Journal of Sociology

http://jos.sagepub.com/ Mapping the intellectual labour process

Raewyn Connell and June Crawford Journal of Sociology 2007 43: 187 DOI: 10.1177/1440783307076895 The online version of this article can be found at: http://jos.sagepub.com/content/43/2/187

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Mapping the intellectual labour process

Raewyn Connell
University of Sydney

June Crawford
University of New South Wales

Abstract
The sociology of intellectuals needs analysis of the intellectual labour force. A survey of 500 intellectual workers identified three distinct dimensions of the labour process: involvement with technology, autonomy, and involvement in the organizational world. Clear differences between institutional sectors negate the convergence thesis. A degree of proletarianization in the intellectual workforce occurs, but only in limited groups. An alternative pattern of marginalization is associated with non-standard employment conditions. Workplace egalitarianism and extensive connectedness are found, but are not linked, partly disconfirming the democratization thesis. Autonomy emerges as a key issue within a collective labour process. The data emphasize the importance of the organizational context of intellectual labour. Directions for a new understanding of intellectuals and cultural politics are identified. Keywords: autonomy, globalization, intellectuals, knowledge work, labour process, profession

The intellectual labour force

The sociology of intellectuals is familiar mainly as a debate about politics and representation. Intellectuals have been seen as a vanguard for social change and bearers of truth or critique, but also as bearers of privilege and pervasive forms of power. Gouldners (1979) view of intellectuals as a flawed universal class is an influential example; Baumans (1987) critique of intellectuals as self-appointed legislators a famous refutation. It is not surprising that a recent review of the field (Kurzman and Owens, 2002) presents its whole history as a long argument about whether intellectuals are a class-in-themselves, class-bound or class-less.
Journal of Sociology 2007 The Australian Sociological Association, Volume 43(2): 187205 DOI:10.1177/1440783307076895 www.sagepublications.com

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188 Journal of Sociology 43(2)

In previous articles in this journal and elsewhere, our research group has argued for a different approach to understanding intellectuals and cultural dynamics. It is essential to investigate intellectual labour (Connell, 2006; Connell and Wood, 2002; Connell et al., 2005). The findings from our research, as well as ethnographic and organizational studies of knowledge workers in other countries (Alvesson, 2004; Barley and Kunda, 2004), justify thinking of intellectual work in terms of a labour process that has strongly marked collective characteristics. Intellectual workers need to be considered not just as individuals but as members of a specific kind of labour force. Intellectuals and intellectual workers are notoriously difficult to define. A fruitful approach was taken by Althusser (1969), who treated scientists as workers applying specific tools to specific objects in order to transform them. In intellectual labour the tools are symbolic techniques; the objects of labour are cultural materials; and the outcomes are transformed cultural materials. The tools used with particular objects of knowledge are typically organized in the form of disciplines, which are themselves cultural traditions as well as systems of social control (Becher, 1989), and may produce significant differences within the labour process. This approach shares questions with other areas of industrial sociology. A long debate concerns processes of proletarianization, including the loss of autonomy and craft distinctiveness. It is possible that technical and professional workers too are subject to the de-skilling described by Braverman (1974). For instance, there has been a sustained debate about de-skilling and proletarianization among school teachers (Ozga and Lawn, 1988), which has recently given more attention to the casualization of teachers and the commodification of educational services under neoliberalism (Clark, 2004; Robertson, 2000). Clearly, in understanding intellectual labour, it will be important to know about employment conditions, control and autonomy in the workplace. The application of symbolic techniques to cultural materials requires abstraction, and this has been the basis of arguments about the politics of intellectual labour. Some writers have seen intellectual workers as bearers of democratic possibilities in advanced capitalism, whether through their shared culture (Gouldner, 1979) or the collective character of their work (Gorz, 1999). A particularly sophisticated argument, developed in the Australian journal Arena, linked the constitutive abstraction typical of intellectual labour with the relatively egalitarian and network character of relations among intellectual workers (Sharp, 2005). The Arena thesis pictured intellectual workers as bearers of a democratic alternative to capitalist power in consequence of a labour process that required a certain detachment from the culturally given, and a readiness to share knowledge. These arguments are broadly compatible with research showing tensions between knowledge workers and managerial control (Scarborough, 1999). But questions immediately arise about how widespread such tensions are.

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Connell & Crawford: The intellectual labour process 189

A contrary logic is suggested by recent debates about the commercialization of universities (Branscomb et al., 1999; Cooper et al., 2002). There may be a convergence on corporate models of control, market dynamics and commodification. Kleinman and Vallas (2001), in a recent study of knowledge workers in the United States, suggest a growing similarity between academic labour and corporate sector knowledge work. Powell and Owen-Smith (2002) give dramatic examples of the blurring of public science and private profit-making in biomedical research, but note this may not be possible in other fields. These arguments require research that includes a broad cross-section of intellectual workers, while allowing a detailed investigation of the intellectual labour process and its correlates. Such requirements point to survey method. To explore difference statistically requires the creation of instruments to measure aspects of the labour process. In this article we describe several such instruments and what they tell us about patterns of difference in a national survey of the intellectual labour force in Australia. We first characterize the intellectual labour process in aggregate, examining the components of the work done, the role of new technologies, and awareness of change and stress. We then address the three interpretive questions just raised: Is there evidence for the convergence thesis, indicating a homogenization of intellectual labour across sectors? Is there evidence for a process of proletarianization in the intellectual workforce? Does the intellectual labour process reveal bases for a democratic or anti-authoritarian politics? We then consider the implications of the findings for the broad picture of intellectuals and their work in the contemporary world.

Method
To produce a sampling frame based on the understanding of intellectual labour outlined above, we developed a classification of fields of knowledge and culture, used this to characterize groups of occupations and then attempted to sample within those occupations. The tools of intellectual labour are symbolic, deployed in organized bodies of knowledge or symbolism, and applied to diverse objects. At the level of objects, we distinguish four groups: representations concerning (1) Nature; (2) The production system; (3) Social relations; (4) Knowledge and symbolism. All intellectual work is dependent on its historical location, a point familiar since Kuhns (1962) famous treatment of scientific revolutions. Accordingly, at the level of tools or techniques we distinguish: (1) New fields: expanding, emerging or newly defined areas, created by recently

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developed techniques, addressing newly defined problems, or arising in newly created institutions; and (2) Old fields: established, stable or contracting areas, depending on established methods, addressing long-recognized or classic issues, or arising in well-established institutions. Combining the two dimensions produces a classification of areas of intellectual labour that we call the Grid. It is summarized in Table 2; details are provided in another report (Connell et al., 2005). We listed 40 occupational groups in whose working life one of these eight types of intellectual labour predominated. They included traditional categories for intellectuals priests, lawyers, doctors, academics, artists and policy-makers but also spread widely into new forms of intellectual work such as management consulting, advertising and database management. Interviewees in each group were drawn from the existing contact list maintained by the commercial market research organization contracted to do the fieldwork, supplemented by publicly available data sources such as professional directories and by snowballing. To diversify the sample, a relatively large number of occupational groups was used with a relatively small quota for each, and an effort was made to achieve geographical spread across Australia. Clearly this sample is not equivalent to a random sample. It is satisfactorily diverse, however, and should allow us to answer questions about relationships, which are at the centre of this research. We developed a questionnaire whose core was descriptions of practice in the respondents working life; plus a selection of attitude/opinion items and personal data. The following areas were covered, mainly in this order (number of items in parentheses): Education and training (10) Career (9) Current job (17) Use of technology (18) Workplace and employment context (16) Opinions on culture and intellectual life (6) Networks, associations, links and travel (23) International orientation (6) Social background and personal life (14) A telephone survey was conducted in AprilJune 2000, by interviewers employed and trained by Market Equity Pty Ltd, with operations based in Perth, Australia. Five hundred interviews were completed. Answers were recorded on disk by Market Equity, which provided the raw data and frequency tabulations by Grid categories. Further statistical analysis was carried out by the authors. The sample obtained was very close to the quota plan. The 500 interviews were spread across all states of Australia, but with a bias away from the south-east.

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Connell & Crawford: The intellectual labour process 191

Broad social characteristics of the sample were those to be expected in such a set of occupations: 72 percent were men; the gender ratio varies among Grid categories in the expected directions; median age was 45; 81 percent held a university degree, about half of these having a higher degree; 72 percent were born in Australia or New Zealand. The largest group of non-Australian born came from the UK. From two questions on employment situation, a composite variable of employer type was constructed. The sample was distributed across sectors as follows: Company or large partnership 36% Government department or other public sector organization 18% University 17% Other organization (e.g. voluntary) 10% Work independently (e.g. private practice or small partnership) 19%

Creativity, computers and change: the labour process in aggregate

The great majority of our respondents are full-time workers, only 8 percent saying that they work less than 35 hours a week. Their median selfestimated workload, in fact, is 50 hours per week. Though most of this work is done in a conventional workplace, a significant fraction is done at home. Only 24 percent of respondents report that they do none of their work at home while 19 percent report that they do half or more of their work at home. Working from home is found in all fields of knowledge, as defined by the Grid, with the highest rate in social relations/old where there is a self-employed cluster of respondents. Using the detailed descriptions of intellectual labour given in life-history interviews (Connell and Wood, 2002), we designed a set of questions asking what percentage of the respondents time was spent in five types of activity. The most important finding was the sheer spread of activities, found across all areas of knowledge. Most respondents reported a broad mixture of tasks administration, communication, face-to-face work, etc. What might be thought the classic terrain of intellectuals, doing creative work, normally accounts for less than a quarter of respondents time. Only for 11 percent of respondents did this account for more than half their working time. Since our sample roughly corresponds to what Florida (2002) calls the super-creative core of the creative class, we have a certain scepticism about his interpretation. On the other hand these data support Alvessons (2004) argument about the embedding of knowledge-intensive work in networks of communicative relationships. Our respondents are strongly connected to the world.

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This mixture of tasks, even if different from what tradition suggests, seems to give widespread satisfaction. A simple question on job satisfaction, Most of the time I am doing the work that I really want to do, registered positive opinions 77 percent agree, 22 percent disagree. Other evidence from the survey supports the idea of high levels of interest and gratification in the work. The communication that respondents emphasize is now, to a significant extent, mediated. Asked if their work has been strongly affected by changes in technology in the last five years, no less than 83 percent of our respondents agree (including 51% strongly agree). Ninety-four percent say they make regular use of a personal computer in their current work, 95 percent make regular use of a telephone or fax, 89 percent make regular use of email, and 81 percent make regular use of word-processing. (These figures are credible, because different responses are made to other items: only 48% say they make regular use of a mobile phone, 38% make regular use of spreadsheets.) A very large majority of respondents say they positively enjoy working with ICT. A considerable part of this communication is long-distance. It is clear from our data that the Internet has become a routine part of intellectual work in the Australian context: 73 percent of respondents say they use the Internet regularly, 21 percent occasionally, only 6 percent not at all. Yet there are limits. The commonest pattern is for daily, or nearly daily, use for less than an hour. Only 8 percent describe themselves as using the Internet for three or more hours per day. The Internet is mainly used to replace letters and posted documents, and perhaps telephone calls. Collaboration at a distance is certainly made easier, which is relevant to the democratization thesis. We do not, however, find a workforce addicted to new technology. Only 8 percent use the Internet a great deal for maintaining their website; indeed, a majority does not seem to have a website at all, suggesting a large reservoir of unskilled or unconfident users. There is also a downside to the technology: 64 percent of our respondents agreed that new technologies have given work to them that used to be done by other people. Beyond the specific issue of ICT, there is a distinct awareness of change among our respondents. To the statement In my field of work, knowledge and methods are changing rapidly, 83 percent agree, only 15 percent disagree. Even with this lopsided pattern, differences between fields of knowledge appear. The Grid was designed to distinguish emerging fields of knowledge from established ones, and Table 1 provides clear validation. For each of the four objects of knowledge, the respondents in the new field show stronger recognition of change. Questions about career patterns offer a longer-term indication of change. Given three options to describe their career structure a straightforward career progression mainly in the same field, a career with modest changes of direction or breaks in continuity, or a career with major changes of

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Table 1: Rapid change In my field of work, knowledge and methods are changing rapidly. Percent responding positively (agree + agree strongly) rather than negatively (disagree + disagree strongly), in each field of the Grid. Grid Field Nature Economy Social relations Symbolism New 95 83 89 93 Old 79 79 74 77

direction or breaks in continuity, only 27 percent of respondents specified the first option, compared with 37 percent for the second and 35 percent for the third. Occupational change, then, was a widespread experience. Change can mean stress. Bearing in mind the relatively long working hours and the widespread introduction of new technology, occupational stress may be a significant issue for this workforce. We asked a direct question about changes in stress levels, The amount of stress and tension in my workplace has been increasing in recent years. A two-thirds majority of respondents, 66 percent, agree with this statement. This indicator of stress is quite evenly distributed over the Grid categories.

Differences in the labour process: testing the convergence thesis

The questionnaire included 29 questions covering all aspects of the labour process. A preliminary factor analysis identified three clusters of items: (a) items about involvement with technology; (b) items concerned with autonomy, job satisfaction and stress; (c) items about employment status, supervision and organization size. Each cluster of items was examined closely, and items were selected for scale analysis on both conceptual and statistical grounds. Three scales were constructed. The first, which we call Technological Involvement (TCI) measured positive engagement in the use of ICT. It included items such as New technologies have increased my capacity to do the work I want to do. This short scale correlates positively (r = .6, p < .001) with a previously developed scale of use of technology relevant to international communication (TEC, see Connell et al., 2005). In this sample, broadly, those who use ICT are also those who like it. The second scale, which we call Autonomy (AUT), was mainly an indicator of levels of independence within the workplace and satisfaction with the work. Items included I have space in my job to exercise my creativity, and Is there a specific person you report to, or who supervises your work?

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Table 2: Scales for dimensions of the labour process Name TCI AUT ORG Number of items 4 7 7 Mean 12.6 13.2 8.4 Standard deviation 2.10 2.49 2.86 Reliability (alpha) 0.64 0.65 0.51

Table 3: Correlations of labour process scales with background variables (* p < .01) TCI Age Gender Income OST (overseas training) INO (international orientation) INP (international practice) 0.16* 0.01 0.04 0.01 0.15* 0.16* AUT 0.16* 0.13* 0.14* 0.02 0.03 0.07 ORG 0.25* 0.03 0.26* 0.13* 0.29* 0.55*

The third scale, which we call Organizational Involvement (ORG), is rather more unusual. It appears to indicate levels of engagement in a broad organizational world, both public and private. Items included How many hours do you work, in an average week? and How much do you discuss current issues or problems in your field with other colleagues or contacts in Australia or New Zealand? Scale characteristics are shown in Table 2. The level of internal consistency of these scales (as measured by Cronbachs coefficient alpha) is not high, particularly for ORG, but is sufficient for the scales to be useable indicators of three conceptually meaningful aspects of the labour process. Intercorrelation of the scales shows them to be essentially unrelated (TCI AUT r = .00, TCI ORG r = .07, AUT ORG r = .05). Accordingly, we used the scales to explore variation between different groups of intellectual workers, defined by age, gender, income and overseas training (which mainly distinguishes immigrants). To explore their connection with dimensions of globalization, the scales were also correlated with scales of international orientation and international practice, defined in a previous analysis (Connell et al., 2005). As Table 3 shows, the labour process varies across background characteristics of the intellectual workforce. In most respects the variation is not dramatic, but it does follow intelligible patterns. Younger respondents are more engaged with new technologies; but TCI does not vary by gender, income or overseas education (i.e. migrancy). There is a firm tendency for

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Connell & Crawford: The intellectual labour process 195

older respondents and better-paid respondents to have stronger involvement in the organizational world, as measured by ORG, and a weaker tendency for them to have more autonomy/job satisfaction, as measured by AUT. This organizational world is also, quite clearly, a key basis of international engagement. ORG is firmly correlated with both the scale of international orientation (including items about valuing overseas links) and the scale of international practice (including items about working with colleagues abroad). These correlations are distinctly stronger than those with TCI. This tells us something about the pattern of globalization among Australian intellectual workers. It is not the bricoleurs or free agents who are most globally involved, nor particularly those involved with new technology, but essentially those who are most strongly linked into the organizational world within Australia. The local institutional system itself, it appears, is the pathway to the world. To study how varieties of the labour process were located in the institutional and cultural world of intellectual labour, and to test the convergence hypothesis, analyses of variance were performed on these scales using the Grid of intellectual fields and the measure of employer type. Group means for the latter are shown in Table 4. Multiple pairwise comparisons were carried out using the Bonferroni argument to assess statistical significance. A Type I error rate of 0.05 was used. Examination of the Grid reveals no significant differences between intellectual fields for the AUT scale. There are some differences for the TCI scale (p < .001), with high levels of technological involvement mostly in the newer fields, especially in natural science. This is not surprising, given that research in areas like molecular biology often depends on remote access to electronic databases. There are also significant field differences for the ORG scale (p < .002), with highest levels of organizational involvement in the economy/old and symbolism/old categories. This may simply reflect the circumstances of public sector employment. The crucial test of the convergence hypothesis is the examination of employer type in Table 4. This shows that the labour process varies distinctly

Table 4: Employer type and labour process scales. Group means are shown, with standard deviations in parentheses. TCI Corporate (n = 179) Government (n = 92) University (n = 86) Other org. (n = 50) Independent (n = 93) Total (n = 500) 12.77 13.07 12.98 11.59 12.11 12.62 (1.94) (2.02) (1.79) (1.99) (2.51) (2.10) AUT 13.00 12.36 12.13 13.49 15.25 13.20 (2.32) (2.39) (2.33) (2.00) (2.04) (2.49) ORG 7.46 8.79 10.55 8.80 7.64 8.40 (2.83) (2.59) (2.79) (2.18) (2.36) (2.86)

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by employer type, though not always in the direction that would be expected from the literature. Analysis of variance shows significant differences (p < .001) for all three scales. Contrary to academic tradition, universities are low, not high, on the measure of autonomy, AUT. It is workers in the independent sector who lead here. TCI scores are highest in the university and government sectors, consistent with what we found for the TEC scale. Contrary to neoliberal belief, it is not the corporate sector that is leading technological workplace change, but the public sector. ORG scores are low among the independent and corporate sectors, highest in universities. A public/private division suggests itself here, with other organizations (which include the voluntary sector) aligned with public sector employment. Bearing in mind the links between ORG and international involvement, a pattern of centrality and marginality in the intellectual workforce, linking national and international arenas, suggests itself. The evidence of this survey is, then, unequivocally against the convergence hypothesis at least, the version which suggests that convergence between intellectual labour in the commercial and academic (or, more broadly, public sector) worlds has already occurred. What sector one works in does still matter for the kind of labour one performs, on all three dimensions of the intellectual labour process.

Proletarianization and a new pattern of marginality

Four out of five respondents work in an organization. About half of those institutions are large, with more than 100 workers. Asked about current employment status, 58 percent of respondents described themselves as permanent employees, 23 percent are self-employed and 16 percent are employed on a contract, with a small remainder in other statuses. Though some of the traditional pattern of self-employed professionalism remains, by and large this workforce is operating in a world of large organizations and employer/employee relations. This is not an old-style structurally autonomous intelligentsia. The issue of proletarianization is a real question. In the questionnaire we have two reasonably direct measures of this process: being under supervision and being unionized. Asked if there is a specific person who supervises their work, 61 percent of respondents say yes. This is true for all Grid categories except economy/new, where the rate is 50 percent, and for all employment sectors except independent (see Table 5). In that respect the proletarian condition is usual in this workforce. But there are two qualifications. First, there are significant minorities who float free of supervision, including those who work in individual practices. Second, as well as being supervised, many of our respondents also exercise supervision over others in fact, more than are supervised. Asked

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Table 5: Employer type, supervision and unionization Percent who work under supervision Company Government agency University Other organization Independent Total 67 87 74 58 15 61 Percent who are union members 9 45 69 22 12 28

if they supervise other workers, 78 percent say yes. This is hardly the picture of a body of routine, subordinate workers. Rather, it indicates that the core of our sample occupy intermediate positions in conventionally hierarchical workplaces. This is consistent with our data on the classic indicator of mobilization on the basis of working-class consciousness, union membership. Only 28 percent are members of a union. The level of unionization varies between fields of knowledge, from a low of 15 percent in economy/new to a high of 38 percent in symbolism/new. This is undoubtedly a reflection of differences between employment sectors. As Table 5 shows, union membership varies dramatically by sector, from 69 percent union membership in the university group to a mere 9 percent in the corporate group. This reflects the broad pattern of union densities in different sectors of the Australian economy. Yet union membership is still a meaningful issue in our sample. It is negatively correlated with the AUT scale, that is to say, the less autonomous positions in this workforce are the more unionized. Union membership is positively correlated with the size of the organization. As we show in another article, union membership is negatively correlated with support for market ideology (Connell and Crawford, 2005). A much greater number of respondents, 64 percent, are members of a professional association and nearly half are members of more than one professional association. Thirty-seven percent are members of at least one international professional association more than are members of a union, an interesting indication of the shape of contemporary intellectual networks. There is a clear-cut negative correlation between being in a union and level of involvement in professional associations (r = .25, p < .001). In this sample at least, the two forms of organization are alternatives. We may argue, then, that tendencies to proletarianization can be seen in this workforce but only in part of it. And it is not necessarily the pattern of the future. Union membership is positively correlated with age, whereas supervision is negatively correlated with age. That is to say, the younger

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respondents, despite being more often under supervision, are the less unionized. The data on professional association membership and exercising a supervisory role suggest a degree of social privilege or authority as the major pattern in the present. There are, however, other forms of subordination. Indeed, a major trend under neoliberalism has been towards downsizing of organizations and increased flexibility of the workforce. Labour force flexibility, in the extreme form of contingent work as a long-term status, has already emerged as an issue in studies of intellectual labour (Barley and Kunda, 2004). We have a direct measure of labour force flexibility in a question on employment status. Though a majority of the respondents are permanent employees, significant numbers are either self-employed (23%) or employed on a contract (16%). We combined these answers in a new variable of noncore employment. We examined the relationship between non-core employment and two other indicators of flexible labour working from home and working less than standard hours. All three variables proved to be intercorrelated at a high level of significance (non-core employment work from home, r = .33, p < .001; non-core employment less than standard hours, r = .20, p < .001; work from home less than standard hours, r = .34, p < .001). Non-core employment is, not surprisingly, found at a much higher rate in the independent sector than in the other sectors of the workforce. More surprisingly, it is not associated with gender. In the intellectual workforce, the traditional use of women as a source of supplementary labour does not seem to apply. In non-core employment we have identified an axis of differentiation in the intellectual workforce, which does not correspond to the traditional schema of proletarianization, but which perhaps defines a new form of dependence or marginality. We take this, together with the data on the ORG scale discussed in the previous section, as pointing to an organization-based pattern of centrality and marginalization within the intellectual workforce. Market forces are certainly impinging on this workforce a surprising 59 percent say their work leads to a commercial return through fees from clients (obviously, many are referring to fees paid to the employer). But the market has not swept away the institutional structure that still remains a powerful framing of the intellectual labour process.

Equality and autonomy: testing the democratization thesis

We now turn to the argument that sees egalitarian or network-like patterns of relationship as a potential basis of democratic politics. The first difficulty for this argument is the pattern of workplace hierarchy reported above: a majority of respondents work under supervision, and three-quarters of respondents supervise other workers. Yet the intellectual workplace is not generally perceived as hierarchical. To the opinion statement Most people in my workplace treat each other as

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equals, 81 percent agreed and only 14 percent disagreed. This sense of workplace equality does not vary greatly between groups in the sample. Analysis of variance shows the statistical relationship of this item with employer type, and with gender, to be non-significant. There is a slight variation by Grid field (natural sciences and social relations scoring slightly higher on workplace equality). In most respects, however, the democratic atmosphere is not localized. The workplace is also perceived as interactive. Asked how much they discuss current issues or problems with people in their workplace or organization, 65 percent of respondents answered a great deal. This may be compared with 40 percent who answered a great deal for discussion with colleagues outside the workplace but in Australia or New Zealand, and 10 percent for colleagues elsewhere in the world. Obviously the local forum is still the predominant one, though many in the sample have active networks beyond it. The data on Internet usage, given earlier, reinforce this point. So far, the evidence resembles the picture of the intellectually trained workforce given in the Arena version of the democratization thesis (Sharp, 2005). A stronger test of this thesis is possible. Is the sense of workplace equality linked to the pattern of extended communication among intellectual workers? We examined this question by intercorrelating the items on workplace equality, discussion with colleagues outside the workplace, and time on the Internet. Discussion with colleagues is correlated with time on the Internet (r = .17, p < .001), as one would expect if these items are reliable. But neither is significantly correlated with the perception of workplace equality (r = .01, p = .87, 2-tailed; r = .05, p = .28, 2-tailed). In that respect the democratization thesis is not supported. Despite the emphasis that respondents place on communication, the importance of networks and the prevailing institutional environment, the work itself is not perceived as collectivized. To the statement Most of the time I work in a group more than I work alone, only a minority (34%) agreed, with 66% disagreeing. To the statement I have a high level of autonomy or independence in the work that I do, 95 percent agreed (49% strongly) and only 5 percent disagreed. It is the sense of autonomy, more than workplace equality, that seems to be the key to our respondents relationships with their work. The item on autonomy just quoted does have a relationship with the perception of workplace equality (r = .11, p < .02), but it is more firmly correlated with items on job satisfaction, i.e. doing the work one wants to do (r = .30, p < .001), and on sense of creativity (r = .38, p < .001). These items form the core of the autonomy factor that emerged in the factor analysis and provided the basis of the AUT scale. The data on the AUT scale (Tables 3 and 4 above) give a profile of the sense of independence in this workforce. Analysis of variance shows that AUT is not associated with Grid field, so we cannot say that autonomy is

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more prevalent in particular areas of knowledge. But, as Table 5 shows, it is very clearly associated with sector of employment. The particular item on being supervised shows marked differences between sectors. AUT scores are highest among independent workers or employees of other organizations. The university and government sectors have the lowest average AUT scores. These results strongly contradict the traditional belief that academic freedom has produced a high level of autonomy for university workers. There is a modest tendency for older and better-paid respondents to report more workplace autonomy/satisfaction. There is also a modest tendency for men to have higher AUT scores than women, consistent with the familiar pattern of women filling more of the support roles in organizations. Non-union employees have higher AUT scores than union members, probably reflecting their location in organizational hierarchies. The pattern is complex and interesting. A higher sense of autonomy, and the associated job satisfaction, seems to come with certain forms of social authority, or with working outside the organizational mainstream. There is some support here for a darker interpretation of the Arena argument, that individual autonomy has developed as a cultural alternative to cooperative democracy. If so, the current structuring of the intellectual workforce creates both the kind of marginalization described in the previous sector, and a certain compensation for it in the shape of personal autonomy. But it also leaves significant groups of intellectual workers in the mainstream organization sectors with both lower levels of autonomy and lower levels of satisfaction and reward. Not surprisingly, this is the group most likely to be unionized. Broadly, these findings confirm the accuracy of some of the perceptions about intellectual work on which the democratization thesis was built. But the correlational data argue against the democratization thesis, at least in its straightforward form. It seems that the linked issues of autonomy and job satisfaction are more central to our respondents experience of work. Autonomy is associated either with social privilege or with marginal positions. This, with some other indications, suggests a certain individualization operating in the domain of intellectual labour, in which autonomy works separately from, or even against, collective and democratic processes. It is relevant that in the attitude data from this study, AUT does not correlate significantly with either of the main attitude dimensions, support of market ideology or cultural optimism (Connell and Crawford, 2005).

Conclusion: elements of a new picture of intellectuals

The survey method used in this study proved capable of mapping variations in the labour process, and thus allows us to answer the three interpretive questions posed at the start of this article.

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For all three the convergence thesis, the proletarianization thesis and the democratization thesis the main findings are negative. In terms of convergence, there are clear differences between sectors and significant differences among demographic groups. Of course a cross-sectional survey does not map change over time, but this is clear evidence against the presumption that large-scale convergence has already happened. In terms of proletarianization, again the main conclusion is negative. Though indicators of proletarianization are present in some sectors, the intellectual workforce as a whole seems to remain in a comfortable, intermediate position in social hierarchies. In terms of the democratization thesis, the pattern of lateral communication among intellectual workers is certainly present, but the specific linkage with workplace egalitarianism is not. On the whole this workforce appears well-integrated and reasonably satisfied, rather than developing an oppositional consciousness. So far, our findings read like empiricist devils-advocacy nice theoretical ideas spoiled by awkward facts. But we can offer something more: findings that point in new directions for a sociology of intellectuals. First is the general pattern of the intellectual labour process. The work of our respondents is not tightly focused on a single component, such as creative work. Rather, it is a mixed labour process in which the same worker performs a range of tasks, from maintaining organizational life to communicating with clients to developing new ideas. Within this spectrum, there is a definite emphasis on communication processes as recognized two decades ago by the Arena group, and confirmed in recent research on knowledge-intensive workers (Alvesson, 2004). Much of this communication is now mediated, as we see in the high uptake of ICT and the high level of Internet use, especially in the newer fields of knowledge. In the Australian context, this has the specific role of maintaining connection with the global metropole, i.e. intellectual workers in North America and Western Europe the pattern of quasi-globalization that we have tracked in other articles (Connell and Wood, 2002; Connell et al., 2005). We were able to identify three broad dimensions in the intellectual labour process, and to construct useable scales of involvement with technology, autonomy and involvement in the organizational world. Our detailed analysis shows the importance of the institutional bases of intellectual labour. Sector of employment matters: government and university workers led the way with new technology, not the corporate sector, while levels of autonomy are lower in government and university employment than elsewhere. Only a minority of this workforce is unionized, but union membership does correspond to a distinct set of experiences and attitudes. Involvement in the organizational world is, for Australian intellectual workers at least, the main pathway to global connections. In terms of the concept of intellectual labour proposed at the beginning of the article, we would emphasize that the tools applied in transforming

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cultural materials are collective phenomena. They include the institutions where intellectual labour is done as well as the disciplines and traditions of specific fields of knowledge. This point has often been made about big science, and we now propose it as a general feature of contemporary intellectual labour. We are long past the era when it made sense to think of scholars, artists and public intellectuals in essentially individual terms, though an individualist approach has lingered in sociological discourse about intellectuals. One reason is that such an understanding of intellectual work lingers among intellectual workers themselves. Our data on the importance of autonomy are particularly relevant here; a high level of perceived autonomy goes together with satisfaction in the work. On the one hand, this reflects the traditional demand for scope to exercise expert judgement. On the other hand, it reflects the individual appropriation of opportunities and resources that are collectively created. We note that higher AUT scores are found among respondents who are older and better paid, i.e. closer to the top of the organizational tree. The ideology of creativity, which now exists in forms compatible with the neoliberal ideology of the market (Florida, 2002), may have a powerful effect in masking the organizational realities of intellectual labour. One of these realities is a persistent differentiation of centre from margin. We see this on a global scale in the quasi-globalization mentioned above; we also see it within the workforce of a single country. Intellectual labour is to a large extent institutionalized and collective, but not homogeneous. Our data show important sectoral differences, for instance the university system leading the way into new technology and global connections. Our data point to two patterns of subordination. One is Fordist subordination within organizational life, to which unionism is a traditional response. The other is a pattern of marginality associated with non-standard employment and separation from the mainstream organizational world, to which unionism is largely irrelevant. Differences of this kind make little sense within the older sociological accounts of intellectuals as a new class or as a vanguard agent of change. This whole tradition of sociological thought seems increasingly irrelevant to the conditions of modern intellectual production. In no sense can we see the contemporary intellectual workforce as a broadly unified force for cultural or political change. The intellectual workforce is certainly experiencing the pressures of technological change, the market agenda and neoliberal globalization. There are clear data showing a sense of rapid change, and a sense of stress, among our respondents. But this has not produced any unity of organization or outlook. Further, intellectual workers emphasis on autonomy, understood in a relatively individualist way, seems to lead away from the alliances with other social forces that defined the socio-political role of intellectual workers for Gramsci.

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It is in the dynamics of the intellectual labour process itself that we would see the key to the social and political role of intellectual workers. They are not a flawed universal class, in Gouldners famous phrase, so much as the bearers and operators of an immensely important social asset shared, organized knowledge and technique. In contemporary conditions, this social asset is realized organizationally. Struggles to control or influence the organizations concerned are therefore struggles over the future of intellectual production itself. Thus the neoliberal invasion of the universities, institutions whose leading role for the intellectual workforce is well shown in our study, is a crucial issue of cultural politics today. As we show in another article (Connell and Crawford, 2005), the market agenda has divided, rather than unified, intellectual workers. Intellectual workers, on our evidence, do not form a unified agency in cultural politics, but that is not to say they are passive. There is agency in intellectual labour itself, as the transformation of cultural materials recursively changes its own objects and production tools. The divisions and struggles among intellectual workers mean that some groups appropriate more of the resources and advantages available within organizations. Intellectual workers demands for autonomy confront managerial power within organizations. This problem has been well analysed at the level of the individual organization (Scarborough, 1999), but it is also an issue at the level of the whole workforce. Neoliberal governments persistent support for managerial prerogative, and distrust of intellectuals generally, seems likely to drive a wedge between a privileged minority of intellectual workers who share the benefits of the managerial world, and the bulk of intellectual workers who are coming under stricter controls and stronger pressure to perform. The contemporary intellectual workforce is involved in very large-scale social changes, in which the collective process of intellectual work itself is sometimes strategic. Struggles over the social asset represented by the intellectual production process will take new forms, not well mapped in our existing discourses about intelligentsias or knowledge workers. We therefore hope that, in the future, the sociology of knowledge and intellectuals will incorporate the industrial dimensions explored in this article, which alone will give cultural and political analysis a realistic grounding in the world of the contemporary intellectual workforce.

Acknowledgements
We are grateful to the respondents in this survey for their gift of time and information. The empirical study was managed by Julian Wood, Senior Research Associate at the University of Sydney. John Fisher, Research Associate at the University of Sydney, helped with bibliographical work. The fieldwork was conducted with care and intelligence by Market Equity P/L. We are particularly indebted to Ian Stewart and Roy Jopson of Market Equity. The study was funded by an Australian Research

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Council large grant. We are grateful to colleagues and friends who submitted to pilot interviews. We are also grateful to colleagues at the University of Sydney, the University of California, Berkeley, the University of Essex, and the 2000 annual conference of the Australian Sociological Association at Flinders University, who participated in early discussions of the findings.

References
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Biographical notes
Raewyn Connell is Professor at the University of Sydney, and author of Which Way is Up?; Teachers Work; Ruling Class, Ruling Culture and other books. Her current research concerns social theory, globalization and neoliberalism. Address: Faculty of Education and Social Work, University of Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia. [email: r.connell@edfac.usyd.edu.au] June Crawford is a research consultant, formerly Associate Professor in Psychology at Macquarie University. She has wide experience in designing and analysing surveys. Her most recent research concerns sexual practice in the context of HIV/AIDS prevention. Address: National Centre in HIV Social Research, University of New South Wales, NSW 2052, Australia. [email: june.crawford@unsw.edu.au]

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