Post-Toyotist Affect:
Japanese Workers Working On Neoliberal Reforms
Speaker: Nana GAGNÉ (Assistant
Professor, Department of Japanese Studies, The Chinese University of Hong Kong)
Time: 1:00 – 2:30 pm, 10 Feb 2017 (Friday)
Venue: Room 115, Humanities Building, New Asia College, CUHK
Time: 1:00 – 2:30 pm, 10 Feb 2017 (Friday)
Venue: Room 115, Humanities Building, New Asia College, CUHK
The pursuits of stability and security have been the orientation of many Japanese and Japanese corporations since the post-war period. In recent decades, the state and corporations started to promote neoliberal reforms in an attempt to “correct” Japanese capitalism. To explore more about the neoliberal restructuring in Japan and its influence on Japanese employees, our department invited Prof. Nana Gagné to give a seminar on “Post-Toyotist Affect: Japanese Workers Working On Neoliberal Reforms” on Feb 10.
Prof. Nana Gagné |
Prof.
Gagné discussed two major issues in the talk——how neoliberal restructuring had
affected Japan’s particular postwar relationship between welfare, corporations
and individuals (i.e. the post-war Japanese system of “welfare corporatism”);
and what restructuring had done to individual workers and their subjectivity,
as corporate culture was transformed and rearticulated with new forms of
organization, evaluation, and governance.
Neoliberal
reforms had brought in deregulations of non-regular employment, discretionary work,
and a new merit system that emphasized “management-by-objectives”. By promoting
American-style management practices and performance-based strategies, it was intended
to train up a group of “strong individuals”, in contrast to the “company man” enculturated
in the past. But in practice, neoliberal restructuring was imbricated with
complex realities of historical trajectories and local contexts. As a result, a
number of unintended consequences arose. For instance, employees became
defensive, stopped building companionship with colleagues, and had worsen
workplace relationships. The liberation and flexibility introduced by the
reforms, representing the best interest of the companies, in the eyes of the
employees were alienating and dehumanizing.
The audience |
As
Prof. Gagné concluded, the emergence of a “post-Toyotist affect” revealed new
kinds of alienation based on quantified output. The restructuring efforts did
not produce a new discourse that enabled the transvaluation of older values
into new values. Rather, the de-coupling of employment structures and
individual stability led to an ambivalent nostalgia for the previous management
style.
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