How does precarious work entail social vulnerabilities and moral complicities? Theorists of precarity pose two challenges for analysing labour conditions in Asia. Their first challenge is to distinguish the new kinds of social vulnerability which constitute precarious work. The second is to assign moral responsibility in the social network that produces vulnerability in depoliticised and morally detached ways. In this article, the social and normative dimensions of precarious work are connected through a conceptual investigation (...) into how Singapore allocates responsibility for managing temporary migrant labour. First, it analyses how various management strategies, driven by globalisation and government deregulation, increase worker vulnerabilities. These strategies intensify relations of dependence, disempowerment and discrimination, which the workers may accommodate or resist in limited ways. Second, it assesses why the strategies leave the state, employers, agents and others complicit in producing the vulnerabilities. These actors enable, collaborate with, or condone the production of precarity. Their complicity is complicated by varying support or resistance to reforms. The result is a novel conceptual scheme for analysing the complicit network behind precarious work, which can be used in other sites of precarity where some are complicit in the vulnerability of others. (shrink)

We examine the short-term and long-term impact of bilateral agreements on migrant workers’ vulnerability during their employment in Israel. To do so, we developed the Vulnerability Index of Migrant Workers based on five dimensions: poor working conditions, poor living conditions, poor safety conditions, low wages, and dependence on migration costs. We focus on migrant workers arriving in Israel from two different countries, employed in two different sectors of the economy. Data was gathered through a survey conducted among workers arriving from (...) both countries before and after the implementation of the bilateral agreements. The study revealed that after the implementation of bilateral agreements, the working, living and safety conditions of migrant workers remained poor or even worsened. For Thai workers, there was a slight improvement in the working and living conditions in the short term after the bilateral agreement, but they worsened in the long run. The total Index of Vulnerability of both groups showed improvement due to the dramatic decrease in dependence on migration costs, despite the deterioration in some working and living conditions and the reduction in migrant workers’ relative wages. (shrink)

ABSTRACT Drawing on limited ethnographic fieldwork conducted in 2009 and 2010, this article analyzes how the idioms of “craft” and “handmaking” are being evoked and imagined in Detroit. Because of a recent flurry of journalistic accounts of artists, makers, and entrepreneurs flocking to the city’s industrial ruins, Detroit has reemerged in the public imaginary as a utopic “blank canvas”: an empty space waiting to be inscribed and transformed by the arrival of a new creative class. In this narrative of transforming (...) the “Motor City” into “Maker City,” the future of the not-quite-postindustrial city rests in the hands of those willing and able to do-it-themselves. While urban farming, artist collectives, hackerspaces, and business start-ups are all part of this narrative, here I focus primarily on the gendered domestic arts, craft fairs, and in particular the work of an all-female grassroots collective of makers called Handmade Detroit. Interrogating the intersections between postfeminist and post-Fordist subjectivities that emerge in and through the narratives, spaces, and practices of the “indie” crafting community in Detroit, I argue that pleasure and self-fulfillment are often exchanged for what might otherwise be felt to be unstable, precarious, and even exploitive work. Finally, this article explores how the transformative rhetoric of DIY often espouses values of pleasure, autonomy, and choice, reproducing neoliberalist rationalities and limiting the political potential of craft and community activism in Detroit. (shrink)

This case study analyzes precarious employment from the perspective of different theories of distributive justice. Its purpose is to serve as a learning tool for students in business ethics courses.

Journal of Political Philosophy, EarlyView.

Discussions of college faculty professionalism most often address the ethical responsibilities or failures of "professors." Yet the majority of college faculty are not "professors," and work in conditions that preclude or prevent acting in accordance with high-minded statements like the AAUP's Statement on Professional Ethics, In addition, ignorance of the actual working conditions of both tenure-track and tenuous-track faculty has induced a crisis of ethical responsibility for all college faculty. Because official statements about college faculty professionalism neglect the reality (...) of college faculty work, the ethical responsibility of faculty requires a new basis. (shrink)

Precarious employment is commonplace within the University-as-business model. Neoliberal and New Public Management agendas have influenced widespread insecurity, and limited career progression pathways within academic work. Qualitative multi-case data inform this investigation of how young academic workers cope with, and justify, their precarious situations in a large Australian university. This article introduces the notion of cruel optimism to analyse the unethical exploitation of desires of precariously employed academics. This analytical engagement extends empathetic engagement with the lived experiences (...) and rationalisations of precariously employed academic workers, paying homage to their desires and negotiations. Findings demonstrate that participants were heavily invested in working towards achieving their good life fantasy which encompassed secure employment and the recognition this provided. Cruel optimism operated as participants developed coping mechanisms to deal with the ongoingness of their troubling situation as precarious workers uncertain how to change their precarious circumstances. Participants experienced cruel optimism as they navigated through issues of identity, control, and desire, related to their present and future lives as academic workers experiencing an impasse of crisis ordinariness. Optimism directed towards the academic scene of desire motivated participants’ daily actions and informed their understandings. Ethical elements of the impasse of precarious employment are presented in relation to the neoliberal and New Public Management-oriented University context. This article provides a novel conceptualisation of how precarious employment contributes to a relation of cruel optimism among workers by highlighting how organisations exploit the desires of insecure employees for extended periods of time, contributing to an impasse of crisis ordinariness. (shrink)

Increasing global competition has intensified the use of informal sector workforce worldwide. This phenomenon is true with regard to India, where 92% of the workers hold precarious jobs. Our study examines the dynamics of workplace dignity in the context of Indian security guards deployed as contract labour by private suppliers, recognising that security guards’ jobs were marked by easy access, low status, disrespect and precariousness. The experiences of guards serving bank ATMs were compared with those working in large reputed (...) organisations. The former reported loss of dignity though their inherent self-worth remained partially intact, whereas the latter reclaimed dignity despite the precarious working conditions and the absence of unions. Guards from large reputed organisations evolved strategies by which they took advantage of the client’s vulnerabilities, developed ‘thick’ relationships at work and immersed themselves in 'doing dignity work' to ensure that they are not disposable. ‘Doing dignity work’ was a visible device which involved actions that met or went beyond the norms laid down by the client and was used by security guards to limit the extent of their precariousness. Since the opportunity to reclaim dignity was facilitated by large reputed clients’ adherence to legal regulations, we see implications of the study for the moral economy. (shrink)

The condition of precariousness not only provides insights into a segment of the world of work or of a particular subject group, but is also a privileged standpoint for an overview of the condition of the social on a global scale. Because precariousness is multidimensional and polysemantic, it traverses contemporary society and multiple contexts, from industrial to class, gender, family relations as well as political participation, citizenship and migration. This book maps the differences and similarities in the ways precariousness (...) and insecurity in employment unfold and are subjectively experienced in regions and sectors that are confronted with different labour histories, legislations and economic priorities. Establishing a constructive dialogue amongst different global regions and across disciplines, the chapters explore the shift from precariousness to precariat and collective subjects as it is being articulated in the current global crisis. This edited collection aims to continue a process of mapping experiences by means of ethnographies, fieldwork, interviews, content analysis, where the precarious define their condition and explain how they try to withdraw from, cope with or embrace it. (shrink)

This article draws upon clinical experience of GPs working in a deprived area of the North East of England to examine the potential contribution of Universal Basic Income to health by mitigating ‘patient-side barriers’ among three cohorts experiencing distinct forms of ‘precariousness’: 1) long-term unemployed welfare recipients with low levels of education (lumpenprecariat); 2) workers on short-term/zero-hours contracts with low levels of education (‘lower’ precariat); 3) workers on short-term/zero-hours contracts with relatively high levels of education (‘upper’ precariat). We argue that (...) any benefits must be accompanied by robust institutions capable of promoting health. (shrink)

The issue of a generational exchange in Italian feminism has been crucial over the last decade. Current struggles over precariousness have revived issues previously raised by feminists of the 1970s, recalling how old forms of instability and precarious employment are still present in Italy. This essay starts from the assumption that precariousness is a constitutive aspect of many young Italian women's lives, young Italian feminist scholars have been discussing the effects of such precarity on their generation. This article analyses (...) the literature produced by political groups of young scholars interested in gender and feminism connected to debates on labour and power in contemporary Italy. One of the most successful strategies that younger feminists have used to gain visibility has involved entering current debates on precariousness, thus forcing a connection with the larger Italian labour movement. In doing so, this new wave of feminism has destabilized the universalism assumed by the 1970s generation. By pointing to a necessary generational change, younger feminists have been able to mark their own specificity and point to exploitative power dynamics within feminist groups, as well as in the family and in the workplace without being dismissed. In such a layered context, many young feminists argue that precariousness is a life condition, not just the effect of job market flexibility and not solely negative. The literature produced by young feminists addresses the current strategies engineered to make ‘their’ precarious life more sustainable. This essay analyses such strategies in the light of contemporary Italian politics. The main conclusion is that younger Italian women's experience requires new strategies and tools for struggle, considering that the visibility of women as political subjects is still quite minimal. Female precariousness can be seen as a fruitful starting point for a dialogue across differences, addressing gender and reproduction, immigration, work and social welfare at the same time. (shrink)

The aim of the article is to offer a reading of Judith Butler’s understanding of the precarious, the notion which gives rise to her particular understanding of precarity. The first part of the article discusses the transition from the theory of performativity to the theory of precarity and claims that the body provides the link between a performative act and a precarious life. The second part scrutinizes the idea of the precarious as it appears in conjunction with (...) life. Precariousness and precarity are related to dispossessability and dispossession, and to a politically induced inequality. The article concludes with a claim that the notion of the precarious offers itself as a possible point of departure for an entirely different conceptualization of equality, and as a strong basis for coalitional action or collective struggle. The specific positioning of the body and the political desire for radical equality in Butler’s thought makes theories of performativity and precarity interrelated. (shrink)

Precarisation means more than insecure jobs, more than the lack of security given by waged employment. By way of insecurity and danger it embraces the whole of existence, the body, modes of subjectivation. It is threat and coercion, even while it opens up new possibilities of living and working. Precarisation means living with the unforeseeable, with contingency. In this article I analyse how the new precarious living and working conditions and the privatisation of protection against precariousness are conditions of (...) both a prospering financial capitalism and its concomitant debt economy. This economy is based on the expansion of productivity that involves less work, in the traditional sense, than subjectivation. A new subjectivity is needed to assume responsibility, to take on debt, and to internalise the risks both as guilt and as debt: a personality that is doubly indebted and responsible for oneself.La precarización significa más que empleos inseguros, más que la falta de seguridad que proporciona el empleo asalariado. A través de la inseguridad y el peligro, la precarización abarca toda la existencia, el cuerpo, los modos de subjetivación. Es una amenaza y una forma de coerción, aunque también abre nuevas posibilidades de vivir y trabajar. Precarización significa vivir con lo imprevisible, bajo la contingencia. En este artículo analizo cómo las nuevas condiciones de vida y de trabajo precarias y la privatización de la protección contra la precariedad son condiciones, tanto de un próspero capitalismo financiero, como de su concomitante economía de la deuda. Esta economía se basa en la expansión de la productividad, la cual implica más bien procesos de subjetivación que lo que hemos entendido por trabajo en el sentido tradicional. Se necesita una nueva subjetividad para asumir responsabilidades, para endeudarse e internalizar los riesgos como culpa y como deuda: una personalidad doblemente endeudada y responsable de sí misma. (shrink)

Readers of Theodor Adorno often have understood him as a "totalizing negativist." If it truly is the case that Adorno saw modern society as a realm of complete falsehood, however, his own social theory is unintelligible. In A Precarious Happiness, Peter E. Gordon aims to redeem Adorno from this negativist interpretation by showing that it arises from a basic misunderstanding of his work. Pushing against entrenched interpretations, Gordon argues that Adorno's philosophy is animated by a deep attachment to (...) a concept of happiness or human flourishing, and it is only by virtue of that normative standard that Adorno judges the world a catastrophic failure. Through a comprehensive reading of Adorno's work, A Precarious Happiness shows that in an imperfect world, the available standards of our flourishing are also imperfect. Looking beyond Adorno, Gordon suggests that the practice of social criticism, even if it is directed toward exposing what is "false," cannot succeed without appealing to an unrealized notion of what would be right. (shrink)

Purpose This paper aims to explore the technologization of peace work through “remote support monitors” that use social and digital media technologies like social media to alert local violence prevention actors to potentially violent situations during demonstrations. Design/methodology/approach Using a distributed cognition lens, the authors explore the information processing of monitors within peace organizations. The authors adopt a qualitative thematic analysis methodology composed of interviews with monitors and documents from their shared communication and discussion channels. The authors’ analysis seeks (...) to highlight how information is transformed between social and technical actors through the process of monitoring. Findings The authors’ analysis identifies that the technologization of monitoring for violence prevention to assist nonviolent activists produces two principal and related forms of transformation: appropriation and hidden attributes. Monitors “appropriate” information from sources to fit new ends and modes of representation throughout the process of detection, verification and dissemination. The verification and dissemination processes likewise render latent supporting informational elements, hiding the aggregative nature of information flow in monitoring. The authors connect the ideas of appropriation and hidden attributes to broader discourses in surveillance and trust that challenge monitoring and its place in peace work going forward. Originality/value To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to focus on the communicative and information processes of remote support monitors. The authors demonstrate that adoption of social and digital media information of incipient violence and response processes for its mitigation suggests both a social and technical precarity for the role of monitoring. (shrink)

This article presents the findings of a study on homeschooling in Czechia. It focuses on the gender aspects of this uncommon educational decision. Based on forty-three individual interviews with homeschooling parents, the article’s unifying thread is interest in understanding how mothers are involved in the decision to homeschool, and how the practice is embedded in gendered relationships within the society. We explore the results from two perspectives. First, we consider how the choice to homeschool lies simultaneously in embracing and opposing (...) cultural imperatives of good mothering. Second, we explore the precarious status of homeschooling mothers in relation to economic independence. By shedding light on individual choice within social structures, we situate the practice of homeschooling within the gender inequalities of today’s society. (shrink)

This article turns on a curatorial project that Trine Friis Sørensen conducted in relation to the Danish Radio Archive by commissioning two artists, Kajsa Dahlberg and Olof Olsson, to engage with the archive and produce artworks in relation to it. Focusing on the practice of commissioning rather than its outcome, the article proposes to consider commissioning as a curatorial mode of inquiry into the DR Archive and in turn asks why we commission, how the commission works and what kind of (...) thinking the commission engenders. Drawing on Bruno Latour, Michel Foucault and in particular Jacques Derrida, this thinking with and through the practice of commissioning eventually prompts. (shrink)

OrientationThis study employed a second stage moderated mediation analysis to investigate the influence of authentic leadership on employee flourishing via trust in the leader and job overload.Research PurposeTo explore the relationship between authentic leadership and flourishing by considering the indirect effect of trust in the leader as potentially moderated by job overload.Motivation for the StudyAn authentic leadership style, trust in the leader, and job overload may impact employee flourishing. A deeper understanding of the potential interaction effect of trust in the (...) leader and job overload in the relationship between authentic leadership and flourishing may improve individual and organizational productivity.Research Approach/Design and MethodThis study used a quantitative, cross-sectional survey design and PROCESS for moderated mediation. The sample consisted of 314 employees in a prominent steel manufacturing organization in South Africa. The Authentic Leadership Inventory, Workplace Trust Survey, Flourishing-at-Work Scale, and the Job Demands-Resources Scale were utilized.Main FindingsThe study found that authentic leadership was a significant predictor of flourishing through trust in the leader. Job overload did not moderate the relationship between trust in the leader and employee flourishing.Practical/Managerial ImplicationsThis study emphasizes the potential role of authentic leadership in fostering a trustful relationship between employees and their leaders. It might result in the increased flourishing of employees. The non-significant influence of job overload on trusting relationships in precarious work contexts was also illuminated.Contribution/Value-AddThrough the analysis of these relations, organizations may be favorably equipped to optimize the resources required to improve performance. Moreover, the investigation into trust in the leader combined with job overload increases our understanding of supporting and promoting employee flourishing at work. (shrink)

This article examines the utopianism of Kim Stanley Robinson's 2017 sf novel New York 2140, the world of which is defined by a nexus of profound climatological disasters. In contrast to other texts in the growing cli-fi genre, Robinson's seemingly apocalyptic world is a representation of a disaster utopia—real-world networks of care, compassion, collaboration, and utopian joy that emerge in the wake of disasters. In New York 2140 Robinson explores the valences of disaster utopianism beyond its contemporary, exceptional appearances, contemplating (...) how communities can flourish in a world where disaster emerges as a direct result of capitalist precarity and inequality. The article situates New York 2140 within a newly emerging corpus of cultural work that calls for a direct confrontation with the destructive powers of the present by understanding utopia as a precarious and never-finished form of resistance to neoliberal late capitalism. (shrink)

Emerging from the internationally recognised Theorising Normalcy and the Mundane conference series, the chapters in this book offer wide-ranging critiques of that most pervasive of ideas, 'normal'. In particular, they explore the precarious positions we are presented with and, more often than not, forced into by 'normal', and its operating system, 'normalcy' (Davis, 2010). They are written by activists, students, practitioners and academics and offer related but diverse approaches. Importantly, however, the chapters also ask, what if increasingly precarious (...) encounters with, and positions of, marginality and non-normativity offers us a chance (perhaps the chance) to critically explore the possibilities of 'imagining otherwise'? The book questions the privileged position of 'non-normativity'; in youth and unpacks the expectation of the 'normal' student in both higher and primary education. It uses the position of transable people to push the boundaries of 'disability', interrogates the psycho-emotional disablism of box-ticking bureaucracy and spotlights the 'urge to know' impairment. It draws on cross-movement and cross-disciplinary work around disability to explore topics as diverse as drug use, The Bible and relational autonomy. Finally, and perhaps most controversially, it explores the benefits of (re)instating 'normal'. By paying attention to the opportunities presented amongst the fissures of critique and defiance, this book offers new applications and perspectives for thinking through the most ordinary of ideas, 'normal'. (shrink)

This paper looks at an emerging major economic trend which appears to be, in part, a consequence of neoliberal globalization. This development is the rise of a huge segment of the world’s population, in both developed and developing countries, comprising a redundant or unneeded group of workers, both rural and urban. These make up “the precarious classes.” The paper initially presents background ideas to set the stage for discussing these findings. It looks at data summarizing the consequences of globalization (...) to date in the U.S. and in the rest of the world. The rise of the “working poor” in the U.S. is first documented and then we summarize Samir Amin’s work on what he calls the emergence of “precarious classes” around the globe. Finally, we tie this apparent trend to related global problems and look at what is needed to further research this potentially ominous development. (shrink)

With concerns about political apathy, it might be worth turning to a group that is challenging the political discourse and confronting institutions and policies head on. This article explores the ideas of two undocumented activists who are working to change the laws and politics that affect them. Using their work and dedication, this article discusses their dedication and their ideas for creating a new basis for a civics curriculum that goes beyond information and instead places other values at the (...) center of education. (shrink)

After years of the welfare state, the rise of technology, combined with neoliberal governmental apparatuses, has established a new society of the precarious. In this new way of the world, productivity is not just connected to labor in the traditional sense of work hours, but more totally, to the formation of the self: work becomes performative and affective, and personal identities seep more and more into working ones. This new mode of being has another side, however: it (...) can lead to new forms of self-organization, resistance and exodus. In it we see the emergence of a new and disobedient self-government of the precarious. (shrink)

This collectively written article aims to offer a bird's eye view of the Italian debates about precarity in employment and life, as captured in discussions among participants in a focus group held in Milan in 2006. The chief topics that emerged from this discussion include the feminization of labour, feminist practices and methodologies, representation/participation, and guaranteed income. Here, we give as much space as possible to the diverse voices of participants and their strategies for transformation.

The cultural activities of human being are to be mediated by physical elements. These are, as a matter of fact, the natural things. There is allowed no other way for human being to realize his mental work but than in and through the nature. So, generally speaking, culture in ordinary sense consists in the human mind "objectified" in the natural reality. It remains within the boundary of human activities, which themselves cannot transcend the nature.

In this thought-provoking and innovative book, Kendra Coulter examines the diversity of work done with, by, and for animals. Interweaving human-animal studies, labor theories and research, and feminist political economy, Coulter develops a unique analysis of the accomplishments, complexities, problems, and possibilities of multispecies and interspecies labor. She fosters a nuanced, multi-faceted approach to labor that takes human and animal well-being seriously, and that challenges readers to not only think deeply and differently about animals and work, but to (...) reflect on the potential for interspecies solidarity. The result is an engaging, expansive, and path-making text. (shrink)

This article utilizes the work of Judith Butler in order to chart a queer and feminist animal studies, an animal studies that celebrates our shared embodied finitude. Butler's commentary on other animals remains dispersed and fragmented throughout books, lectures, and interviews over the course of the last several years. This work is critically synthesized in conjunction with her work on mourning and precarious lives. By developing an anti-anthropocentric understanding of mourning and precarious lives, this article (...) hopes to create ontological, ethical, and political concepts that resist the violence of the present. In so doing, the article contrasts Butler's understanding of precarious life with Giorgio Agamben's understanding of bare life in order to conceive of precariousness as constitutive of social reality. This intellectual labor lays the groundwork for understanding mourning the lives of other animals as a political act that produces new communities, rather than as an individuating and isolating emotion. (shrink)

Time, precarious lives and memories and multiple narrations related to crossing borders constitute the key meanings of a series of contemporary pieces of works produced by migrant artists and writers. Through an analysis of some of their works, this article focuses on some spatio-temporal images, actions and metaphors related to movement. Then it questions the exploration of narratives in visual arts, especially the relationship between imaginary fiction and reality stories. Theatre may become the very place where contemporary tales of (...) migrant people are translated, told, performed. The very meaningful notion of hospitality becomes a theatrical practice in one of the most relevant spectacles of the Théâtre du Soleil, Le Dernier Caravansérail. Another aspect of this creative hospitality — Leïla Sebbar’s Mes Algéries en France — concerns the interweaving of memories belonging to opposite sides of divided countries, after the colonial wars. This work of collection, transcription, translation from one to another gives an example of writing as a repairing work but also of revelation of unknown connections. (shrink)

Resumen: El artículo propone abordar la novela Throguel Online (2020) del escritor chileno Nicolás Meneses desde una perspectiva intermedial. Analizaremos el lugar del libro entre literatura, videojuego e internet, considerando varios elementos de su mezcla entre capas reales y virtuales que realiza, y que lo convierten en una obra sintomática y modélica de la era digital y cibercapitalista. Por un lado, la novela despliega, a nivel estético, material y temático, varias textualidades y configuraciones del videojuego que invaden y transforman las (...) materialidades y lenguajes del texto; por otro lado, señala tanto las problemáticas de una vida precaria en América Latina (Chile) como las posibilidades de formar nuevas comunidades virtuales mediante las redes digitales. Abstract: This article proposes an approach to the novel Throguel Online (2020), by Chilean writer Nicolás Meneses, from an intermedial perspective. We will analyze the book´s place between literature, videogame, and internet, considering various elements in the mixture of real and virtual layers it is performing, and which is turning it into a symptomatic and exemplary work for the digital and cybercapitalist era. On the one hand, the novel displays, on an aesthetic, material y thematic level, different textualities and configurations of videogames that invade and transform the materialities and languages of the text. On the other hand, it shows both the difficulties of precarious life in Latin America (Chile), and the possibilities of creating new virtual communities through digital networks. (shrink)

In this essay, I pose the question: what does it mean to be at home in a world where housing is increasingly a private commodity? I draw upon phenomenological analyses of the experience of home from Bachelard and Heidegger, both elaborating upon the fruitful descriptions of home as anchoring our temporal experience, while at the same time critiquing Bachelard’s all too hasty claim that all human beings begin in welcoming homes. As such, I claim that insofar as spaces of dwelling (...) are not simply available in an increasingly precarious world, we ought to commit ourselves both to the work of cultivating more spaces of dwelling, and resisting an economic and political understanding of dwelling that reduces it to a purely material structure, or worse, an essentially fungible commodity or investment property, rather than a place that provides the conditions and parameters for human life. (shrink)

ResumoA partir de uma crônica de Bráulio Tavares, este artigo reflete sobre cenas da precariedade de ontem e de hoje. A primeira cena está em Lima Barreto, em Recordações do escrivão Isaías Caminha, ao referir a Revolta da Vacina no Rio de Janeiro do século XX, comparada às manifestações de 2013 e 2014 no país; a segunda é a espetacularização da mídia sobre as manifestações de rua em 2013 e 2014, e sobre o processo de impedimento do mandato presidencial de (...) Dilma Rousseff em 2015; a terceira é uma cena da vida cotidiana de uma moça de Brasília em outubro de 2014. As três situações revelam o mundo da classe trabalhadora e seu desamparo em meio ao espetáculo midiático.Palavras-chave: Trabalho. Mídia. Política. Espetáculo. AbstractFrom a chronicle by Bráulio Tavares, this paper reflects about scenes of the precariousness of yesterday and today. The first scene is in Lima Barreto’s novel Recordações do escrivão Isaías Caminha (Memories of the scrivener Isaías Caminha), when referring to the Vaccine Revolt in the Rio de Janeiro of the 20th century, compared to the manifestations of 2013 and 2014 in Brazil; the second is about the media spectacularization of the street manifestations between 2013 e 2014 in Brazil, and also on Dilma Rousseff's impeachment process in 2015; the third one is from the everyday life of a girl from Brasília in October of 2014. All those three situations reveal the world of the working class and its helplessness in the face of the media spectacularization.Keywords: Work. Media. Politics. Spectacle. (shrink)

The articles brought together in this double-length section of the Annual Review of Theory, Culture & Society focus on two intertwined strands of the thought of Georg Simmel, both of them neglected until recent years. A first bears on what might be called Simmel’s metaphysics of the social, or what he himself once called ‘sociological metaphysics’. A second strand centres on the renewed contemporary relevance of Simmel’s ideas about money economies and their relation to precarious individual life-situations in an (...) age of global economic turbulence. Current sensibilities in the wake of global economic crisis and the demise of some of the more euphoric sociologies of globalization of the last two decades provide a timely setting for a reappraisal of Simmel’s thinking. With the completion in 2012 of the Suhrkamp edition of Simmel’s collected works, Simmel’s themes need to be explored more deeply, including particularly his thinking about lived experience, transcendence, death, fragmentary worlds of value, and allegorical representation. This issue of the journal showcases some of the latest scholarly work and foregrounds several pivotal primary pieces unavailable in English until now. (shrink)

In keeping with the focus of this special section, we concentrate initially on some of the problems of autonomist Marxist concepts such as `immaterial labour', `affective labour' and `precarity' for understanding work in the cultural industries. We then briefly review some relevant media theory (John Thompson's notion of mediated quasi-interaction) and some key recent sociological research on cultural labour (especially work by Andrew Ross and Laura Grindstaff, the latter drawing on Hochschild's concept of emotional labour), which we believe (...) may be more useful than autonomist concepts in developing empirically informed critique. The main body of the article then consists of an ethnographic account of working on one particular television programme, an account that aims to build on these theoretical debates. We analyse how the power to provide exposure or not to individuals in the talent show genre in contemporary television (a feature that derives from the symbolic power of producers to make texts that are then circulated to massive numbers of people) and disputes between commissioners and independent producers about how best to go about doing so (an organizational issue) are registered in the form of stress, anxiety and sometimes poor working relations among project teams of young television researchers (a matter of working conditions and experiences). We especially focus on how additional pressures are borne by these workers because of the requirements to undertake emotional labour, involving the handling of strong emotions on the part of talent show contributors, and to maintain good working relations in short-term project work, requirements generated by the need to ensure future employment. Ultimately, then, we support the view that creative work is `precarious' — but we go beyond the generalizations involved in concepts such as immaterial labour and affective labour to show the specific ways in which precariousness is registered and negotiated in the lives of young workers in one industry. (shrink)

Studies of creative industries typically contend that creative work is profoundly precarious, taking place on a freelance basis in highly competitive, individualized and contingent labour markets. Such studies depict creative workers as correspondingly self-enterprising, self-reliant, self-interested and calculative agents who valorise care-free independence. In contrast, we adopt the ‘ethics of care’ approach to explore, recognize and appreciate the communitarian, relational and moral considerations as well as interpersonal connectedness and interdependencies that underpin creative work. Drawing on in-depth interviews (...) with creative workers in a range of marginal socio-cultural contexts, we argue that creative workers cultivate and sustain a diverse array of practices of care arising from an affective concern with the well-being of others. Far from being merely individualistic and crudely competitive actors, creative workers enact practical ethical responsibilities and affectivities towards a range of human and non-human others, including families, local communities and neighbourhoods, colleagues, artistic scenes and their adjacent genres, and surrounding national and linguistic cultures. In emphasizing the fundamental and structuring role of care in contingent labour markets our approach accords with recent trends in the social sciences that ‘affirmatively’—as opposed to ‘negatively’ and ‘suspiciously’—recognize that mutuality, solidarity and affectivity are powerful drivers of action on a par with or even exceeding market-driven self-centredness. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:The foundation story of bioethics is, as Susan Reverby (2009) argues, one of a trinity of horror stories culminating in what we commonly call the "Tuskegee Syphilis Study." The foundation story emphasizes that medical researchers violated participant autonomy by deceiving them about their medical conditions, the goals of the study, and the treatments they would receive, and by failing to consider the health and best interests of the research participant. While this story reflects some key elements of the Tuskegee study, (...) it is only a selection of all the possible facts that, as a consequence, deflects attention from equally salient and problematic elements of the Public Health Service's unethical study and its context. Those elements not included in the bioethics foundation story represent the types of racial and social inequities that COVID-19 and other contemporary events have thrown into stark relief. If bioethics plans to emphasize translational work around public policy and public engagement understood broadly, then it will need to revise and expand the story it tells about itself and its founding. (shrink)

Todos los particulares pueden obtener ingresos extra y recuperar el poder adquisitivo perdido en el contexto de la crisis, anuncia Airbnb. Este estudio analiza la forma que adquiere el trabajo de los anfitriones -las personas que alquilan su vivienda o habitación- en Airbnb. Se plantea que la actividad de los anfitriones adquiere la forma de trabajo abstracto, pero que es un trabajo que se articula y se desarrolla sobre la propia vida y cotidianidad de los anfitriones: sobre la esfera reproductiva (...) de la persona y sobre actividades no económicas. Para que los anfitriones pueden maximizar los beneficios que obtienen, adoptan la forma de empresarios de sí mismos. Como resultado, los anfitriones reducen su precariedad económica pero la actividad de hospedar en Airbnb les genera nuevas formas de precariedad vital.Everyone can earn extra income and recover the lost consumption power due to the crisis, adevertises Airbnb. This study analyzes the form that the work of Airbnb hosts - people who rent their home or room on the platforma- acquires. It is stated that the activity of the hosts is a type of abstract labour, but that develops over the life of the hosts: over the reproductive sphere of the person and over non-economic activities. In order for hosts to maximize the benefits they can obtain on Airbnb, they become entrepreneurs of themselves. As a result, hosts reduce their economic precariousness but the activity of hosting on Airbnb generates new ways of vital precariousness. (shrink)

Agrifood scholars have long investigated the relationship between farm size and a wide variety of social and ecological outcomes. Yet neither this scholarship nor the extensive research on farmworkers has addressed the relationship between farm size and job quality for hired workers. Moreover, although this question has not been systematically investigated, many advocates, popular food writers, and documentaries appear to have the answer—portraying precarious work as common on large farms and nonexistent on small farms. In this paper, we (...) take on this question by describing and explaining the relationship between farm size and job quality for hired farm workers. To do so, we draw on data from two independently conducted, mixed-methods case studies—organic fruit and vegetable production in California, and dairy farming in Wisconsin—each of which offers a different set of insights into the farm size-job quality relationship. In both cases, larger farms fared better than or no worse than their smaller-scale counterparts for most job quality metrics investigated, though many of the advantages of working on large farms accrue disproportionately to white, U.S.-born workers. We explain that these patterns stem from economies of scale, industrialization, firm size itself, the dominant class identities and aspirations of farmers and their peers, as well as farmers’ and immigrant workers’ fears of immigration enforcement. (shrink)

Beginning with Jacques Derrida’s Beast and the Sovereign, I identify two forms of curiosity: 1) scientific curiosity, which proceeds through objective dissection and 2) therapeutic curiosity, which proceeds through observational confinement. Through an analysis of Derrida’s treatment of both sorts of curiosity, I notice and develop a third, deconstructive form of curiosity. Through repeated turn to the work of Sarah Kofman, I characterize this third curiosity as, by turns, linguistic, animal, and critical. As linguistic, this curiosity is a penchant (...) for wordplay and a keenness for the unsteady reservoirs of signification, resisting any clean dissection of meaning or the confinement of terms. As animal, it tracks a scent, regularly suspending its paw, as if to emphasize the meandering and precarious quality of knowledge. And as critical, it combats the illusions of pure revelation and instead draws attention to the conjuring trick, the systematic substitution of signs, undergirding it. Finally, I consider in what way Derrida’s resistance to philosophy may be read on the grounds not of a singular wonder but of multiple curiosities. (shrink)

AbstractDeveloped from meaningful work and business ethics, we investigate the motivational effect of meaningful work on paid staff (not volunteers) with a “shortage” of ethical employment practices situated in the Not-for-Profit sector. We tested the traditional notion of meaningful work by nature and by line manager support (under its business-like practices) to compensate for the “sacrifice” (low pay and job stress caused by poor employment terms) of front line staff working alongside professional managers paid the market rate. (...) Using a mixed-method case study, we employed SEM modelling to analyse a staff survey of 125 valid responses and administrative records of staff resignation, alongside interviews. The results show that meaningful work by nature and by line manager support are positively and significantly associated with job satisfaction but neither has a significant effect on staff resignation action. There is no empirical evidence to support the compensating effect of meaningful work by nature; meaningful work by line manager support has a stronger effect only through reduced job stress, rather than compensating for the low pay, in preventing resignation. The qualitative analysis reveals that continued low pay and using precarious employment contracts have evoked the questioning of ethics of employment practices in this sector. We discuss the implications and suggest further areas of research. (shrink)

This interdisciplinary volume revisits Adorno's lesser-known work, Minima Moralia, and makes the case for its application to the most urgent concerns of the 21st century. Contributing authors situate Adorno at the heart of contemporary debates on the ecological crisis, the changing nature of work, the idea of utopia, and the rise of fascism. Exploring the role of critical pedagogy in shaping responses to fascistic regimes, alongside discussions of extractive economies and the need for leisure under increasingly precarious (...) working conditions, this volume makes new connections between Minima Moralia and critical theory today. Another line of focus is the aphoristic style of Minima Moralia and its connection to Adorno's wider commitment to small and minor literary forms, which enable capitalist critique to be both subversive and poetic. This critique is further located in Adorno's discussion of a utopia that is reliant on complete rejection of the totalising system of capitalism. The distinctive feature of such a utopia for Adorno is dependent upon individual suffering and subsequent survival, an argument this book connects to the mutually constitutive relationship between ecological destruction and right-wing authoritarianism. These timely readings of Adorno's Minima Moralia teach us to adapt through our survival, and to pursue a utopia based on his central ideas. In the process, opening up theoretical spaces and collapsing the physical borders between us in the spirit of Adorno's lifelong project. (shrink)

There has been an exponential rise in use of the term vulnerability across a number of political and policy arenas, including child protection, sexual offences, poverty, development, care for the elderly, patient autonomy, globalisation, war, public health and ecology. Yet despite its increasing deployment, the exact meaning and parameters of this concept remain somewhat elusive. In this article, we explore the interaction of two very different strategies—one in which vulnerability is relied upon by those seeking improved social justice as a (...) mechanism by which to identify, problematise and compel state responses to a universal condition of precarious dependency, and the other in which it is used as a category of neo-liberal governance which legitimates state encroachment whilst constructing ‘vulnerable’ individuals as ‘risk-managers’ who must behave ‘responsibly’ in the face of disadvantage. We suggest that the co-existence of these divergent approaches highlights the fluidity and malleability of the concept of vulnerability. Using sex work as a specific case study, we explore the ways in which vulnerability bears multiple meanings, and has been used in recent times in the furtherance of moralistic and regressive agendas, which collude with, rather than challenge, state power. Without seeking to reject the label or normative import of vulnerability, we call, therefore, for a more circumspect approach to its usage, and a more critical evaluation of recent claims which hail it as a mechanism, preferable to the conventional use of equality paradigms, by which to secure progressive feminist outcomes. (shrink)

This article describes the emergence of a prized labor market in sectors that policymakers have designated as the creative industries. Statistics generated about these sectors have been legion. By contrast, there has been precious little attention to the quality of work life with which such livelihoods are associated. The article considers several features of creative work that have a qualitative dimension and recommends a policy-minded approach to each. The second half of the article examines the case for a (...) cross-class coalition of the sort proposed by the anti-precarity movement. Though they occupy opposite ends of the labor market hierarchy, workers in retail and low-end services and the `creative class' temping in high-end knowledge sectors share certain elements of precarious, or nonstandard employment. While these different segments have existential conditions in common, is there any reason to imagine that they interpret or experience them in similar ways? And, even if they do, is there enough commonality to forge a political coalition of interest against the class polarization associated with economic liberalization? (shrink)

This article critically evaluates and contests the flagship benefit delivery system Universal Credit for lone mothers by focusing on some of the ethical challenges it poses, as well as some key implications it holds for social work with lone mothers and their children. Universal Credit was first introduced in the United Kingdom (UK) in 2008, and echoes conditionality-based welfare policies adopted by neoliberal governments internationally on the assumption that paid employment offers a route out of poverty for citizens. However, (...) research evidence suggests that the risks of conditionality polices for lone parents can often include increased poverty, a deterioration in mental health or even destitution posed by paternalistic sanctions or precarious low-paid employment, which can undermine parenting capacities and children’s well-being. The article also critically appraises and questions challenges posed by an increased reliance upon contractual ethics by governments, alongside the wider behaviour-modifying policies of the workfare-orientated state. This includes that working-class lone mothers can erroneously be stigmatised as representing a morally challenged dependent burden through activation policies and risk-averse social work practices. (shrink)

In recent years, feminist scholars have criticized various European governments for placing the burden of environmentalist practices on women’s unpaid work. While denouncing how environmentalist regimes reinforce gender inequalities, this literature has overlooked migrant domestic workers’ contributions to sustainable practices, such as managing household recyclables and waste. This article addresses the intersection of gender, race and immigration in urban recycling schemes in the city of Naples, Italy, a growing destination for labor migrants and an area with a long history (...) of waste management crises. Through in-depth interviews, the author examines how migrant domestic workers sustain recycling efforts, in their homes and workplaces. These narratives show how precarious immigration and employment statuses push migrant workers to take on burdensome recycling work for their employers. Despite concerns of street harassment and xenophobia, findings further show how contributing to neighborhood recycling efforts are also important ways in which migrant women express their commitment to the local community. These findings broaden existing notions of gender inequalities in environmental governance through an intersectional framework focusing on precarious migrant labor. (shrink)