Graham Sharp

Post-Fordism, the Vocational Curriculum and the Challenge to Teacher Preparation.

ABSTRACT This paper explores the relationship between changes in the labour process, recent developments in the vocational curriculum and challenges that these changes present to the preparation of further education lecturers in England and Wales. Firstly it will be argued that the economy is moving from a Fordist to a post‐Fordist phase and that this change is affecting the vocational education curriculum. Previous attempts to relate post‐Fordism to education have tended to analyse the relationships in terms that are too general. When a specific aspect of education and training is examined such as the introduction of National Vocational Qualifications and General National Vocational Qualifications in England and Wales, more light is shed on the question of ‘correspondence’. This in turn reveals issues such as divisions between mental and manual work and issues of conception and execution which tend to be ignored or overlooked in debates about changes in the curriculum and changes in the economy. Secondly...

Barriers to Skills Development in a Local Construction Labour Market

The literature on the construction industry suggests that the structure of labour markets in that industry sets up barriers to skills development. It is often suggested that ‘employer engagement’, leading to increased ‘buy-in’ into skills development, and investment by employers is the way to overcome these barriers. We present an example from a local labour market in South East England, with reference to an intervention in training (‘Constructing Futures’) that has brought private and public sector actors together. This example shows that employer engagement on its own is not sufficient to overcome the barriers created by the labour market structure. We suggest some essential measures to allow more workers to enter the industry and gain skills and reduce the skill shortages endemic to the industry in South East England.

Metabolic Rift Theory and the Crisis of Our Foodways

This chapter applies metabolic rift theory to a neglected area in food studies: Processed food in general and ultra-processed food in particular. It argues for a closer link between the study of production and the study of consumption. This raises questions of disciplinary belonging and boundaries. My analysis starts from the sociology of food but a similar argument might be made using other disciplines such as political science or history. The sociology of food, I argue, has focused on consumption, leaving production and distribution to other disciplines, notably human geography. Moreover, much research on food consumption is depoliticised, and refrains from challenging the underlying structures of contemporary food systems. This is despite the fact that producing, transporting, selling, and consuming food are an important contributor to anthropogenic climate change, responsible for as much as 30 % of all CO2 emissions (Foresight 2011). Further, there is increasing evidence that ultra-processed foods are having impacts on human health, in particular obesity and all the health risks associated with being overweight.

Food Production and Consumption

The emerging world eco-socialist movement is increasingly paying attention to the role of food—its production, transportation and consumption—and indeed the waste it creates as an important element...

School Meals in England and the Contradictions of Capital

Food and drink may not seem to have much to do with real politics, the class struggle, and the battle against climate change. However, there is a growing awareness across the globe that food, how we produce it, transport it, sell it, and finally consume it, is right at the heart of the ecological crisis that is so intimately bound up with capitalism. Although natural scientists and nutritionists have been concerned for a long time about the effects food supplies have on our health, only recently have social scientists begun to study and research food in its own right.

Case Studies in Alternative Foodways

The crux of the book focuses on the development of mining technologies and how those technologies reconfigured the social and physical landscape of Santa Rita. The copper companies of Santa Rita Del Cobre were constantly attempting to increase efficiency, cut costs, and gain higher profits. The main method was through innovations in the technical means of production that only temporarily realized this goal through displacing externalities on the workers, community, and the environment. Moreover, with each new round of mechanization the mine required more raw materials and energy for the entire life cycle of copper, leading to greater and wider uses of natural resources that proved unsustainable for the copper town of Santa Rita. The story of Santa Rita points out the inherent economic and ecological unsustainability of large-scale mining that many contemporary mining communities face. With any hope, let this be a lesson for the future of mining and community development.