Exploring the New International-Informational Division of Labor,Collision between Time-Space Configuration and Engendered Work Organization: Reflections from Argentina

Abstract

The debate on the nature and dynamics of late 20th century capitalism, and the crucial role Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) play in these dynamics, has centered on the transition towards a Third Industrial (Informational) Revolution. Little attention has so far been paid to the changes taking place in work organizations and engendered skills that sustain informational economic growth. This, in turn, has meant that the simultaneous construction of the New International-Informational Division of Labor (NIIDL) and the role that the new lime-space configuration plays in the emergence and consolidation of that division has also tended to be overlooked. This article examines this debate, particularly in terms of the relationship between NIIDL and the global organization of production, skills and the control of women and men workers. This is done on the basis of field research in the so-called artisan sector of an inland province of Argentina in the past 15 years. The theoretical and empirical exercise reveals serious structural obstacles that prevent any easy solution to the problem depending on the time-space configuration in which women artisans in particular are inserted, the type of piece produced, work organization, technologies and sources of energy used, among others. There is pressing need to implement a number of active public policies promoting knowledge-based industry, alternative sources of energy, education, science and technology, socialization of information and democratization of communication to be carried out at international, regional, national and local levels with a view to ensuring the creation of an autonomous and humane intensified time-space configuration and to implement a new gender aware informational development agenda based on the defense of women's (and men's) human rights.