Privileged Precarities


Book Description

Wie gestalten sich die Arbeits- und Lebenswelten von jungen UNO-Beschäftigten in Zeiten des Postfordismus? Ausgehend von der Perspektive junger Beschäftigter an den UNO-Standorten in Genf und Wien befasst sich das Buch mit der zunehmenden Flexibilisierung und Arbeitsplatzunsicherheit. Die Studie legt ein besonderes Augenmerk auf mikrostrukturelle Machtpraktiken und die individuelle Agency. Sie zeigt, wie UNO-Beschäftigte ihre persönlichen Erzählungen mit dem in den vergangenen Jahren und Jahrzehnten kreierten Organisationsbild in Einklang bringen, und in welchem Wechselspiel die prekären Beschäftigungsverhältnisse mit einem moralischen Überlegenheitsgefühl stehen. Dabei wird deutlich, dass diese Entwicklungen keinen Widerspruch darstellen, sondern zwei Seiten derselben Medaille sind. Das Buch zeigt am Beispiel der UNO auf, wie flexible Beschäftigungsverhältnisse in Zeiten des kognitiv- und affektbasierten Kapitalismus auf Biographien wirken. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/




Queer Precarities in and out of Higher Education


Book Description

Queer Precarity in Higher Education looks at queer scholars pushing against institutional structures, and the queer knowledge that gets pushed out by universities. It provides insight into the work of, in and beyond academia as it is un-done in the contemporary (post)Covid moment, not least by queer academic-activists. This radical un-doing represents cycles of queer precarity, pragmatism and participation both situating and questioning the 'queer arrival' of institutionalized programmes and presences (e.g. queer and gender studies degrees, prominent and public feminist academics). In this book, the contributors push back against contemporary educational precarity, mobilizing queer insight and insistence; and push back against confinement of the University, socially and spatially. The collection brings together academic-activist perspectives to extend understandings of experiences of marginalization and inequality in higher education. It also documents the diversity of tactics with which queers negotiate and resist the various, shifting and interconnected forms of precarity and privilege found on the edges of academia. Contributors consider these issues from inside/outside academia and across career course, challenging the 'queer arrival' as emanating outward from the university to the community, from the academic to the activist, or from a state of privilege to a place of precarity.




Hate in Precarious Times


Book Description

In the age of Brexit and Donald Trump, the radical right has gained significant popularity, characterized by a rhetoric of xenophobia, discrimination and “hate speech”. This book examines why the politics of hate and ideologies of the far-right are on the rise and argues that to counter it we must challenge the sense of social and economic precarity this politics feeds off. Hate in Precarious Times examines five distinct types of precarity, covering threats to a particular way of life; fear of apocalyptic terrorism; the insecurity of austerity, and low-waged jobs in the wake of the Financial Crisis; challenges to privilege; and the spread of disinformation in a “post-truth” age. In this book, Neal Curtis seeks the root of what causes ordinary people to identify with far-right ideologies and asks what can be done to counter the conditions underpinning this.




Shakespeare's ‘Lady Editors'


Book Description

This bold and compelling revisionist history tells the remarkable story of the forgotten lives and labours of Shakespeare's women editors.




Capitalism on Edge


Book Description

The wake of the financial crisis has inspired hopes for dramatic change and stirred visions of capitalism’s terminal collapse. Yet capitalism is not on its deathbed, utopia is not in our future, and revolution is not in the cards. In Capitalism on Edge, Albena Azmanova demonstrates that radical progressive change is still attainable, but it must come from an unexpected direction. Azmanova’s new critique of capitalism focuses on the competitive pursuit of profit rather than on forms of ownership and patterns of wealth distribution. She contends that neoliberal capitalism has mutated into a new form—precarity capitalism—marked by the emergence of a precarious multitude. Widespread economic insecurity ails the 99 percent across differences in income, education, and professional occupation; it is the underlying cause of such diverse hardships as work-related stress and chronic unemployment. In response, Azmanova calls for forging a broad alliance of strange bedfellows whose discontent would challenge not only capitalism’s unfair outcomes but also the drive for profit at its core. To achieve this synthesis, progressive forces need to go beyond the old ideological certitudes of, on the left, fighting inequality and, on the right, increasing competition. Azmanova details reforms that would enable a dramatic transformation of the current system without a revolutionary break. An iconoclastic critique of left orthodoxy, Capitalism on Edge confronts the intellectual and political impasses of our time to discern a new path of emancipation.




A Precarious Game


Book Description

A Precarious Game is an ethnographic examination of video game production. The developers that Ergin Bulut researched for almost three years in a medium-sized studio in the U.S. loved making video games that millions play. Only some, however, can enjoy this dream job, which can be precarious and alienating for many others. That is, the passion of a predominantly white-male labor force relies on material inequalities involving the sacrificial labor of their families, unacknowledged work of precarious testers, and thousands of racialized and gendered workers in the Global South. A Precarious Game explores the politics of doing what one loves. In the context of work, passion and love imply freedom, participation, and choice, but in fact they accelerate self-exploitation and can impose emotional toxicity on other workers by forcing them to work endless hours. Bulut argues that such ludic discourses in the game industry disguise the racialized and gendered inequalities on which a profitable transnational industry thrives. Within capitalism, work is not just an economic matter, and the political nature of employment and love can still be undemocratic even when based on mutual consent. As Bulut demonstrates, rather than considering work simply as a matter of economics based on trade-offs in the workplace, we should consider the question of work and love as one of democracy rooted in politics.




Retirement Migration and Precarity in Later Life


Book Description

The last few decades have seen an increase in the migration of ageing people from richer Northern and Western countries to poorer Southern and Eastern countries. This book seeks to understand the motivation behind retirement migration and how precarity in later life contributes to this trend. Drawing on accounts of retirees from different nations, the book examines how welfare policies in their home country versus their country of migration shape their experiences of migration. It shows how ageism impacts social precarity across different social classes, and across economic, social and health dimensions. It also evaluates how local and global systems of inequalities influence retirement migrants' experience, providing both opportunities and constraints that differ across countries.




Diversity and Precarious Work During Socio-Economic Upheaval


Book Description

Explores how communities from disadvantaged backgrounds experience precarity more severely than others in social and economic settings.




Precarity and Insecurity in International Schooling


Book Description

The arena of International Schooling is growing rapidly and changing in nature. The number of schools delivering a curriculum wholly or partly in English outside an English-speaking nation reached 12,000 in 2020. China and the Middle East is the emerging centre of activity, and local parents are the main customers.




Addressing Ableism


Book Description

Addressing Ableism is a set of philosophical meditations outlining the scale and scope of ableism. By explicating concepts like experience, diagnosis, precariousness, and prosthesis, Scuro maps out the institutionalized and intergenerational forms of this bias as it is analogous and yet also distinct from other kinds of dehumanization, discrimination, and oppression. This project also includes a dialogical chapter on intersectionality with Devonya Havis and Lydia Brown, a philosopher and writer/activist respectively. Utilizing theorists like Judith Butler, Tobin Siebers, Emmanuel Levinas, and Hannah Arendt to address ableism, Scuro thoroughly critiques the neoliberal culture and politics that underwrites ableist affections and phobias. This project exposes the many material and non-material harms of ableism, and it offers multiple avenues to better confront and resist ableism in its many forms. Scuro provides crucial insights into the many uninhabitable and unsustainable effects of ableism and how we might revise our intentions and desires for the sake of a less ableist world.