THE THIRD WAVE
This rising level of social diversity is fed by further divisions in the labor market, as reflected in the proliferation of new occupations, especially in the white-collar and service fields.Newspaper want ads clamor for “Vydec Secretary” or “Mini-computer Programmer,” while at a conference on the service professions I watched a psychologist list 68 new occupations from consumer advocate, public defender, and sex therapist to psycho-chemotherapist and ombudsman.
As our jobs become less interchangeable, people do too. Refusing to be treated as interchangeable, they arrive at the workplace with an acute consciousness of their ethnic, religious, professional, sexual, subcultural, and individual differences. Groups that throughout the Second Wave era fought to be “integrated” or “assimilated” into mass society now refuse to melt their differences. They emphasize instead their unique characteristics. And Second Wave corporations, still organized for operation in a mass society, are still uncertain how to cope with this rising tide of diversity among their employees and customers.
Though sharply evident in the United States, social de-mas-sification is progressing rapidly elsewhere as well. In Britain, which once regarded itself as highly homogeneous, ethnic minorities, from Pakistanis, West Indians, Cypriots, and Ugandan Asians to Turks and Spaniards now intermingle with a native population itself becoming more heterogeneous. Meanwhile, a tidal influx of Japanese, American, German, Dutch, Arab, and African visitors leave in their wakeAmerican hamburger stands, Japanese tempura restaurants, and signs in store windows that read “Se Habla Espanol.”
Around the world, ethnic minorities reassert their identities and demand long-denied rights to jobs, income, and advancement in the corporation. Australian Aborigines, New Zealand Maoris, Canadian Eskimos, American Blacks, Chicanos, and even Oriental minorities once regarded as politically passive are on the move. From Maine to the Far West, Native Americans assert “Red Power,” demand the restoration of tribal lands, and dicker with the OPEC countries for economic and political support.
Even in Japan, long the most homogeneous of the nidus-trial nations, the signs of de-massification are mounting. An uneducated convict overnight emerges as spokesman for the small minority of Ainu people. The Korean minority grows restless, and sociologist Masaaki Takane of Sophia University says, “I have been haunted by an anxiety . . . Japanese society today is quickly losing its unity and its disintegrating.**
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