ERIC Number: EJ1078191
Record Type: Journal
Publication Date: 2015
Pages: 16
Abstractor: As Provided
ISBN: N/A
ISSN: ISSN-0158-037X
EISSN: N/A
Tapping into the "Standing-Reserve": A Comparative Analysis of Workers' Training Programmes in Kolkata and Toronto
Maitra, Saikat; Maitra, Srabani
Studies in Continuing Education, v37 n3 p317-332 2015
This paper examines employment-related training programmes offered by state funded agencies and multinational corporations in Toronto (Canada) and Kolkata (India). In recent years both cities have witnessed a rise in the service sector industries aligned with global regimes of flexible work and the consequent reinvention of a worker subject that is no longer disciplined according to the needs of industrial production. A worker must now be self-regulated, competitive, flexible, with an ability to convey an urbane, English-speaking deportment within the workplace. Training of employees, especially soft skill training becomes crucial in this connection as a form of technology for achieving this end. Based on Martin Heidegger's conceptualisation of "standing-reserve", we suggest that what training programmes do in the context of neoliberal capitalist production is the creation of an essential quality of human-ness that has to be harnessed, its potentialities tapped and amplified through training. We further suggest that such programmes often remain heavily influenced by race/class/gender hierarchies as well as stereotypical assumptions of desirable/undesirable bodies, forms of socialisation and modes of habitation that often are naturalised in the course of training.
Descriptors: Foreign Countries, Workplace Learning, Training, Employees, Neoliberalism, Race, Sex, Stereotypes, Socialization, Learning Modules, Comparative Education, Skill Development, Job Skills, Ethnography, Labor Force Development, Work Attitudes, Ideology, Qualitative Research, Participant Observation, Semi Structured Interviews
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Publication Type: Journal Articles; Reports - Research
Education Level: N/A
Audience: N/A
Language: English
Sponsor: N/A
Authoring Institution: N/A
Identifiers - Location: Canada (Toronto); India
Grant or Contract Numbers: N/A