[HPforGrownups] Muggleborns choosing WW

[manawydan]

No: HPFGUIDX 118835

A late response to these posts, I know: suddenly after much thought I knew
how to respond.

Sandy wrote:
>Well, maybe I'm misunderstanding what you mean about "useless or alienating
work." You snipped my example of the >apparently bored and unhappy
receptionist at St. Mungos, who seems like she's just absolutely had enough
of dealing with >people suffering from magical maladies. And I'd add the
bored security guard who checks Harry's wand before the >hearing -- spending
most of his day reading the paper. Neither of these people seem any more
happy with their work than >your average WalMart clerk. I've got nothing
against work, and think people are happiest when they have something >useful
to do.

Possibly not. But then that's not the angle from which I'm approaching the
question. It's inevitable in any setup that there will be people who are
happy or unhappy in their work. But what I was talking about was the work
setup _itself_.

What do I mean by that? Basically that the picture that I form of the WW
economy has a lot more in common with the 18th than with the 20th/21st
century: one where there's a lot of handicraft type work going on, where
there's not a lot of the kind of mass production and mind control that came
in with the industrial revolution, one in which there isn't the level of
alienation which our world has in the workplace.

>But I don't think JKR is trying
>to show us that the WW world is a utopia where everyone has the absolutely
perfect job for their talents and personality. >(You need look no farther
than the faculty at Hogwarts, where a huge percentage -- including Snape,
Trelawney, Binns >and Hagrid-as-teacher, as well as four out of five DADA
teachers -- are really not suited for the job.)

No, though returning to our earlier perspective of _their_ attitude to the
job, we have

Binns - so dedicated that not even death would keep him from his work,
Trelawney - who goes totally to pieces at being sacked by Dolly Umbridge
Hagrid - I can't remember the exact reference, but I seem to recall his
being extremely proud at being given the CoMC job.

Snape of course, being a Major Character, isn't so easy to categorise.

Meanwhile, Ginger wrote:
>It's not exactly stated, but QA seems to imply that broom making
>started out as an individual job, but then moved to assembly style.

>In the next paragraph, JKR says "A breakthrough occurred" when the
>Ollerton brothers started the Cleansweep Broom Company, which
>produced brooms "in numbers never seen before".  This would seem to
>indicate mass production.

It could, but it's not the only model for production that the Ollertons
could have used. Once again, I hark back to the 18th century. The typical
method back then was called "putting-out", which meant that the manufacturer
would give work to a number of small artisans, who would then do the work in
their own homes, than bring it back to the manufacturer, who would pay them
for it.

I can more easily form a WW picture of a number of artisan broom makers from
various parts of the country turning up at intervals for a new stock of
materials than the kind of industrial revolution picture of a broomstick
factory, surrounded by a dormitory of workers' tenements...

But JKR alone knows all.

Cheers

FFred

O Benryn wleth hyd Luch Reon
Cymru yn unfryd gerhyd Wrion
Gwret dy Cymry yghymeiri