Victoria Browne, Jason Danely, and Doerthe Rosenow (eds)
- Published in print:
- 2021
- Published Online:
- May 2021
- ISBN:
- 9780197266830
- eISBN:
- 9780191938160
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- British Academy
- DOI:
- 10.5871/bacad/9780197266830.001.0001
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Social and Cultural Anthropology
Vulnerability is a fundamental aspect of existence, giving rise to the need for care in various forms. Yet we are not all vulnerable in the same way, and not all vulnerabilities are equally ...
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Vulnerability is a fundamental aspect of existence, giving rise to the need for care in various forms. Yet we are not all vulnerable in the same way, and not all vulnerabilities are equally recognised or cared for. This transdisciplinary volume considers how vulnerability and care are shaped by relations of power within contemporary contexts of war, development, environmental degradation, sexual violence, aging populations and economic precarity. It proposes that care for vulnerable populations or individuals is inseparable from other political processes of recognition, welfare, healthcare and security, whilst also exploring vulnerability as a shared, generative condition that makes caring possible. Ethnographic and narrative accounts of vulnerable life and caring relations in various geographical regions – including Japan, Uganda, Micronesia, Iraq, Mexico, the UK and the US – are interspersed with perspectives from philosophy, International Relations, social and cultural theory, and more, resulting in a compelling series of intellectual exchanges, creative frictions and provocative insights.Less
Vulnerability is a fundamental aspect of existence, giving rise to the need for care in various forms. Yet we are not all vulnerable in the same way, and not all vulnerabilities are equally recognised or cared for. This transdisciplinary volume considers how vulnerability and care are shaped by relations of power within contemporary contexts of war, development, environmental degradation, sexual violence, aging populations and economic precarity. It proposes that care for vulnerable populations or individuals is inseparable from other political processes of recognition, welfare, healthcare and security, whilst also exploring vulnerability as a shared, generative condition that makes caring possible. Ethnographic and narrative accounts of vulnerable life and caring relations in various geographical regions – including Japan, Uganda, Micronesia, Iraq, Mexico, the UK and the US – are interspersed with perspectives from philosophy, International Relations, social and cultural theory, and more, resulting in a compelling series of intellectual exchanges, creative frictions and provocative insights.
Victoria Browne, Jason Danely, and Doerthe Rosenow
- Published in print:
- 2021
- Published Online:
- May 2021
- ISBN:
- 9780197266830
- eISBN:
- 9780191938160
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- British Academy
- DOI:
- 10.5871/bacad/9780197266830.003.0001
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Social and Cultural Anthropology
This chapter introduces the linked concepts of vulnerability, politics and care, considering how all three have developed in distinctive ways within and across different disciplines in the humanities ...
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This chapter introduces the linked concepts of vulnerability, politics and care, considering how all three have developed in distinctive ways within and across different disciplines in the humanities and social sciences, and their complex relation to one another. Concentrating on philosophy, anthropology and international relations, we review the major theoretical contributions to the study of vulnerability and care that have emerged out of work on precarity, feminism, and the ethics of care. We then propose a transdisciplinary approach to vulnerability that places various concepts and methodologies in closer dialogue with each other. These dialogues form the basis of the four sections of the book, each of which is briefly described with reference to the chapters.Less
This chapter introduces the linked concepts of vulnerability, politics and care, considering how all three have developed in distinctive ways within and across different disciplines in the humanities and social sciences, and their complex relation to one another. Concentrating on philosophy, anthropology and international relations, we review the major theoretical contributions to the study of vulnerability and care that have emerged out of work on precarity, feminism, and the ethics of care. We then propose a transdisciplinary approach to vulnerability that places various concepts and methodologies in closer dialogue with each other. These dialogues form the basis of the four sections of the book, each of which is briefly described with reference to the chapters.
Nada Mustafa Ali
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- May 2021
- ISBN:
- 9780197266953
- eISBN:
- 9780191938191
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- British Academy
- DOI:
- 10.5871/bacad/9780197266953.003.0009
- Subject:
- Political Science, Conflict Politics and Policy
This chapter discusses gender, peace, and the disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration (DDR) programs for former Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) combatants and Women Associated with the ...
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This chapter discusses gender, peace, and the disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration (DDR) programs for former Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) combatants and Women Associated with the Armed Forces (WAAF) in South Sudan, based on field research in Juba and Wau in South Sudan in 2013. The chapter examines the distinct impact of DDR on women former combatants and on (WAAF), in a militarized ‘post’-conflict setting where gender inequality prevails, and in light of the government of South Sudan’s and the international community’s endorsement of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace and Security. A key finding is that in post-CPA South Sudan, DDR compounded social exclusion for most women ex-combatants and WAAF. The chapter calls for a rethinking of understandings of peace as mere cessation of hostilities, and as gathering of arms from former combatants. It also calls for restoring the voices of former combatants of both sexes, and of citizens in local communities directly affected by conflict, into policy and scholarly discourses on Security Sector Reform (SSR), and post-conflict reconstruction.Less
This chapter discusses gender, peace, and the disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration (DDR) programs for former Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) combatants and Women Associated with the Armed Forces (WAAF) in South Sudan, based on field research in Juba and Wau in South Sudan in 2013. The chapter examines the distinct impact of DDR on women former combatants and on (WAAF), in a militarized ‘post’-conflict setting where gender inequality prevails, and in light of the government of South Sudan’s and the international community’s endorsement of United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 on Women, Peace and Security. A key finding is that in post-CPA South Sudan, DDR compounded social exclusion for most women ex-combatants and WAAF. The chapter calls for a rethinking of understandings of peace as mere cessation of hostilities, and as gathering of arms from former combatants. It also calls for restoring the voices of former combatants of both sexes, and of citizens in local communities directly affected by conflict, into policy and scholarly discourses on Security Sector Reform (SSR), and post-conflict reconstruction.
Paul W. Posner, Viviana Patroni, and Jean François Mayer
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781683400455
- eISBN:
- 9781683400677
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University Press of Florida
- DOI:
- 10.5744/florida/9781683400455.001.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Latin American Studies
Labor Politics in Latin America assesses the capacity of working-class organizations to represent and advance working people’s demands in the era of globalization and neoliberalism, in which capital ...
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Labor Politics in Latin America assesses the capacity of working-class organizations to represent and advance working people’s demands in the era of globalization and neoliberalism, in which capital has reasserted its power on a global scale. The book’s premise is that the longer-term sustainability of development strategies for the region is largely connected to the capacity of working-class organizations to secure a fairer distribution of the gains from growth through labor legislation reform. Its analysis suggests the need to take into consideration the wider structural changes that reconfigured the political maps of the countries examined (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, and Venezuela), for example, globalization and its impact on democratic transformation in the region, operating within longer time frames. It is precisely this wider structural analysis and historical narrative that allows the book’s case studies to show that, even in the uncovering of substantial variation, what becomes evident in the study of Latin America over the last three decades is the overwhelming reality that for most workers in the region, labor reform—or the lack thereof —in essence increased precarity and informality and weakened labor movements.Less
Labor Politics in Latin America assesses the capacity of working-class organizations to represent and advance working people’s demands in the era of globalization and neoliberalism, in which capital has reasserted its power on a global scale. The book’s premise is that the longer-term sustainability of development strategies for the region is largely connected to the capacity of working-class organizations to secure a fairer distribution of the gains from growth through labor legislation reform. Its analysis suggests the need to take into consideration the wider structural changes that reconfigured the political maps of the countries examined (Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Mexico, and Venezuela), for example, globalization and its impact on democratic transformation in the region, operating within longer time frames. It is precisely this wider structural analysis and historical narrative that allows the book’s case studies to show that, even in the uncovering of substantial variation, what becomes evident in the study of Latin America over the last three decades is the overwhelming reality that for most workers in the region, labor reform—or the lack thereof —in essence increased precarity and informality and weakened labor movements.
Kelly Bogue
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781447350538
- eISBN:
- 9781447350545
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Policy Press
- DOI:
- 10.1332/policypress/9781447350538.001.0001
- Subject:
- Political Science, Public Policy
Drawing on first person accounts and participant observation, this book looks in-depth at one of the UK government’s most controversial austerity policies, the ‘Bedroom Tax’. Focusing on the lives of ...
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Drawing on first person accounts and participant observation, this book looks in-depth at one of the UK government’s most controversial austerity policies, the ‘Bedroom Tax’. Focusing on the lives of 31 people in one neighbourhood, it explores the push and pull factors that structure tenants’ behaviour regarding downsizing to smaller properties within a residualised and stigmatised social housing sector. It highlights the meaning of home and the continuing relevance of community and the tensions created when tenants are faced with the threat of displacement and the concomitant loss of social networks and informal structures of welfare that operate in place. While this book focuses on one social policy, it speaks to broader concerns about the value and loss of social housing and how we care for and house our most vulnerable citizens in the midst of neoliberal restructuring. It reflects on the continuing loss of housing benefit support, on-going cuts to the welfare state and what this means for communities and their sense of security and belonging. More broadly, it reflects on how cuts to housing benefit support are undermining the capacity of low income households to secure and maintain housing within a social sector that faces new financial risks and a private rented sector in which the term ‘no DSS’ has made a resurgence. The central argument of this book is that policies such as the Bedroom Tax which undermine secure housing are divisive, heightening resentment about access to housing while leading to increasing housing inequality and urban marginality.Less
Drawing on first person accounts and participant observation, this book looks in-depth at one of the UK government’s most controversial austerity policies, the ‘Bedroom Tax’. Focusing on the lives of 31 people in one neighbourhood, it explores the push and pull factors that structure tenants’ behaviour regarding downsizing to smaller properties within a residualised and stigmatised social housing sector. It highlights the meaning of home and the continuing relevance of community and the tensions created when tenants are faced with the threat of displacement and the concomitant loss of social networks and informal structures of welfare that operate in place. While this book focuses on one social policy, it speaks to broader concerns about the value and loss of social housing and how we care for and house our most vulnerable citizens in the midst of neoliberal restructuring. It reflects on the continuing loss of housing benefit support, on-going cuts to the welfare state and what this means for communities and their sense of security and belonging. More broadly, it reflects on how cuts to housing benefit support are undermining the capacity of low income households to secure and maintain housing within a social sector that faces new financial risks and a private rented sector in which the term ‘no DSS’ has made a resurgence. The central argument of this book is that policies such as the Bedroom Tax which undermine secure housing are divisive, heightening resentment about access to housing while leading to increasing housing inequality and urban marginality.
Katherine Fusco and Nicole Seymour
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- May 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780252041242
- eISBN:
- 9780252050107
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5622/illinois/9780252041242.001.0001
- Subject:
- Film, Television and Radio, Film
Kelly Reichardt is the first book-length study of contemporary filmmaker Kelly Reichardt. This book argues that Reichardt’s process-based slow cinema captures the “emergent” quality of contemporary, ...
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Kelly Reichardt is the first book-length study of contemporary filmmaker Kelly Reichardt. This book argues that Reichardt’s process-based slow cinema captures the “emergent” quality of contemporary, neoliberal emergencies such as global warming and economic precarity. The book positions Reichardt’s filmmaking in relation to contemporary American independent cinema, the international slow cinema movement, and the tradition of European neorealism. Drawing from these lineages, Reichardt’s cinema emphasizes the local effects of global catastrophes and represents crises as everyday experiences that are slow in unfolding. In this way, the book argues that Reichardt challenges the cinema’s tendency to spectacularize disaster. She makes this critique both through her films’ pacing and her tendency to work with the traditions of genre film, only to deflate their most thrilling elements to reveal what has been termed the slow violence of our postindustrial moment. Additionally, the book considers Reichardt’s frequently thin characterization of her protagonists, arguing that the underdrawn and often unlikeable characters work to challenge audience identification and the expectations that victims of emergency should be especially deserving or empathetic. In chapters that examine Reichardt’s earliest film, her four Oregon-centric films, and her experimental short films, Kelly Reichardt establishes Reichardt as a crucial voice in American independent film, one committed to documenting the challenges of the twenty-first century.
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Kelly Reichardt is the first book-length study of contemporary filmmaker Kelly Reichardt. This book argues that Reichardt’s process-based slow cinema captures the “emergent” quality of contemporary, neoliberal emergencies such as global warming and economic precarity. The book positions Reichardt’s filmmaking in relation to contemporary American independent cinema, the international slow cinema movement, and the tradition of European neorealism. Drawing from these lineages, Reichardt’s cinema emphasizes the local effects of global catastrophes and represents crises as everyday experiences that are slow in unfolding. In this way, the book argues that Reichardt challenges the cinema’s tendency to spectacularize disaster. She makes this critique both through her films’ pacing and her tendency to work with the traditions of genre film, only to deflate their most thrilling elements to reveal what has been termed the slow violence of our postindustrial moment. Additionally, the book considers Reichardt’s frequently thin characterization of her protagonists, arguing that the underdrawn and often unlikeable characters work to challenge audience identification and the expectations that victims of emergency should be especially deserving or empathetic. In chapters that examine Reichardt’s earliest film, her four Oregon-centric films, and her experimental short films, Kelly Reichardt establishes Reichardt as a crucial voice in American independent film, one committed to documenting the challenges of the twenty-first century.
Frank Baldwin and Anne Allison
- Published in print:
- 1953
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781479889389
- eISBN:
- 9781479830893
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9781479889389.003.0001
- Subject:
- Sociology, Economic Sociology
The earthquake, tidal wave, and nuclear meltdown in 2011 brought enormous loss of life and destruction to a Japan already grappling with recession, demographic dilemmas, and challenges from China. ...
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The earthquake, tidal wave, and nuclear meltdown in 2011 brought enormous loss of life and destruction to a Japan already grappling with recession, demographic dilemmas, and challenges from China. Could the country rally, recover economic vitality, and face the future confidently or was the natural disaster the tipping point to national decline? Although there is no consensus among the authors in this volume--guarded pessimism vies with tentative optimism—they all see Japan’s future as precarious.Less
The earthquake, tidal wave, and nuclear meltdown in 2011 brought enormous loss of life and destruction to a Japan already grappling with recession, demographic dilemmas, and challenges from China. Could the country rally, recover economic vitality, and face the future confidently or was the natural disaster the tipping point to national decline? Although there is no consensus among the authors in this volume--guarded pessimism vies with tentative optimism—they all see Japan’s future as precarious.
Anne Allison
- Published in print:
- 1953
- Published Online:
- May 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781479889389
- eISBN:
- 9781479830893
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- NYU Press
- DOI:
- 10.18574/nyu/9781479889389.003.0003
- Subject:
- Sociology, Economic Sociology
In postwar Japan, durable attachments—to workplace and family—were the normative ideal. In post-Bubble Japan, the family-corporate system, along with its logics of time and security, has started to ...
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In postwar Japan, durable attachments—to workplace and family—were the normative ideal. In post-Bubble Japan, the family-corporate system, along with its logics of time and security, has started to disintegrate leading to a form of (social) precarity quite unique to Japan/ese. Looking at lonely death as one symptom of this precarity, the essay also looks at news forms of social connection and belonging (beyond the workplace and heteronormative family) that are arising in post 3.11 Japan. How hope is calculated, in both the older and newer terms, is discussed and how to think about the hopeful possibility of a post-precarious Japan is raised at the end.Less
In postwar Japan, durable attachments—to workplace and family—were the normative ideal. In post-Bubble Japan, the family-corporate system, along with its logics of time and security, has started to disintegrate leading to a form of (social) precarity quite unique to Japan/ese. Looking at lonely death as one symptom of this precarity, the essay also looks at news forms of social connection and belonging (beyond the workplace and heteronormative family) that are arising in post 3.11 Japan. How hope is calculated, in both the older and newer terms, is discussed and how to think about the hopeful possibility of a post-precarious Japan is raised at the end.
Anna Dezeuze
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- May 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780719088575
- eISBN:
- 9781526120717
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9780719088575.001.0001
- Subject:
- Art, Art History
This book proposes a new reading of contemporary art between 1958 and 2009 by sketching out a trajectory of ‘precarious’ art practices. Such practices risk being dismissed as ‘almost nothing’ because ...
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This book proposes a new reading of contemporary art between 1958 and 2009 by sketching out a trajectory of ‘precarious’ art practices. Such practices risk being dismissed as ‘almost nothing’ because they look like trash about to be thrown out, because they present objects and events that are so commonplace as to be confused with our ordinary surroundings, or because they are fleeting gestures that vanish into the fabric of everyday life. What is the status of such fragile, nearly invisible, artworks? In what ways do they engage with the precarious modes of existence that have emerged and evolved in the socio-economic context of an increasingly globalised capitalism?
Works discussed in this study range from Allan Kaprow’s assemblages and happenings, Fluxus event scores and Hélio Oiticica’s wearable Parangolé capes in the 1960s, to Thomas Hirschhorn’s sprawling environments and participatory projects, Francis Alÿs’s filmed performances and Gabriel Orozco’s objects and photographs in the 1990s. Significant similarities among these different practices will be drawn out, while crucial shifts will be outlined in the evolution of this trajectory from the early 1960s to the turn of the twenty-first century.
This book will give students and amateurs of contemporary art and culture new insights into the radical specificities of these practices, by situating them within an original set of historical and critical issues. In particular, this study addresses essential questions such as the art object’s ‘dematerialisation’, relations between art and everyday life, including the three fields of work, labour and action first outlined by Hannah Arendt in 1958.Less
This book proposes a new reading of contemporary art between 1958 and 2009 by sketching out a trajectory of ‘precarious’ art practices. Such practices risk being dismissed as ‘almost nothing’ because they look like trash about to be thrown out, because they present objects and events that are so commonplace as to be confused with our ordinary surroundings, or because they are fleeting gestures that vanish into the fabric of everyday life. What is the status of such fragile, nearly invisible, artworks? In what ways do they engage with the precarious modes of existence that have emerged and evolved in the socio-economic context of an increasingly globalised capitalism?
Works discussed in this study range from Allan Kaprow’s assemblages and happenings, Fluxus event scores and Hélio Oiticica’s wearable Parangolé capes in the 1960s, to Thomas Hirschhorn’s sprawling environments and participatory projects, Francis Alÿs’s filmed performances and Gabriel Orozco’s objects and photographs in the 1990s. Significant similarities among these different practices will be drawn out, while crucial shifts will be outlined in the evolution of this trajectory from the early 1960s to the turn of the twenty-first century.
This book will give students and amateurs of contemporary art and culture new insights into the radical specificities of these practices, by situating them within an original set of historical and critical issues. In particular, this study addresses essential questions such as the art object’s ‘dematerialisation’, relations between art and everyday life, including the three fields of work, labour and action first outlined by Hannah Arendt in 1958.
Eva A. Duda-Mikulin
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- September 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781447351627
- eISBN:
- 9781447351665
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Policy Press
- DOI:
- 10.1332/policypress/9781447351627.001.0001
- Subject:
- Political Science, Comparative Politics
In June 2016, after 43 years as part of the European community, the UK people decided to leave. In March 2017, the UK Prime Minister officially started the process of Brexit – the UK’s withdrawal ...
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In June 2016, after 43 years as part of the European community, the UK people decided to leave. In March 2017, the UK Prime Minister officially started the process of Brexit – the UK’s withdrawal from the EU. While Brexit was decided by a relatively small margin of people, one issue was key in the debates preceding the EU referendum. This was migration. People have been migrating since the beginning of time but today the issue of migration has been elevated to a key national concern. It is now one of the most contentious and divisive matters in the UK. This book investigates EU women migrants’ perspectives on the Brexit vote in the UK. It presents accounts from EU nationals and considers the wider implications in relation to precarity and the British paid labour market. This book offers important insights into the world of the UK paid labour but from the point of view of EU migrants and more specifically Polish women whose livelihoods have been disrupted by the Brexit vote and the decision that the UK should leave the EU whilst any solid guarantees with regards to migrants’ rights are yet to come from the UK government. Through analysis of new data generated in qualitative interviews, this book makes an original and grounded contribution to understanding the significance and impacts of the result of the Brexit referendum on migrant workers from the EU resident in the UK.Less
In June 2016, after 43 years as part of the European community, the UK people decided to leave. In March 2017, the UK Prime Minister officially started the process of Brexit – the UK’s withdrawal from the EU. While Brexit was decided by a relatively small margin of people, one issue was key in the debates preceding the EU referendum. This was migration. People have been migrating since the beginning of time but today the issue of migration has been elevated to a key national concern. It is now one of the most contentious and divisive matters in the UK. This book investigates EU women migrants’ perspectives on the Brexit vote in the UK. It presents accounts from EU nationals and considers the wider implications in relation to precarity and the British paid labour market. This book offers important insights into the world of the UK paid labour but from the point of view of EU migrants and more specifically Polish women whose livelihoods have been disrupted by the Brexit vote and the decision that the UK should leave the EU whilst any solid guarantees with regards to migrants’ rights are yet to come from the UK government. Through analysis of new data generated in qualitative interviews, this book makes an original and grounded contribution to understanding the significance and impacts of the result of the Brexit referendum on migrant workers from the EU resident in the UK.
Jeff Ferrell
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- September 2018
- ISBN:
- 9780520295544
- eISBN:
- 9780520968271
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520295544.001.0001
- Subject:
- Sociology, Law, Crime and Deviance
This is a book about drift and drifters—about the ways in which dislocation and disorientation can become phenomena in their own right. Locating drift within social, political, and spatial theory, ...
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This is a book about drift and drifters—about the ways in which dislocation and disorientation can become phenomena in their own right. Locating drift within social, political, and spatial theory, the book also situates contemporary drift within the contested politics of the present day. Here the book explores the ways in which contemporary arrangements of power both promote and police drift; it also explores the experiential and collective politics of drift as a form of resistance to power. The book, in turn, highlights a distinctly North American form of drift—that of the train-hopping itinerant—via historical analysis of the hobo and the hobo’s collective politics, and through the author’s own train-riding immersion in the contemporary world of gutter punks and train hoppers. In conclusion, the book considers drift as a methodology and epistemology attuned to the contemporary world. It argues that we can better understand the world that has emerged around us by abandoning traditional, slab-like approaches to social inquiry and, instead, by learning the theoretical and methodological lessons offered by drift. In this context, the book reconsiders the photodocumentary tradition and explores the potential of ghost method and ghost images, absences, aftermaths, ruins, residues, and mistakes.Less
This is a book about drift and drifters—about the ways in which dislocation and disorientation can become phenomena in their own right. Locating drift within social, political, and spatial theory, the book also situates contemporary drift within the contested politics of the present day. Here the book explores the ways in which contemporary arrangements of power both promote and police drift; it also explores the experiential and collective politics of drift as a form of resistance to power. The book, in turn, highlights a distinctly North American form of drift—that of the train-hopping itinerant—via historical analysis of the hobo and the hobo’s collective politics, and through the author’s own train-riding immersion in the contemporary world of gutter punks and train hoppers. In conclusion, the book considers drift as a methodology and epistemology attuned to the contemporary world. It argues that we can better understand the world that has emerged around us by abandoning traditional, slab-like approaches to social inquiry and, instead, by learning the theoretical and methodological lessons offered by drift. In this context, the book reconsiders the photodocumentary tradition and explores the potential of ghost method and ghost images, absences, aftermaths, ruins, residues, and mistakes.
Peter Dwyer (ed.)
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- September 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781447341826
- eISBN:
- 9781447341864
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Policy Press
- DOI:
- 10.1332/policypress/9781447341826.001.0001
- Subject:
- Political Science, Public Policy
This edited collection considers how conditional welfare policies and services are implemented and experienced by a diverse range of welfare service users across a range of UK policy domains ...
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This edited collection considers how conditional welfare policies and services are implemented and experienced by a diverse range of welfare service users across a range of UK policy domains including social security, homelessness, migration and criminal justice. The book showcases the insights and findings of a series of distinct, independent studies undertaken by early career researchers associated with the ESRC funded Welfare Conditionality project. Each chapter presents a new empirical analysis of data generated in fieldwork conducted with practitioners charged with interpreting and delivering policy, and welfare service users who are at the sharp end of welfare services shaped by behavioural conditionality.Less
This edited collection considers how conditional welfare policies and services are implemented and experienced by a diverse range of welfare service users across a range of UK policy domains including social security, homelessness, migration and criminal justice. The book showcases the insights and findings of a series of distinct, independent studies undertaken by early career researchers associated with the ESRC funded Welfare Conditionality project. Each chapter presents a new empirical analysis of data generated in fieldwork conducted with practitioners charged with interpreting and delivering policy, and welfare service users who are at the sharp end of welfare services shaped by behavioural conditionality.
Jeremy F. Lane
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- May 2021
- ISBN:
- 9781789622140
- eISBN:
- 9781800341555
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Liverpool University Press
- DOI:
- 10.3828/liverpool/9781789622140.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Film, Media, and Cultural Studies
Over recent decades concerns at the increased scarcity and precarity of salaried employment have dominated political struggles, theoretical debates and cultural representations in France. This study ...
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Over recent decades concerns at the increased scarcity and precarity of salaried employment have dominated political struggles, theoretical debates and cultural representations in France. This study argues that such concerns are evidence of a profound shift in the French economy and labour market. In its first, theoretical part, the study engages with work in political economy and sociology, sketching a new interpretative framework, the better to understand the nature and implications of this profound shift. This shift has challenged certain fundamental French republican values, opening up a rift between the precarious forms of subjectivity characteristic of post-Fordist labour and older notions of republican citizenship. In its second part, the study finds symptoms of this rift in a range of cinematic and literary representations of the contemporary workplace, as these depict the dilemmas faced, the trajectories followed, and the geographical regions inhabited by French workers of different ages, sexes, classes, and ethnicities.Less
Over recent decades concerns at the increased scarcity and precarity of salaried employment have dominated political struggles, theoretical debates and cultural representations in France. This study argues that such concerns are evidence of a profound shift in the French economy and labour market. In its first, theoretical part, the study engages with work in political economy and sociology, sketching a new interpretative framework, the better to understand the nature and implications of this profound shift. This shift has challenged certain fundamental French republican values, opening up a rift between the precarious forms of subjectivity characteristic of post-Fordist labour and older notions of republican citizenship. In its second part, the study finds symptoms of this rift in a range of cinematic and literary representations of the contemporary workplace, as these depict the dilemmas faced, the trajectories followed, and the geographical regions inhabited by French workers of different ages, sexes, classes, and ethnicities.
Walter Armbrust
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- May 2020
- ISBN:
- 9780691162645
- eISBN:
- 9780691197517
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Princeton University Press
- DOI:
- 10.23943/princeton/9780691162645.003.0007
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Social and Cultural Anthropology
This chapter focuses on an influential post in June of 2011 by a blogger named Muhammad Abu al-Ghayt. Abu al-Ghayt's post frames class by reference to ʻashwa'iyyat, literally “haphazard” ...
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This chapter focuses on an influential post in June of 2011 by a blogger named Muhammad Abu al-Ghayt. Abu al-Ghayt's post frames class by reference to ʻashwa'iyyat, literally “haphazard” neighborhoods, meaning specifically the informal neighborhoods that were mentioned in the previous chapter as the social location of a substantial number of the fighters in street battles. In the imaginary of elites, many members of the middle class, and more than a few media professionals ʻashwa'iyyat are discursively marginal, or even liminal in the sense that they are often depicted as a morally compromised urban instantiation of precarious lives—morally compromised because of the alleged social pathologies that go with precarity, such as drug abuse, crime, and fanaticism. That sense of precarity, moreover, is an effect of the neoliberal ideology that formed the economic and social conditions of the revolution. Abu al-Ghayt never uses the term “neoliberal,” but the ʻashwa'iyyat were as much a product of it as the luxury housing developments that absorbed so much of the state's resources for the benefit of elites. Both the discursive sense of ʻashwa'iyyat as the urban expression of precarity and its associated pathologies, and the neoliberal order that structured poverty and wealth in the decades leading up to the revolution, are implicitly invoked by Abu al-Ghayt in his blog.Less
This chapter focuses on an influential post in June of 2011 by a blogger named Muhammad Abu al-Ghayt. Abu al-Ghayt's post frames class by reference to ʻashwa'iyyat, literally “haphazard” neighborhoods, meaning specifically the informal neighborhoods that were mentioned in the previous chapter as the social location of a substantial number of the fighters in street battles. In the imaginary of elites, many members of the middle class, and more than a few media professionals ʻashwa'iyyat are discursively marginal, or even liminal in the sense that they are often depicted as a morally compromised urban instantiation of precarious lives—morally compromised because of the alleged social pathologies that go with precarity, such as drug abuse, crime, and fanaticism. That sense of precarity, moreover, is an effect of the neoliberal ideology that formed the economic and social conditions of the revolution. Abu al-Ghayt never uses the term “neoliberal,” but the ʻashwa'iyyat were as much a product of it as the luxury housing developments that absorbed so much of the state's resources for the benefit of elites. Both the discursive sense of ʻashwa'iyyat as the urban expression of precarity and its associated pathologies, and the neoliberal order that structured poverty and wealth in the decades leading up to the revolution, are implicitly invoked by Abu al-Ghayt in his blog.
Stephen Greer
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781526113696
- eISBN:
- 9781526141941
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7228/manchester/9781526113696.003.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Media Studies
Since the late 1990s, the figure of the creative entrepreneur has played an increasingly significant role in the working life of performers and theatre-makers across the UK and Europe. Focusing on ...
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Since the late 1990s, the figure of the creative entrepreneur has played an increasingly significant role in the working life of performers and theatre-makers across the UK and Europe. Focusing on the burgeoning economy and ecology of contemporary arts festivals as a key environment for the creation and staging of solo work, this chapter explores the increasing demand for self-employed artists to pursue individualised risk and reward, and to self-exploit. While unjuried events like the Edinburgh Festival Fringe emphasise that they are ‘open to all’, participation requires artists to take on the risk of significant personal debt and embrace often narrowly-drawn industry standards. In this context, ‘free’ fringe festivals – and the work of artist-led groups like Forest Fringe and BUZZCUT – suggest alternative modes of practice in resistance of neoliberal economies.Less
Since the late 1990s, the figure of the creative entrepreneur has played an increasingly significant role in the working life of performers and theatre-makers across the UK and Europe. Focusing on the burgeoning economy and ecology of contemporary arts festivals as a key environment for the creation and staging of solo work, this chapter explores the increasing demand for self-employed artists to pursue individualised risk and reward, and to self-exploit. While unjuried events like the Edinburgh Festival Fringe emphasise that they are ‘open to all’, participation requires artists to take on the risk of significant personal debt and embrace often narrowly-drawn industry standards. In this context, ‘free’ fringe festivals – and the work of artist-led groups like Forest Fringe and BUZZCUT – suggest alternative modes of practice in resistance of neoliberal economies.
Patrícia Alves de Matos
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- May 2021
- ISBN:
- 9781526134981
- eISBN:
- 9781526158413
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Manchester University Press
- DOI:
- 10.7765/9781526134998
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Social and Cultural Anthropology
Call centres are a part of the daily lives of most people across the world, as they have become a privileged site of contact between firms and their clients. Drawing on the unusual advantage of ...
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Call centres are a part of the daily lives of most people across the world, as they have become a privileged site of contact between firms and their clients. Drawing on the unusual advantage of long-term ethnographic fieldwork, this book describes the emergence of a regime of ‘disciplined agency’ within the Portuguese call centre sector. The notion of ‘disciplined agency’ is the guiding thread connecting the book’s account. Departing from a historical examination of the neoliberal economic restructuring of Portuguese capitalism shaping the emergence of the call centre sector, the analysis progresses through the ascendancy of call centres as icons of precarity in contemporary Portugal, and the specific features of the call centre labour process that configure a new means of commodifying the worker. This book engages in a discussion of the particular subjectivities and forms of personal dispossession attached to the value-extraction system of ‘disciplined agency’ deployed in call centre labour, and how it is facilitated by relationally and morally embedded structures of kin, generation and class.Less
Call centres are a part of the daily lives of most people across the world, as they have become a privileged site of contact between firms and their clients. Drawing on the unusual advantage of long-term ethnographic fieldwork, this book describes the emergence of a regime of ‘disciplined agency’ within the Portuguese call centre sector. The notion of ‘disciplined agency’ is the guiding thread connecting the book’s account. Departing from a historical examination of the neoliberal economic restructuring of Portuguese capitalism shaping the emergence of the call centre sector, the analysis progresses through the ascendancy of call centres as icons of precarity in contemporary Portugal, and the specific features of the call centre labour process that configure a new means of commodifying the worker. This book engages in a discussion of the particular subjectivities and forms of personal dispossession attached to the value-extraction system of ‘disciplined agency’ deployed in call centre labour, and how it is facilitated by relationally and morally embedded structures of kin, generation and class.
Anthony Lloyd
- Published in print:
- 2018
- Published Online:
- May 2019
- ISBN:
- 9781529204018
- eISBN:
- 9781529204063
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Policy Press
- DOI:
- 10.1332/policypress/9781529204018.003.0007
- Subject:
- Sociology, Occupations, Professions, and Work
This chapter explores the absence of protection for employees within the service economy. Some employees are exploited by employers who extract ‘free’ work through practices such as underpayment of ...
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This chapter explores the absence of protection for employees within the service economy. Some employees are exploited by employers who extract ‘free’ work through practices such as underpayment of the minimum wage, cash-in-hand work, and work ‘trials’ paid at exploitatively low day rates. The labour market instability highlighted previously further impacts upon employees made redundant as some operators struggle to recover from the economic downturn. Employees are paid meagre redundancies and thrown back into the large pool of surplus labour. Others heed the call for self-employment and freedom or flexibility but this is often precarious and problematic. The final section of the chapter considers the impact of labour market conditions upon mental health and well-being and ultimately demonstrates the negative impact upon some employees who require medical solutions to structural problems.Less
This chapter explores the absence of protection for employees within the service economy. Some employees are exploited by employers who extract ‘free’ work through practices such as underpayment of the minimum wage, cash-in-hand work, and work ‘trials’ paid at exploitatively low day rates. The labour market instability highlighted previously further impacts upon employees made redundant as some operators struggle to recover from the economic downturn. Employees are paid meagre redundancies and thrown back into the large pool of surplus labour. Others heed the call for self-employment and freedom or flexibility but this is often precarious and problematic. The final section of the chapter considers the impact of labour market conditions upon mental health and well-being and ultimately demonstrates the negative impact upon some employees who require medical solutions to structural problems.
Stephen Katz
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- September 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781447340850
- eISBN:
- 9781447340904
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Policy Press
- DOI:
- 10.1332/policypress/9781447340850.003.0003
- Subject:
- Sociology, Gerontology and Ageing
This chapter explores the critical intersections between ageing, human development, and the life course as precarious forms of life. The first part reviews the literature on global precarity and the ...
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This chapter explores the critical intersections between ageing, human development, and the life course as precarious forms of life. The first part reviews the literature on global precarity and the endangerment of liveability in relation to ageing populations, with a focus on neoliberal strategies that naturalise and individualise risky life-course trajectories and health crises. The second part examines selected figures of the obese child, unstable adolescent, despairing mid-lifer, and cognitively impaired older adult as examples of crisis-laden personifications of social problems. Data are drawn from historical texts, popular images and professional knowledges. Conclusions revisit the work of Butler and Foucault to raise questions about current models of resilience and the possibilities of resistance and living differently.Less
This chapter explores the critical intersections between ageing, human development, and the life course as precarious forms of life. The first part reviews the literature on global precarity and the endangerment of liveability in relation to ageing populations, with a focus on neoliberal strategies that naturalise and individualise risky life-course trajectories and health crises. The second part examines selected figures of the obese child, unstable adolescent, despairing mid-lifer, and cognitively impaired older adult as examples of crisis-laden personifications of social problems. Data are drawn from historical texts, popular images and professional knowledges. Conclusions revisit the work of Butler and Foucault to raise questions about current models of resilience and the possibilities of resistance and living differently.
David Lain, Laura Airey, Wendy Loretto, and Sarah Vickerstaff
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- September 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781447340850
- eISBN:
- 9781447340904
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Policy Press
- DOI:
- 10.1332/policypress/9781447340850.003.0005
- Subject:
- Sociology, Gerontology and Ageing
This chapter develops a theoretical model for understanding ‘ontological precarity’ among older workers. Ontological precarity is caused by individuals feeling ‘trapped’ between precariousness in ...
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This chapter develops a theoretical model for understanding ‘ontological precarity’ among older workers. Ontological precarity is caused by individuals feeling ‘trapped’ between precariousness in different domains of their lives. Individuals worry about the long-term sustainability of their ‘precarious employment’. This anxiety is enhanced by financial pressures to work longer in the context of diminishing financial support from a ‘precarious welfare state’ and from ‘precarious households’. The chapter presents case studies of three older hospitality workers, in order to illustrate how these different forms of precarity interact. It concludes by discussing policy implications and provides suggestions for how the framework could be used in future research.Less
This chapter develops a theoretical model for understanding ‘ontological precarity’ among older workers. Ontological precarity is caused by individuals feeling ‘trapped’ between precariousness in different domains of their lives. Individuals worry about the long-term sustainability of their ‘precarious employment’. This anxiety is enhanced by financial pressures to work longer in the context of diminishing financial support from a ‘precarious welfare state’ and from ‘precarious households’. The chapter presents case studies of three older hospitality workers, in order to illustrate how these different forms of precarity interact. It concludes by discussing policy implications and provides suggestions for how the framework could be used in future research.
Karen Kobayashi and Mushira Mohsin Khan
- Published in print:
- 2020
- Published Online:
- September 2020
- ISBN:
- 9781447340850
- eISBN:
- 9781447340904
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Policy Press
- DOI:
- 10.1332/policypress/9781447340850.003.0006
- Subject:
- Sociology, Gerontology and Ageing
The profile of older adults in the Global North is changing rapidly with increasing proportions of foreign-born ageing populations. Despite their demographic significance, very little research has ...
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The profile of older adults in the Global North is changing rapidly with increasing proportions of foreign-born ageing populations. Despite their demographic significance, very little research has been conducted on the complex and varied experiences of ageing, risk, and insecurity in this group, particularly with regard to significant life course events such as migration. Using the conceptual lens of precarity, this chapter presents a nuanced analysis of risk and vulnerability in the context of ageing and migration. We begin with a brief overview of the key economic, psychosocial, and cultural markers of precarity in older immigrants. Next, we highlight the ‘politics of precarity’ inherent in the larger political economy of immigration and the invisibility of racialized older immigrants in health and social care policies. We conclude with a discussion on the challenges to understanding precarity in the context of migration, and provide suggestions for future research.Less
The profile of older adults in the Global North is changing rapidly with increasing proportions of foreign-born ageing populations. Despite their demographic significance, very little research has been conducted on the complex and varied experiences of ageing, risk, and insecurity in this group, particularly with regard to significant life course events such as migration. Using the conceptual lens of precarity, this chapter presents a nuanced analysis of risk and vulnerability in the context of ageing and migration. We begin with a brief overview of the key economic, psychosocial, and cultural markers of precarity in older immigrants. Next, we highlight the ‘politics of precarity’ inherent in the larger political economy of immigration and the invisibility of racialized older immigrants in health and social care policies. We conclude with a discussion on the challenges to understanding precarity in the context of migration, and provide suggestions for future research.
