I understand precarity to be a matter of the working class, defined as all those who sell their labor power as a commodity, with the important note that ’sell’ does not limit the working class to those who earn wages but includes nonmonetary or nonwage transaction in exchanges for means of meeting needs as well.
(more…)July 28, 2006
My initial understanding of precarity
July 27, 2006
Big ideas: Precarity
This piece doesn’t offer a lot, but addressing it could prove useful.
"Both celebrated and vilified, precarity is a lifestyle created by the new reality of casual, flexible, temp and contract work. It has been brought on by the erosion of traditional safety nets—the dole, public healthcare, pensions, lifetime corporate jobs, unions, and so on. Most are forced into it. But still others choose to live precariously, rather than scramble to survive in the collapsing old system. To them, precarity is an identity, and they’re fighting— collectively—to make it work.
At least, that’s what’s happening in Europe and parts of South America, where precarity activists are building sophisticated networks of squats and collective housing co-ops, independent production and distribution networks, and worker-run factories. It’s all a means of protecting against the volatility and uncertainty of the system around them. In recent years, they’ve even organized massive days of action—paralleling traditional May Day protests to "activate new forms of social cooperation, new abilities to share skills, experiences and resources, in order to construct and live a new imagery of social radicalism.
So here’s the question: where is the precarity movement in the rest of the world? How about in the USA, home to some of the most insecure workers in the first world? Does America’s culture of individuality preclude a collective response? Have activists been beaten into submission by corporate dominance and the heavies in the White House? Or are we wrong? Maybe the US has an equivalent precarity movement under a different name. Or it’s nameless and waiting to be discovered."
This and this provide at least the beginning of an answer to these rather unsatisfactorily posed questions.