In Allison Pugh’s the Tumbleweed Society, the book offers insight into the cultural deprivation and insecurities within the lives of individuals and the workplace society. Using eighty individual interviews, Pugh offers exploration in the lives of people from different social class standings as well as gender and racial segregation pertaining to the work force. Noting specifically the feeling of severe job insecurity and the fact that most believe that job insecurity is purely inevitable. Along with job insecurity Pugh focuses on how people cope with flexibility in the workplace and discusses the hardships of how the fast paced and technological advancements have interfiered within the intimate lives of families.
Pugh designed her study …show more content…
Her husband has been employed as well as laid off. However, her husband has never been laid off long enough to feel the pressure from the lack of a job. Therefore Mrs. Moore does not understand the real effect of job insecurity on the household intimately or economically. She is an at will employee who works when she wants to. Mrs. Moore is not the average citizen who seeks employment as a need and not as a want. Moore is completely different than Fiona who is a single mother that has faced layoffs and economic hardships that have strained her family (Pugh 3). Fiona however is a good description of the adaptation of …show more content…
“The worker is related to the product of labor as to an alien object. (Marx)” Ultimately Fiona’s work becomes an object within her life. Being an example of the Tumbleweed Society as adapting flexibility in the work place, Fiona does not allow the work place to be a part of her home life. She doesn’t feel as though she owes anything to her employer other than hard work and perceives her job as a “means to satisfy needs, not to simply feel the pure emotion of actually satisfying a need (Marx).” Emotion is a prominent factor in the workforce. Before the perspective of job insecurity was not felt as harshly as it is today. The past work force felt more security and stability than the work force after the corporate changes in the 1980’s. Alienation began creeping in people’s lives and cooperation was allowed to set rules to
Pugh designed her study …show more content…
Her husband has been employed as well as laid off. However, her husband has never been laid off long enough to feel the pressure from the lack of a job. Therefore Mrs. Moore does not understand the real effect of job insecurity on the household intimately or economically. She is an at will employee who works when she wants to. Mrs. Moore is not the average citizen who seeks employment as a need and not as a want. Moore is completely different than Fiona who is a single mother that has faced layoffs and economic hardships that have strained her family (Pugh 3). Fiona however is a good description of the adaptation of …show more content…
“The worker is related to the product of labor as to an alien object. (Marx)” Ultimately Fiona’s work becomes an object within her life. Being an example of the Tumbleweed Society as adapting flexibility in the work place, Fiona does not allow the work place to be a part of her home life. She doesn’t feel as though she owes anything to her employer other than hard work and perceives her job as a “means to satisfy needs, not to simply feel the pure emotion of actually satisfying a need (Marx).” Emotion is a prominent factor in the workforce. Before the perspective of job insecurity was not felt as harshly as it is today. The past work force felt more security and stability than the work force after the corporate changes in the 1980’s. Alienation began creeping in people’s lives and cooperation was allowed to set rules to