Introduction

The evidence presented so far locates the low-paid service economy employee within the context of global political economy, restructured labour markets and neoliberal ideology. The reality of life in the labour market's lower echelons has been illustrated through exploration of management practices, organisational culture, working conditions, employment conditions and relations between employers, employees and customers. Within this context a number of absences, imbued with causative potential, become apparent. The absence of stability, an ethical responsibility for the Other, and protection all indicate a set of problematic conditions and experiences that demonstrate the impact of neoliberal ideology and market capitalism. Inequality, precarity and indeterminacy reign. Meanwhile, the transcendental materialist subject actively solicits the dominant Symbolic Order of neoliberalism and reflects the supreme values of competition, individualism, status and self-interest. Workplace cultures reflect these values and subjects simultaneously shape and are moulded by these precepts.

From our harm perspective, the conditions outlined so far and the causative absences elucidated throughout these pages illustrate a number of pertinent issues. First, harm occurs across a number of levels. The systemic violence of neoliberal capitalism and reorganised labour markets creates a set of drivers and imperatives that fuel both legal and illegal practices, both of which inflict harm on individuals and communities. The unintentional negative motivation to harm ensures that the deep level restructure undertaken as part of the neoliberal project to free capital from regulatory restraints results in harmful consequences related to stability and protection. This indeterminacy actively undermines the quest for recognition and flourishing. Second, the positive motivation to harm, the ‘special liberty’ that emerges from a culture of self-interest, competition and individualism results in a series of harms perpetrated against individuals by employers, co-workers and customers. The absent ethical responsibility for the Other denies intersubjective recognition as the subject fights to maximise market shares.

However, a further absence exists, one which also fits within the harm perspective delineated in Chapter One. The triumvirate of violence outlined by Žižek (2008) included not only systemic and subjective violence, already analysed in previous chapters, but also symbolic violence. The symbolic violence of ideology forecloses alternatives to the status quo, dimming horizons to the confines of ‘capitalist realism’ (Fisher, 2009).