Article

 

FLEXIBLE WORK AND QUALITY OF LIFE: THE UNCERTAINTIES OF THE POST-INDUSTRIAL ERA  
 
by
 
Aliki Mouriki, National Centre of Social Research
Antigone Lyberaki, Panteion University
 
JEL classification : J210, P190, P160
 
Abstract
The concept of labor is both the most fundamental and the most inherently problematic of all economic categories. It is the category through which economists understand most of the human input into the production process. Yet, in treating the major inputs into production -labor, capital and raw materials- in a parallel fashion, economists tend to analyze labor in isolation from the social relations in which individuals are embedded. It is not actual human beings who are an input into the production process, but one of their characteristics -their capacity to do work. But this is an inherently paradoxical strategy since the individual’s capacity to do work is not innate; it is socially created and sustained.