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372 THE ISA HANDBOOK IN CONTEMPORARY SOCIOLOGY

terms of utility) and diminishes the same help workers adjust to the dictates of mass
forces (in political terms of obedience). If production and help managements to fathom
economic exploitation’, continues Foucault, new motivational strategies.
‘separated the force and product of labour, let At first their founders were pragmatic
us say that disciplinary coercion establishes men, searching for influence, credibility and
the constricting link between an internal funds for their ideas. They felt that the rising
aptitude … The soul’, he concluded, ‘was, scientific management movement that swept
the chain of the body’. through industry in the first 30 years of the
The claim that black workers need to twentieth century was ignoring the ‘human
develop a new soulful orientation for eco- factor’. With their insights and methods,
nomic growth, for the RDP marks two shifts. industry could motivate a rather recalcitrant
Firstly, such a participation is not seen as a labour force; through cooperation between
pragmatic/strategic or an instrumental neces- the University and industry one could create
sity but as a ‘value’ – it is the moral impera- a feedback process through which the new
tive of nation-building. Secondly it marks a cadre of personnel managers could expect to
shift from a focus on inequality and power in be trained. In turn, these experts could become
this society to an appeal to ‘voluntarism’: to effective handlers of labour problems.
the compliance, performance or failure in the It is precisely this interaction between
efforts of ordinary people. Our failure will be industrial sociologists and psychologists and
counted, not so much on the scales of class, industrialists in the West that branded them
power, race and access but on the effort of as ‘servants of power’. Instead of being seen
ordinary people. as scientists of work-related problems they
It is precisely here that sociology is asked were seen to be the ideologues of adjustment
to both use and suspend its analytical tools: to the dominant norms and values of society.
to help in the motivation of the majority of Instead of questioning the nature of work, its
our people to ‘deliver’, and be silent on the monotony and repetitive character, they
constraints that make motivation impossible; sought to adjust workers to its rhythms.
conversely, to choose to speak the ‘unspeak- Instead, finally, of lending their craft to
able’ is seen to be damaging the motivational human improvement, they sought commis-
effort. sions and awards from the short-term priori-
ties of corporate elites.
Furthermore, sociology’s broader theoreti-
cal tradition claimed to be able to explain the
COLONIAL MANAGERIALISM chemistry of capitalism’s success. Weber’s
idea that modernity could not only be
Industrial sociology and psychology, the dis- explained through economic causes but had
ciplines that constitute Industrial and Labour to grasp cultural and ideational factors – ‘the
Studies, were developed to deal with the part which religious forces have played in
problem of ‘motivation’ in modern bureau- forming the developing web of our … worldly
cracies and mass production enterprises. modern culture’ (1958: 90) led to problematic
Their history in the advanced capitalist coun- conclusions. Capitalism’s emergence, its cal-
tries differs fundamentally from our own. culating rationality and its accumulating
As engineers, planners and economists in ethos was seen to be peculiar to Europe,
the West concentrated on the flows and and this ‘emergence’ was due to the self-
rhythms of the production process, and discipline, asceticism and motivation of what
defined the nature of work, its output and its he termed its ‘Protestant Ethic’. Of course
quotas, social scientists were enlisted to deal, there was the related claim that the Orient
in the words of Harry Braverman, 1974 with remained the ‘enchanted garden’ of the
the ‘human machinery’. Their task was to world, since powerful values embedded in