The Service to Knowledge Pipeline Hypothesis

Knowledge derived from service (care) moves through two contexts: 

1. Service as seen through culture

2. Service as seen through the economy

Care vs. Service

We may approach service in similar fashion as care ethics. Care ethics places greater focus on the relationships between caregiver and care receiver. It’s a branch of feminist and ethical theory that differs from utilitarian or deontological ethics. It takes in motivation, emotion and sentimental elements and includes it in the “network of social relations” (Sander-Staudt). As Maurice Hamington, a care ethicist explains, care is applied varyingly depending on the level of service required. A customer service worker handing you your coffee wont need a high level of care as opposed to a nurse in an intensive care unit. Care is discriminatory and for this reason, care ethics doesn’t go far enough to cover all the nuances of service giver. We will uncover the fundamental difference between care and service. For now, we will investigate 2 movements of service that took place: 

1. Service as seen through the economy

2. Service as seen through culture

Knowledge is the end result of service as seen through the economy. 

The specific kind of knowledge required in a service economy is expectation. Expectation is the information used by citizens to inform themselves of the treatment they will receive in utilizing the services provided by the state. This information is used to meticulously habituate the citizens’ consciousness through repeated repetitions of services. Depending on the standards of living, each citizen will become accustom to better or worse treatments after repeated uses of service. This informs them of their class-consciousness but not in a Marxist way but rather of bodily “sensation.” Consciousness is shaped by unknowingly accepting the flow of services that passes through awareness. If neglected, all flows are permitted to pass through awareness indiscriminately hence, unaware… In order to make sense of the bodily sensation that occupy each citizens’ body, a political placement is necessary for every consciousness to register sensations of which service fundamentally neglects. Service is turned to information which must be articulated from inside the mind. We may liken this neglection to the disenchantment of the modern world (as known by Max Weber), but we shall look at the neglection of the body next.

It is what becomes unknowingly accustomed to the rhythms and speed of services/transaction throughout the service-user’s lifetime that organizes the body of service worker for standing reserve. For this reason, citizens become unaware of the neglected primary awareness that leaves open its eventual replacement. This primary awareness are the senses that first to arrive to consciousness but, since neglected, the body never properly come to it’s senses. This neglection is experienced as a dulling of the senses which becomes apt for a new awareness. This second awareness is called in to replaces the primary awareness and it is brought from the inner workings of the mind. The regulation of information, which is really a self-regulated, acts upon the intellectual capacity of the mind for reasoning and emotional regulation.

For this reason, service providers (service workers) are educated on the language of service. Once language becomes learned, an emerging self-consciousness that replaces the primary awareness can now go against the essential nature of man from the inside. This elevates the crisis of authority between man and society to man and his body. The control of bodies through service maintains the cosmopolitan order or the state after politics (political violence). Mankind is a service oriented society just as it is a care oriented animal. Customer service is not so much “emotional labor” as it is “educational labor.” Obviously, a server or waiter won’t provide a class or lecture on the importance of politeness - especially to its customers. The consciousness, or self-consciousness, already has the language that brings the service receiver the awareness of when service goes right... and when it goes wrong. This means that education comes internal rather than external i.e. instruction. For example, consultants may educate business owners on the psychological effects of lighting in a restaurant or the placement of food on the table for the purposes of customer satisfaction. This education is purely numbers - customer retention comes to mind. The body is purely captured, measured, and retained. The mere presence of a service worker already radiates data to scientists and consultants. The learning is behavior-based which means any ethical or moral concerns boils down to the behavior of an individual. 

The movements through history of the service economy