Working at Living: The Social Relations of Precarity
May 9, 2013
UC Santa Barbara
Based on the work of a UC Humanities Network working group on the Humanities and Changing Conceptions of Work, “Working at Living: The Social Relations of Precarity” explores the sociality of precarious labor, both formal and informal, from an interdisciplinary, global, and intersectional approach that considers how sociocultural inequalities are and have been magnified and countered during times of financial crises, technological development, and increasing unemployment. Attentive to social contexts that shape, even as they are shaped by, constructs of gender, ethnicity, race, sexuality, ability, age, and citizenship, we consider categorical questions of what counts as work and who counts as a worker from feminist, ethnic, and cultural studies perspectives. We bring to the conversation insights from the humanities sometimes missing from investigations of the informal sector and too often ignored in discussions of the global economic and employment crisis.
Public presentations by the members of the UC Humanities Network working group, “Working at Living: The Social Relations of Precarity.”A tentative webinar is scheduled with National Domestic Workers Alliance activists.
Sponsored by the UC Humanities Network Mellon Foundation Grant on the Humanities and Changing Conceptions of Work, the Hull Chair in Feminist Studies, and the Multicultural Center.
