Technology and Culture

TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 585 This is one of those books which along with a deep faith in the “obvious truth” of natural science shows a faith in the “obvious good­ ness” of technological innovation. In a rather modest way it is pro­ pounding, to laymen and scientists alike, a paradigmatic system of beliefs which may not always overlap with the paradigms of the big science in this domain. It is a book likely to find some opposition from those who recognize the Mertonian norms of universalism, dis­ interestedness, and organized skepticism as the ethos of medical sci­ ence but find it difficult to apply them in practice. Insofar as John’s program involves a step forward in the controlled application of technology to human affairs, both its specific contents and the recep­ tion accorded it by the professional community deserve the attention of every student of the history of technology. Fernando Lolas* Work and Technology. Edited by Marie R. Haug and Jacques Dofny. Sage Studies in International Sociology 10. London and Beverly Hills: Sage Publications, 1977. Pp. 258. $12.00 (clothbound); $6.00 (paperbound). This is a selection of sixteen abbreviated papers out of fifty pre­ sented at the sessions of the research committee on work during the 1974 Toronto International Sociological Association Eighth World Congress. The sociology of work is a relatively new subfield and in­ cludes a number of older specialties under a new rubric. Prominent among these are the sociology of organizations, the sociology of occu­ pations and professions, and the remains of industrial sociology, which traditionally was more often psychology than sociology. What may be the general theme in this new subheld is the increasing con­ cern with the well-being of the individual worker and the role technology plays in the shaping of the conditions and content ofwork. The 19th-century progressivist idea was that everybody will soon benefit from technological progress. Marx put a strong qualification on this thesis: not before the socialist revolution. Indeed, he said, under capitalism technological progress will only result in greater misery, meaning both the impoverishment and the deskilling of the worker. In our century it was realized that the problem is multidimen­ sional, and interest has focused on other questions. Under what con­ ditions does technological progress determine the characteristics of (1) the division of labor, (2) the work organization, and (3) the job? What technology makes organizations more or less hierarchical, more or less bureaucratic? What technological changes foster new pro­ *Dr. Lolas, presently postdoctoral fellow at the Department of Neuroscience, Rush University, Chicago, has conducted research on psychophysiology and psychosomatic medicine. 586 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE fessions or kill old occupations? What technology causes more or less specialization and fragmentation in the division of labor? What technology makesjobs more or less monotonous, strenuous, frustrat­ ing? The present volume includes three papers from the Soviet Union, one from East Germany, and one from Poland. I shall discuss the Polish paper separately. The rest use uncritically and undifferentiatingly the labels “capitalist society,” “bourgeois sociologists,” “socialist society,” “socialist worker,” and “socialist relationship to work,” while professing a limited familiarity with Western studies and declaring that numerous surveys on the topics have been conducted in their own countries. They never quote page numbers or describe the survey data clearly (no sample size, no variables, etc.). They claim the following original discoveries that allegedly refute those of “capitalist sociologists”: high job satisfaction is not equivalent to high job motivation; the levels of education, aspiration, and expectation of the individual correlate withjob satisfaction. They claim that Western sociologists have documented the fact that (1) Western industrial workers have an instrumental work attitude, that is to say, they con­ sider work as no more than a means to income; (2) they are privatized, that is to say, they take no interest in their own class; (3) they are preoccupied with job security; and (4) there is no chance of job im­ provement in the West due to the exclusive rule of the profit motive. They go so far as to declare that Western sociologists—and academi­ cians Yadov and Kissel refer to Rokeach—have shown the irrelevance of fulfillment through...