f. The formation of a “white-collar” proletariat, made up of clerical and sales workers
g. The relative stability of a substantial share of employment in retail trade
h. The simultaneous increase of the upper and lower levels of the occupational structure
i. The relative upgrading of the occupational structure over time, with an increasing share of
those occupations that require higher skills and advanced education proportionally higher
than the increase of the lower-level categories
3. Harvey’s Fragmented labor market in Flexible Accumulation of Capitalism
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G. Transformation of work: The rise of Netwrokers and Flextimers
1. The New division of labor in network enterprise has transformed “work” in the following ways
(Castells, 1996, 243-45)
a. Value-making: It refers to the actual task performed in a given work process
i. The commanders
ii. The researchers
iii. The designers
iv. The integrators
v. The operators
vi. The operated
b. Relation-making: It refers to the relationship between a given organization and its
environment, including other organizations
i. The networkers
ii. The networked
iii. The switched-off
c. Decision-making: It refers to the relationship between managers and employees in a given
organization
i. The deciders
ii. The participant
iii. The executants
2. Flexibility of work changes important elements of work in the following four ways (Carnoy, 2000,
p. 74)
a. The notion of time: Flexible work means less employed time than a thrity-five- or forty-hour
per week full-year job
b. The notion of permanency: Flexible work is based explicitly on a fixed-term contract with no
commitment for future employment
c. The notion of location: Although the vast majority of workers still work at business sites,
increasing numbers of independent contractors work not on-site but in their homes
d. The notion of social contract between employer and employee: the traditional contract
based on reciprocal rights, protections, and obligation is rapidly relinquishing.
H. The consequence of the rise of informational-global capitalism
1. Polarization of classes
a. Polarization between globally mobile capitalists and locally pit-downed proletariat
b. Polarization between mobile “core labor force” of information-global economy made up of
information-based managers and “symbolic analysts” and “disposable labor force” that can
be automated and/or hired/fired/offshored
2. Thesis of deskilling:
a. For core labor force, the deskilling thesis does not applied, but workers in the core labor
force must constantly reskill or “reprogram” oneself to survive the competitions in
global-informational capitalism
b. For the disposable labor force, the deskilling thesis does applied. However, they do not only
experiencing deskilling but also skill and job obsolescence
3. Intensified structural coercion and exploitation thesis
4. Intensified competitions among capitalists
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I.
Educational Consequences of the Constitution of Informational-Global Capitalism
1. Education in Fordist Capitalism: Bowles and Gintis’ Schooling in Capitalist America (1976)
a. Marxian Critique of the Human Capital Theory
b. The reproductive functions of capitalist schooling system
i. Producing the technical and cognitive skill of labor
ii. Producing the personalities necessary for the modes of control in capitalist labor
process
iii. Legitimizing the economic inequality of capitalism and inculcating the value of
possessive individualism
iv. Constituting and reinforcing the fragmented and stratified consciousness of the
subordinate economic classes
c. The Correspondence principle in capitalist schooling
i. The structure correspondence between the social relations of the schooling
system and those of capitalist workplace
ii. “The structure of the social relations on education…inures the students to the
discipline of the workplace”
iii. It “develops the types of personal demeanor, modes of self-presentation,
self-image, and social-class identifications which are the crucial ingredients of
job adequacy”.
iv. The hierarchical relations between administrators and teachers, teachers and
students, and among students replicate the hierarchical division of labor and
vertical authority lines in the workplace.
v. The alienating features in schooling learning prepare students for the
alienating features in the Fordist labor process
vi. The “destructive competition among students through continual and ostensibly
meritocratic ranking and evaluation” nurtures the fragmented and stratified
consciousness in the workplace and legitimatize the economic inequality in
capitalism.
d. Differentiation of correspondence principles between the education stratification
and the occupational hierarchy
2. Education in Informational-Global Capitalism
a. Distinction between neo- and post-Fordism (Brown and Lauder, 1997)
i. “Neo-Fordism can be characterized in terms of creating greater flexibility market
through a reduction in social overheads and power of trade unions, the privatization of
public utilities and the welfare state.” (1997, p. 176)
ii. “Post-Fordism can be defined in terms of the development of the state as a ‘strategic
trader’ shaping the direction of the national economy through investment in key
economic sectors and in the development of human capital. ...Post-Fordism is based on
a shift to ‘high-value’ customized production and services using multi-skilled workers.”
(1997, 176)
b. Education initiatives corresponding neo-Fordism
i. Education of vocationalism: Tighter and more direct corresponding between education
outputs and workplace requirement
ii. Commdification of education and education for performativity: Tighter and more direct
corresponding between education outputs and market imperative
c. Education initiative corresponding post-Fordism
i. Education of flexible specialization in labor process: Replacement of education of
specialized knowledge and skill with education for generic skills and multiple
intelligences.
ii. Education for participatory labor process in network enterprise: Replacement of
education for docile and disciplined bodies and minds with education for team work and
collaborative learning
iii. Education for innovation: Replacement of rote learning with creative learning
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iv. Education for networking capacities in network enterprise: Replacement of education
for textual literacy with education for communicative skills and computer literacy
v. Education for globalism: Replacement of education for localism (i.e. locl or national
identity) and vernacular with education for globalism and global language
3. Degree of correspondence in correspondence principle: Burden of proof of the causality
between school and workplace
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