Andrew Herod

Rob Lambert

With the renaissance of market politics on a global scale, precarious work has become pervasive. This edited collection explores the spread across a number of economic sectors and countries worldwide of work that is invariably insecure, dirty, low-paid, and often temporary and/or part-time. The first part of this cross-disciplinary book analyses the different forms of precarious work that have arisen over the past thirty years in both the Global North and South. These transformations are captured in ethnographically orientated chapters on sweatshops, day labour, homework, Chinese construction workers' unpaid contract work, the introduction of insecure contracting into the Korean automotive industry, and the insecurity of Brazilian sugarcane cutters. The case studies all shed light upon how the nature of work and the workplace are changing under the pressures of neoliberal capitalism and what this means for workers. In the second part the editors and contributors then detail some of the ways in which precarious workers are seeking to improve their own situations through their efforts to counter the growth of precarity under neoliberal capitalism, efforts that involve collectively exploring forms of resistance to work restructuring and the failures of traditional trade unions to fully engage with precarious work's growth. Illustrating the impacts of the expansion of precarious work, this book will appeal to students, academics and those generally interested in the issues of the global economy, the reworking of labour markets, the impacts of neoliberal capitalism and ethnographies of the working poor in various parts of the world.

Ethnographies of Accommodation and Resistance

Neoliberal Capitalism and Precarious Work

Since the renaissance of market politics on a global scale, precarious work has become pervasive. Divided into two parts, the first section of this cross-disciplinary book analyses the different forms of precarious work that have arisen over the past thirty years. These transformations are captured in ethnographically orientated chapters on sweatshops; day labour; homework; unpaid contract work of Chinese construction workers; the introduction of insecure contracting in the Korean automotive industry; and the insecurity of Brazilian cane cutters. The editors and contributors then collectively explore trade union initiatives in the face of precarious work and stimulate debate on the issue.

Geographical scale is a central concept enabling us to make sense of the world we inhabit. Amongst other things, it allows us to declare one event or process a national one and another a global or regional one. However, geographical scales and how we think about them are profoundly contested, and the spatial resolution at which social processes take place – local, regional or global – together with how we talk about them has significant implications for understanding our world. Scale provides a structured investigation of the debates concerning the concept of scale and how various geographical scales have been thought about within critical social theory. Specifically, the author examines how the scales of the body, the urban, the regional, the national, and the global have been conceptualized within Geography and the social sciences more broadly. The first part of the book provides a comprehensive overview of how different theoretical perspectives have regarded scale, especially debates over whether scales are real things or merely mental contrivances and/ or logical devices with which to think, as well as the consequences of thinking of them in areal versus in networked terms. The subsequent five chapters of the book then each takes a particular scale: the body; the urban; the regional; the national; the global and explores how it has been conceptualized and represented discursively for political and other purposes. A brief conclusion draws the book together by posing a number of questions about scale which emerge from the foregoing discussion. The first single-author volume ever written on the subject of geographical scale, this book provides a unique overview in pushing understandings of scale in new and original directions. The accessible text is complimented by didactic boxes, and Scale serves as a valuable pedagogical reference for undergraduate and postgraduate audiences wishing to become familiar with such theoretical issues.

Scale

Luis L. M. Aguiar

In this collection of essays, an international group of scholars investigate the global building cleaning industry to reveal the extent of neoliberalism's impact on cleaners. This book provides the first intensive study focusing on building cleaners and their global experiences Brings together an international group of scholars and experts to investigate different national contexts and examples Draws out important commonalities and highlights significant differences in these experiences Examines topics including erosion of cleaners' industrial citizenship rights, the impact of outsourcing upon their working conditions, economic security, and the intensification of their work and its negative effects on physical health Considers how cleaners are mobilizing to resist and respond to the restructuring of their work.

Cleaners in the Global Economy

The Dirty Work of Neoliberalism

Melissa W. Wright

At a time when references to things ‘global' have gained more currency than ever, this book explores the nexus of power and space behind the politics of geographical scale. Explores the nexus of power and space behind the rescaling of contemporary social, economic and political life. Organized into three sections on theorizing scale, the discourses and rhetorics of scale, and scales of activism. Will stimulate discussion about how conceptions and visions of scale inform all aspects of social life.

Andrew Herod

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