Transcript What is Green Work?

Green Work, Wealth &
Community Development
• Work: how can we be of
service?
• Wealth: what’s the
purpose of work?
Related Questions
• What is “green”—what is
“sustainability”?
• What is money, finance,
democracy?
• “Markets”? “Regulation”?
• etc.
Context
• Structural crisis of the
economic system.
• Long-held
assumptions
challenged.
• Issue of the
POTENTIALS of
economic
development
Key Theme: Redefining Wealth
Phantom/Casino vs. Real Economy
Quantitative:
Money & Material
Accumulation
Qualitative:
Well-being
Regeneration
Work & the ‘Real Economy’
What is work & its
trajectory of
evolution?
What is Green Work?
What’s a “Job”?
How are jobs and work
remunerated?
The Purpose of Social &
Economic Change
• Reform?
– mainstream view of sustainability as limiting
excess
– redistribution of (quantitative) wealth
• Restructuring / Revisioning?
– reshaping the purpose of the economy
– redefining as well as redistributing wealth
What is Green Work?
• Cleanup?
• Efficiency?
• Blue-collar? White-collar?
• Should all work be ‘green’?
Issues Raised
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the nature of work & green work
the purpose & structure of economic life
the role of money
the role of human & environmental need
the role of “labour”
the role of “business”
cutting-edge alternative perspectives
What’s the ‘Real Economy’?
• simply material production?
• Complicated by the rise of
cultural
production/consumption
• Raises questions about the
purpose of production
My Perspective
• Green as Postindustrial
– authentic knowledge-based development
– key role of culture in the economy
• Strategic importance of positive
alternatives in making change
• Holistic definition of a Green Economy
• Importance of “work” not simply “jobs”
The Economy in Loops
A Green Economy-1
1. From products to services: culture-based
production as People Production; focus
on end-use & human need.
2. Ecosystem-based economy:
decentralization, distribution, participation
A Green Economy-2
• Substitutes human creativity for resources
& energy: shift in labour/resources
balance.
– Human development should be the primary
strategy for sustainability
• Eco-production: high “eyes to acres” ratio.
Efficiency depends on participation.
Industrialism: The Divided Economy
Invisible
Use-value
“Consumption”
People
Unpaid
Women
Informal
Private
Visible
Exchange-value
“Production”
Things
Paid
Men
Formal
Public
Invisible Economy (1)
Total Productive System of an Industrial Society
(layer cake with icing)
GNP-Monetized
½ of Cake
Top two layers
GNP “Private” Sector
“Private” Sector
“Public”Sector
“underground economy
Non-Monetized
Productive ½ of
Cake
Lower two layers
All rights reserved.
2
“Love Economy”
Mother Nature
Rests on
GNP “Public” Sector
Rests on
Social Cooperative
Love Economy
Rests on
Nature’s Layer
Copyright© 1982 Hazel Henderson
Issues
• Automation of blue-collar work.
• Degradation & outsourcing of bluecollar work: globalization.
• Undervaluing of Resources: labourvs. resource-productivity
• ‘Automation’ of white-collar work
• De-marketization of production & the
Commons.
• A crisis of “jobs” or a Crisis of
Remuneration?
• Is Fordist-era manufacturing the
solution?
Remuneration & Qualitative Wealth
• Sever work and income?
• Wages: tied to certain kinds of
production & markets. Public
goods not so well served by
markets.
• Economic insecurity: closely
related to environmental
destruction.