ADVERTIMENT. Lʼaccés als continguts dʼaquesta tesi queda condicionat a lʼacceptació de les condicions dʼús establertes per la següent llicència Creative Commons: http://cat.creativecommons.org/?page_id=184 ADVERTENCIA. El acceso a los contenidos de esta tesis queda condicionado a la aceptación de las condiciones de uso establecidas por la siguiente licencia Creative Commons: http://es.creativecommons.org/blog/licencias/ WARNING. The access to the contents of this doctoral thesis it is limited to the acceptance of the use conditions set by the following Creative Commons license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/?lang=en AUTONOMOUS UNIVERSITY OF BARCELONA SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY DEPARTMENT PHD PROGRAM IN PERSON AND SOCIETY IN THE CONTEMPORARY WORLD A CRITICAL APPROACH TO THE DISCURSIVE CONSTRUCTION OF WORK AND THE SELF AS AN EMPLOYEE IN PRESENT-DAY GREECE Doctoral Thesis by Aikaterini Nikolopoulou Director: Dra. Leonor Ma Cantera Espinosa Barcelona 2016 Una aproximación crítica a la construcción discursiva del trabajo y a la autoconstrucción como trabajador en la Grecia actual. Tesis Doctoral Aikaterini Nikolopoulou Directora de Tesis: Dra. Leonor Ma Cantera Espinosa Universidad Autónoma de Barcelona Departamento De Psicología Social Programa de Doctorado: Persona y Sociedad en el Mundo Contemporáneo Barcelona 2016 _____________________ _________________________ Aikaterini Nikolopoulou Leonor M. Cantera Espinosa Doctoranda Directora de Tesis CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS .......................................................................................................... v ABSTRACT ............................................................................................................................. vii RESUMEN .............................................................................................................................. viii INTRODUCTION ...................................................................................................................... 1 PART 1: CRITICAL LITERATURE REVIEW ...................................................................... 23 1. Work in the Realm of Time; A Story of Mutual Inventions and Interventions ................... 24 1.1. Employment as a pledge of slavery. ................................................................ 25 1.2. Instrumentality in the service of hierarchy. ..................................................... 27 1.3. Reforming religion, reforming working subjects. ........................................... 28 1.4. The prevalence of homo œconomicus. ............................................................ 29 2. The Passage to Mass Production and Beyond ...................................................................... 30 2.1. “Rational” legitimization for a “rational” production. .................................... 31 2.2. Subjectivities on the assembly line. ................................................................ 32 2.3. Introducing the flexible, cognitive worker. ..................................................... 34 2.3.1. Flexible and immaterial labour: towards autonomy or (additional) control? .... 35 2.3.2. The biopolitical nature of work ............................................................................ 36 3. The Changing Forms of Power and Resistance; Neoliberalism and its Discontents ........... 38 3.1. It’s (more than) the economy, stupid! ............................................................. 39 3.2. More than an ideology. .................................................................................... 41 3.3. Are we all capitalists? ...................................................................................... 43 3.3.1. De-centering responsibility and control; professionalism and employability discourses ............................................................................................................... 44 3.3.2. Resistance(s) ........................................................................................................ 50 4. On the Political Subject: Reclaiming the Right to Produce Subjectivity ............................. 56 4.1. Reinvigorating the collective subject; towards the extinction or the reinvention of “class”? .................................................................................................... 57 4.2. The precarious multitude. ................................................................................ 58 i 4.2.1. The multitude as a “political project” ................................................................. 59 4.2.2. Precarity: At the intersection between post-industrialism and neoliberalism ..... 61 5. The Greek Case .................................................................................................................... 65 5.1. Simulacra of democracy, or when the content does not match the form. ....... 66 5.2. Welcome to Greece, Chicago boys! ................................................................ 70 5.3. The production of the undemocratic citizen. ................................................... 73 5.3.1. Accelerating the de-democratization of the subject vol.1; the “exceptional” nature of the crisis .................................................................................................. 73 5.3.2. Accelerating the de-democratization of the subject vol.2; the “shocking” nature of the crisis ............................................................................................................. 75 5.4. Sites and instances of resistance. ..................................................................... 78 PART 2: RESEARCH DESIGN .............................................................................................. 81 1. The Discursive Construction of the Social ........................................................................... 82 2. Discourse analysis. ............................................................................................................... 84 3. Our Multiperspectival Package ............................................................................................ 85 3.1. Discourse theory. ............................................................................................. 85 3.2. Critical discourse analysis. .............................................................................. 88 3.3. Critical discursive psychology. ....................................................................... 89 3.3.1. Interpretative repertoires ..................................................................................... 90 3.3.2. The analytical tool of “positioning” .................................................................... 92 4. Accessing the Field .............................................................................................................. 93 4.1. Working with words. ....................................................................................... 93 4.2. Working with photos. ...................................................................................... 95 5. The Participants .................................................................................................................... 96 6. The Research Procedure ....................................................................................................... 97 7. The Analytic Procedure ........................................................................................................ 99 8. Ethical Considerations ........................................................................................................ 100 9. Evaluating the Produced Knowledge ................................................................................. 101 10. Research Questions .......................................................................................................... 103 ii PART 3: FINDINGS AND DISCUSSION ............................................................................ 104 1. The Self as an Employee .................................................................................................... 106 1.1. “The entrepreneur of the self”. ...................................................................... 108 1.1.1. Loyalty to the self ............................................................................................... 112 1.1.2. Individualizing responsibility ............................................................................. 119 1.1.3. Normalizing predicaments as a part of a strategy ............................................. 124 1.1.4. Summary ............................................................................................................ 129 1.2. Socioeconomically determined self. .............................................................. 130 1.2.1. “Just do the job” ................................................................................................ 133 1.2.2. Socioeconomically determined choices.............................................................. 138 1.2.3. Between normalization and resistance .............................................................. 142 1.2.4. Summary ............................................................................................................ 144 1.3. Occupation-oriented self ............................................................................... 146 1.3.1. Loyal to one’s profession ................................................................................... 149 1.3.2. Remain within