Who serves who serves you?
Abstract
In contemporary society, the service has taken up more and more space and, although part of its value is still linked to productive work, it is already possible to see that the field of non-productive and reproductive work begins to absorb a significant part of the social workforce. This process has generated, on the one hand, a demand for professionals able to design good services and, on the other hand, the precariousness of the work of service providers. This article aims to present a reflection on the relationship between these two categories of professionals: those who design and those who execute the service, both working class specimens, but different in their interests and working conditions. Thus, this work brings provocations that can be condensed into a single question: What is the role of the Service Designer in the face of the precariousness of the work of service providers?
Keywords
Service; work relationship; precariousness of work; uberization
DOI
https://doi.org/10.3384/ecp203037
Citation
Santos, B.(2023) Who serves who serves you?, in Carla Cipolla, Claudia Mont’Alvão, Larissa Farias, Manuela Quaresma (eds.), ServDes 2023: Entanglements & Flows Conference, Service Encounters and Meanings, 11-14th July 2023, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. https://doi.org/10.3384/ecp203037
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Who serves who serves you?
In contemporary society, the service has taken up more and more space and, although part of its value is still linked to productive work, it is already possible to see that the field of non-productive and reproductive work begins to absorb a significant part of the social workforce. This process has generated, on the one hand, a demand for professionals able to design good services and, on the other hand, the precariousness of the work of service providers. This article aims to present a reflection on the relationship between these two categories of professionals: those who design and those who execute the service, both working class specimens, but different in their interests and working conditions. Thus, this work brings provocations that can be condensed into a single question: What is the role of the Service Designer in the face of the precariousness of the work of service providers?