Mesleğin Hayatı Belirleme Pratikleri: Bankacı ve Tır Şoförü Örneği
Onur UcaMeslekler, geliri, statüyü, yaşam koşullarını, emeklilik yaşamını belirlemektedir. Bu nedenle meslekler sosyal bilimlerin önemli araştırma nesnelerinden bir tanesidir. Bu makale meslekler üzerinden gündelik hayatın belirlenmesine odaklanmıştır. Mesleklerin yaşamı belirlemesini gösterebilmek adına birbirinden çok farklı olan iki meslek ele alınmıştır. Bu mesleklerin ilki bankacılık, ikincisi ise tır şoförlüğüdür. Bu bağlamda araştırma ilk olarak modern dönemde işin dönüşümünü ele almıştır. Ardından mesleğin hayatı belirleme pratikleri ve bankacılık mesleği ayrıntıları ile aktarılmıştır. Bu açıklamalar çerçevesinde bankacılık mesleğinin temel yönleri ve bankacılık mesleğinin bu mesleği yapan bir insanı nasıl belirleyebileceği bankacılık sektöründe çalışanların deneyimlerinden yararlanılarak anlatılmıştır. İkinci olarak tır şoförünün kim olduğu ve bir tır şoförünün bu mesleği yaparken hayatının mesleğe göre nasıl şekillendiği aktarılmıştır. Tır şoförlüğü mesleğinin insanı nasıl belirleyebileceği de tır şoförlerinin deneyimlerinden yararlanılarak aktarılmıştır. Birbirinden farklı bu iki meslek üzerinden mesleklerin insanların değer dünyalarının oluşumunu belirlediği saptanmıştır. Meslekler insanların gündelik yaşamlarındaki hal ve tavırlarını, hareketlerini dayandırdıkları gerekçeleri, ekonomilerini, aile ilişkilerini, kültürel konumlarını etkilemektedir. Tüm etkenleri değer dünyaları içerisinde ele aldığımızda farklı mesleklere sahip insanların değer dünyaları farklılaşmaktadır. Bu durumun gündelik hayatta nasıl gerçekleştiğini gösterebilmek adına araştırmanın son bölümünde gündelik hayat, meslekler ve değerler arasındaki ilişki açıklanmıştır.
Life Determining Practices of Professions: The Case of Banker Truck Driver
Onur UcaProfessions which determine the income, status, living conditions and retirement life are one of the most important areas of research within social sciences. This article focuses on the formation of the daily life by the professions through the investigation of two professions that are very different from each other. The first one is banking and the second is truck driving. In this context, the research firstly dealt with the history of work and the transformation of work in the modern era. Then, the banking profession, its life shaping practices and the ways it can define the individuals were explored in detail. Subsequently, the truck driving profession, the life style it accompanies and how it shapes the social lives of people were explained. It was revealed that the professions determine the formation of the value worlds of people. People pursuing different professions also have different worlds of value. Finally, in order to illustrate how this happens in daily life, the relationship between daily life, professions and values is clarified in the last part of the research.
Daily lives are shaped by the professions to a great extent in the modern World, where economic logic is dominant. Therefore, there is an essential need to explain how professions determine daily life practices through what kind of mechanisms and their influence on people. With this aim, the profession’s impact in the formation of life was explained and discussed in terms of the professions of banking and truck driving in this research. Two opposing professions were chosen to be able to make a clearer analysis and analyzed in the light of the theory of the pragmatic sociology of critics developed by Laurent Thêvenot and Luc Boltanski (2006) who identify six value worlds that are revealed in situations of cultural dispute and compromise. These include the civic, domestic, market, fame, industrial, and inspired spheres of meaning. The civic value world articulates beliefs in the representativeness, civil service and legality. The domestic value world is driven from the core principles of the tradition, family, friendship, and loyalty. The market value world is based on the competition and the significance of money, profit, interest, and wealth. The value world of fame is formed around the opinion, status, and social recognition. The industrial value world has to do with the principles of efficiency and performance. The inspired value world is built on the principles of creativity, innovation, and aesthetics. “Social actors in the complex societies may draw on several of these worlds… when acting as citizens (civic world), consumers (market world), family members (domestic world), or social media users (fame world)” (Giulianotti and Langseth, 2016). For Boltanski and Thévenot, “this ability to live within worlds, and to travel between worlds, is of central importance to the actors involved in all kinds of disputes about justice” (Jacquemain, 2008, p. 43). From this theoretical perspective, the value worlds of bankers and truck drivers were examined to illustrate the slippery ground on which people from different professions can walk among different value worlds.
The research consists of four main parts. In the first part, the development of professions was reviewed through the historical process of work and its transformation into the profession as we know today. This was basically shaped by the association of three separate power lines. The first was the desire of the private entrepreneur to gain maximum benefit from the newly emerging and rapidly growing industrial worker. The second was the demand of the newly emerging worker to be employed in better conditions and for better wages. The third was the desire of the nation-states to control and regulate the relations of production. The business life shaped by these three leading lines began determining the daily life of the individual. Life (economy, status, class) was now mostly related to the professions.
In the second part, basic aspects of the bankers and their value worlds were explained. Bankers who are middle class members produce the immaterial or intelligence labor. However, they are different from some of the intelligence labor producers such as engineers and architects. Unlike them, bankers do not produce anything that has concrete functioning such as software, program, project, production tool. They are in charge of the regulation of money. Relationship networks are their capital; thus, their CVs often include the companies in which they were employed, courses attended, existing memberships, plaques won or goals achieved. Bankers work with people of a similar labor type who are ambitious in the competition in business life, who hide or leak information to go ahead of others and engage in lobbying activities. Bankers have to establish relations with these people in order to fulfill the necessities of the profession. These working conditions determine their worlds of value.
In the third chapter, the profession of truck driver, the structure of the value worlds of truck drivers and the reasons behind it were explained. Truck drivers should have a driving license, SRC and psychotechnical certificate to officially work. There are certain forms of truck driving as being a A-) driver in their own truck, B-) driver in another person’s truck, C-) driver in a company truck. These distinctions define responsibilities, job descriptions, and employee-employer relations. If you are a driver in your own vehicle, you are free to choose freight, location, price, and timing. The drivers of someone else’s vehicle are usually already familiar with the owner. The important decisions about the vehicle are generally taken by the driver who assumes the confidence of the owner in this situation. On the other hand, the decisions on the company trucks are made by exclusively the company authorities. There is generally no standard in the wages of truck drivers. They tend to cook their own meals to reduce their costs. The time and place of their work are uncertain. All these forms of work determine their worlds of value.
Upon the comparison of two unlike professions and the value worlds they promote, it was revealed that people pursuing different professions also have different worlds of value. In order to illustrate how this happens in daily life, finally the complex relationship between the daily life, professions and values is clarified in the last part of the research.