Russell's Blog

Lil Ħija Jitwieled-Poeżija ta Vincent Caruana

2009-07-21T14:30:00.000-07:00

X'ġejt tagħmel ħija, f'din id-dinja tagħna,
f'dal-wied ta dmugħ, ta dwejjaq u ta' dmija?
Ma tafx li ġejt biex issa taqsam magħna
uġigħ il-qalb li bih din l-art mimlija?

Hawnkekk se tgħadd minn ftit jiem ferħana
il-jiem tal-bidu li msejħin tfulija.
Tinżagħha mbgħad dik ħarstek hekk daħkana
u tilbes flokha l-ħarsa tat-tbatija.

Se tgħaddi magħna ħajja xejn mistrieħa.
Se tkun bħal bniedem jegħreq f'nofs għadira
li jdum jitħabat fl-ilma ħajtu sħiħa.

Taħsibx li qalbi hi tal-hemm ilsira.
Jien ngħallmek bħali l-ħarsa żżomm ferrieħa
u tidħak f'wiċċ id-dinja daħka kbira.

Miet Drogat- Poezija ta' Francis Galea

2009-04-21T00:06:00.000-07:00

Jista' jkun
li f'dak il-ħin
ghazilt li tagħlaq għajnejk
u tistrieħ
għax ma bqajtx tara
ħwejjeġ sbieħ

Jista' jkun
li ma kontx taf kif
u li trid tmut
ħesrem u waħdek
mitluf fil-baħħ
bla ħsieb
bal ħbieb
qalb il-ħmieġ u l-ħurrieq

Jista' jkun
li għada l-ġurnali
jgħidu li miet
drogat
f'misraħ-ġnien imwarrab
mill-umanita'
u jidhirli jien
li n-nies għandha sehem
f'din il-mewta qabel iż-żmien.

Using Keith Grint’s Chapter 2 as reference identify the major differences between pre-industrial and industrial society

2009-03-26T08:44:00.000-07:00

After reading Grint’s chapter 2, the first thing that rally struck us was that in the pre-industrial society (hunter-gatherer society) work was not a defined activity that had to happen from 9 till 5, like in the industrial society. Taking, for example, the farmer who had to cope with all his field work, he and his family would not have a defined set of rules on when to work and when to not work. On the other hand, the factory worker in the industrial period had these defined rules on the place of work, such as the 9 till 5 example.
As we have been discussing in class, during the pre-industrial period, an average family background and economy would consist of a farm surrounded by farming land which in turn would provide the family an area where to grow agricultural products. In turn, the more siblings the family would manage to bring up, the more the advantage in human resources for the agricultural work that needed to be done around the year.

As one can imagine, siblings were brought up in a very sheltered environment. Parents were all the time reachable as work was done in broad eye sight away from home. When the brothers and sisters grew up and from a very young age, they were thought the trade of farming so they would help with the work that had to be done in the fields. This brought with it a lot of security to the siblings, as most of the time, the hours working in the fields were all spent with parents or other siblings.
During the late eighteenth century and early nineteenth century, the industrial revolution took place. A rapid development in industry took place, with capitalists starting to own and introduce improved machinery and production methods on a large scale. First with textiles industry, then followed the steel industry together with chemicals production and digital information technologies. However, what brought this change had to do with the workers and families as well, with their changes over time from being an owner of a piece of land and farming it towards moving out from the countryside to the city and work in a factory. The worker, from a person willing to farm his land, became more willing to leave his family and go to the factory to work. This brought a change in the way siblings were now being brought up. Time spent with their parents was far less than before.
On the other hand, Grint spoke about the issue of diversity and gender roles. During the industrial revolution, the textile industry employed and equal number of men and women. This shows that there was an attitude change towards this to happen:- from the typical mother who helped the father with the work in the fields and made sure to provide security and warmth to the siblings, she moved out and started working in the factories as well.

Grint also spoke about the “family wage”. According to Grint, the breadwinner of the family was seen as the father in the industrial society. This was different in the pre-industrial stage were incomes varied and came from different sources:- taking the example of the family living on farming in rural places, income came from various agricultural products that the family managed to produce. The man looked after the most skilled and difficult work to do in the fields to produce agricultural products, including ploughing, mowing and hedging whilst on the other hand, the women looked after and produced poultry products and managed to produce dairy products. These together produced various income sources.

But now, let us focus a little bit more on the family, because it is on the aspect of the family that we chose to focus. We may find it a little bit difficult to imagine how these families used to live because we were born in a completely new era. We were born long after the Industrial revolution.

Before this major change people used to live in traditional families. One household usually catered for three different generations: grandma and grandpa, their children and their grand-children. It was not something special that you find a family of twenty or more members living under the same roof. Although before the industrial revolution there were different industries “most of them were intimately related to agricultural produce” and in Chapter two Grint emphasizes this by saying that the “main work was directly agricultural.” The families were different as well in the way they reared children. They thought of children as an extra pair of helping hands on the farm or in the farmhouse, so they usually had a lot of children. Education was not important and few children were privileged to go to school. Most of the people in society came from the lower class, there was a small rich upper class and a few that came from the middle class. It is very much to imagine this type of life where there were no televisions, no recorded music, mo telephone, no movies and no cars.

Although some people still think that the male should be the soul bread-winner, before the industrial revolution, people, as Grint puts it “have regularly reproduced an ideology that perceives male workers to be the primary, if not the only, source of income for their families” With the industrial revolution this changed a bit how people saw the world of work. First of all the industrial revolution witnessed the decline of agricultural work and it “polarized the work opportunities of men and women.”

Before the industrial revolution people lived in very quiet environments and did not move a lot because their only ways of transportation was by walking and by using animals like horses or donkeys.

After the Industrial revolution things changed a lot and the family became very different. In fact we can now say that we are living in an industrialized nation and that the family is changing rapidly. Sociologists argue about the liquidity of society and in fact many things in society are changing as we can clearly witness.

Work according to different people..cartoons, videos, etc

2009-03-20T08:29:00.000-07:00

Although I do not consider myself as a Norman Lowell fan, this clip really struck me. First of all I hope that someday I would be able to live like a Prince as he said!! Although I found what he said as a remix, this is what he said originally and it is not someone imitating him. I agree with him that work can sometimes become tedious and that those know how to manipulate people are those who can boast of doing nothing at their place of work. Nowadays some families find it hard to live with only one wage. Despite this I think that it is very difficult to change this way of life.

P.S: I am sorry that the video is in Maltese but what he is saying is summarized above. Snoopy's typical working week summarizes the video in pictures!

Poems in relation to the world of work.

2009-03-16T01:11:00.000-07:00

This is the Critical evaluation of five poems about work in relation to Grint's first chapter: "What is work?" I worked together with Katya (http://katyamuscat.blogspot.com/) and Christian (http://www.chriscamilleri.blogspot.com/) . Please feel free to comment and offer critical and constructive critique.

Analyzing five poems relating to the world of work we were provided with five different pictures of how these five poets perceive the world of work with all it components and its impact on society.Grint with his writing tackles such ideas and find new solutions to these issues so that we could make the much needed move forward which we would help us to perceive the world of work not from such a pessimistic point of view.

In the first chapter of his book Grint uses his views, as well as different perspectives of various sociologists, to discuss some interesting points on the world of work. We can probably conclude that Grint detests capitalism and its results. In fact he uses the views of Marx, Morris and others to make us aware that capitalism can result in ruining one’s social life.

“The Chimney-Sweeper’s Complaint is a poem by Mary Alcock. In eight stanzas, Alcock perfectly describes how a life of a labourer can be ruined and put down. The issue discussed is the issue of the employer versus the unskilled worker: a worker who is so “helpless” and “wretched” that his life is like a life of a slave. Grint discusses the problem of slaves. He describes the situation by claiming that “the more A gains, the more B loses”. In this poem the unskilled labourer calls his employer master. He is portrayed just like an object. He has no dignity. The rich master does not even bother about the situation of his servant. Although the servant has “burnt and bruis’d” legs and although he feels his limbs feeble, his master does not care and commands the boy to keep on working. This reflects the quotation that Grint uses in his first chapter. A quotation that Billy Bennett once sang:

“it’s the rich what gets the pleasure,

It’s the poor what gets the blame.”

In Praise of Idleness Russell claims that

“A great deal of harm is being done in the modern world by belief in the virtuousness of WORK…the road to happiness and prosperity lies in an organized diminution of work”

It is not the case that one has to necessarily think that no work constitutes virtuousness but it is ultimately true that some work can be very frustrating and painful. This goes hand in hand with Alcock’s poem. In the case of the chimney sweeper portrayed in the poem, if his work was diminished or at least he was given dignity he would at least be happier. I chose to finish this analysis of this poem by using a quotation by Morris which I found in Grint’s first chapter. It really struck me and I think that it is very much true for certain jobs. Taking a quick look around our world of work, one cannot but agree with such statement:

“it is the nature of man (sic)…to take pleasure in his work (but) there is some labour which is so far from being a blessing that it is a curse; that it would be better for the community and for the worker if the latter were to fold his hands and refuse to work” (1983:35)

The other poem we discussed is “Work” by D.H. Lawrence. It is a very strong poem. Lawrence emphasizes that work must be something which is fun and absorbing. He feels so strong about this claim that he tells the reader “don’t do it” if it is “never any fun” and it “doesn’t absorb you”. He argues that work must create new and living beings just like trees in spring. Work must bring you to a natural state and must give you identity as well as dignity. Just like nature, work can be a recreation of each and every person. Lawrence seems to detest this period in life where we depend almost completely on machines.

Just like “The Chimney-Sweeper’s complaint”, this poem can be discussed in relation to Grint’s chapter “What is work?”.

Thomas Carlyle, who was a Scottish satirical writer, described work as ‘natural’ as long as it showed “the spiritual side of human nature.” Lawrence in his poem also emphasizes this point. According to the poet, work must give man satisfaction and he must feel as though he is living, not working. He seems to tell the reader that work is just like food: necessary for one’s survival and for one to be complete, he must work.

The poet carries it a little bit too far and in fact it contrasts with Alcock’s poem and with Larkin’s one: “Toad”. It contrasts also with the view of many of us about work. Fortunately or unfortunately work is not considered to be self-fulfilling and necessary by most of the people. Hegel believed that work should create a room for development of the social and individual development.

Contrary to what D.H. Lawrence thinks, Gorz believed that self realization does not occur in work as we normally refer to but “it is rather associated with/hobbies or leisure activities.”

Whilst on one hand it is true that machines have created a more easily-lived life, it is also true that people are becoming “slaves to, not controllers of, machines” just like Morris claimed. In fact in the last two stanzas one can literally feel the anger of the poet when he claims that we must “smash the machines” and that we must “cancel the machines we have got.” It is true that we have reached an age where we are almost depending completely on these machines we have created. This reminds me of the song “Welcome to the machine” by the nineties group Pink Floyd.

I think that keeping these poems in mind each and every one of us must work thoroughly to improve our world of work. I don’t really believe that work is “actually a necessary evil” just like Adam Smith claimed but when thinking about the situation one cannot notice that in the world of work there is surely a whole great room for improvement.

“You will be hearing from us shortly” is a poem on how the women especially those who were married and with children found it very difficult to find a place in the world of work. This is very clear in that which Grint calls The Patriarchal model where women can take important positions of authority only in extreme cases. Apart from this Grint also criticizes the way the hours of work leave little space for the man to take up his responsibility as a father. Also such work practices make it very difficult for the woman to do two things at once that is work and be capable of giving the necessary attention to the children and the family’s household. In fact this is why the employers tend to think twice before giving a woman an authoritative or privileged position. As employers might think that she will not be able to cope with her household children and work. This is very clearly portrayed in the poem in lines:

“Married, children,

We see. The usual dubious

Desire to perpetuate what had better

Not have happened at all”.

The solution to all this according to Grint is flexible hours and the provision of crèches on the place of work. Apart from this Grint also adds that according to the information revealed by Dex (1988:38-9) half of the woman who were unemployed were told by their husbands that they should be staying at home. I believe that it is as clear as daylight that males have always been regarded as the stronger sex and therefore predominantly the Bread winner. Another problem that leads to gender in-equality as portrayed by the poetess U.A.Fanthorpe in the poem “You will be Hearing from us Shortly” is also as a result of the fact that most husbands do not help in that which regards household work. Grint proves this in his writing even though Dex research showed how man with children participated more in housework in order to accommodate their wives or partners work practices. Although a number of people might think we have made reasonable progress in that which regards gender equality I believe that there is still a lot of work that has to be done both on the employer’s behalf. This is so that family women would not be considered as those who can never be given the chance of a career Apart from this more women should be given more incentives to consider taking up a career. Obviously males should also be much more highly educated on that which regards housework and how it should not be considered a degrading job which should only be done woman.

Basil Banting also presents us with another poem that relates to the world of work: "What the chairman told tom?" Banting's poem creates many questions such as: Can work be seen as something that ensures the survival of the individual and society as such? Many activities regarded as work may not be seen as essential or necessary for the survival (Haralombus and Holborn, 2004).

According to Grint “We cannot distinguish between work and non-work”. For example for some individuals taking photographs is an occupation not a leisure pursuit. We see this clearly in Banting's poem “What the Chairman told Tom” (1965). Poetry is considered as a ‘work of art’ but the speaker of the poem considers art as something that is non valuable since “my ten year old son can do it”. Every individual has his or her own viewpoints so we do not see the same activities (Grint, 2005). For example if I consider art as work, other persons, might disagree with my opinion.

According to Grint, ‘work is opposite of leisure: it is something we have to do, something we may prefer not to do and something we tend to get paid for (Grint, 2005; 10). “Leisure is the time left over after other obligations have been attended to” (Horolomus and Holborn, 2004; 674). But why do always consider work as something being boring and as something we might prefer not to do? In Grint’s (2005) book we see also that there are some workers who actually like the work they do, and by doing so they have the ability to like it and in the mean time earn something for their living. “By this the individuals could by their way into self realization” (Grint, 2005; 21)

Keith Grint (2005) claims that ‘no ambiguous or objective definition of work is possible’. Is work something which the individual might prefer not to do, but he is constrained to do it in order to survive? As a matter of fact, after reading this poem, we ended up with the perspective that work is like some kind of punishment since people work not to socialize or to feel useful in their lives, but for the necessities. According to Marx,

“The products of labour are… no longer means of fulfilling the needs of the individual and the community. From an end in themselves, they become a means to an end: a means for acquiring the goods and services necessary for survival”.

(Horolombus and Holborn, 2004; 621)

Larkin (1995) in his poem "Toads", says that we need to accept this, because we can’t fight against it “can’t I use my wit as pitchfork…?” According to Larkin (1955), since the individual works about “six days of the week” just to meet the basic needs, the individual ruins his life by this constant working. Work, according to the speaker leaves no room for fun. Marx developed the idea of alienation where people are unable to find satisfaction and fulfillment in the work they produce (Horolombus and Holborn, 2004). Larkin (1995) can think of intelligence as a possibility of escape. Can he use this intelligence of his, to find a better way to survive? By this, the speaker wonders if any other way of life is possible for him. The poet is torn between two alternatives, work and wit. The latter constitutes of a life where people avoid work completely.

The speaker of the poem has a dilemma of work and the need to work versus freedom and the need to live with no obligations. In this poem we see that although some people live in poverty and can be even homeless, at the end of the day these people move on in life and no one actually starves. They are able to survive on very few things such as ‘fire in bucket”. Although it’s a hard life, they tend to cope with it and at the end of the day they end up better than those who work. But Larkin (1995) thinks that this does not suit him “perhaps it is in his nature to work six days a week.

Thinking about work’s advantages vs. disadvantages, in this poem, there seems to be more disadvantages than advantages. So sometimes it’s better to retrain from working. But on the other hand, although those who live in poverty might survive, they must feel useless. In fact in his book Keith Grint (2005) argues that the enforced ‘leisure’ of unemployment turns the freedom of non-work into a nightmare of perceived worthlessness. Apart from that, these people lack social contact with other people. Although one of the advantages that unemployment carries with it is the increase in leisure time “Kevin et al. found that leisure was not an adequate substitute for work because most of the leisure…failed to compensate for the loss of social contacts at work” (Horolombus and Holborn, 2004, 671).

Work in itself may not be the means to self-realization, nor the means to achieve sufficient wealth to compensate for what may be experienced as the alienating consequences of work, but the effects of unemployment are a clear indication that work is a central social institution and essential part of most people’s lives.

(Grint, 2005 ; 42)

Although these five poems are made up by different poets who lived in different times and in different social backgrounds they all boil down to the same points. An example of this is the theme of injustice which is very clearly shown in poems like “the chimney sweeper’s complaint” and “you will be hearing from us shortly” were both the protagonists are being discriminated because of their lack of power and of status it was difficult for them to voice their ideas. Another poem which can be very well linked with the poem “The chimney sweeper’s complaint is “what the chairman told tom” where the two poets are describing both chimney sweeping and poetry as being degrading jobs having a very low status in society, In the other two poems “Toads” and “The praise of idleness on the other hand the two poets speak about how work is not perceived by humans as something from which one can derive pleasure and satisfaction but is only a means for getting paid.