Subjectivity 5(1): Collective Becomings (2012)

Subjectivity is an international, transdisciplinary journal examining the social, cultural, historical and material processes, dynamics and structures of human experience.

“This issue of Subjectivity can be thought of as the first major engagement with Franco ‘Bifo’ Berardi’s work in English. It is not just a collection of essays that take Bifo’s ideas as their starting point, but rather a collection of essays that all start from the conjuncture of Bifo’s ideas, the issues and conditions raised by them, with forms of collective becomings in the present. The purpose then is not to consider Bifo’s work in isolation, but rather to develop it as a tool, one that is explored through continued usage and application.” (from Editorial)

With contributions by Dave Eden, Abe Walker, Anja Kanngieser, Michael Goddard, Giuseppina Mecchia, Franco ‘Bifo’ Berardi

Edited by Stevphen Shukaitis and Joanna Figiel
Published April 2012
ISSN 1755-6341

Publisher

PDF and HTML articles
single PDF (updated on 2012-8-1)

Carrot Workers Collective: Surviving Internships: A Counter Guide to Free Labour in the Arts (2011)

“This guide has been produced by the Carrot Workers‘ Collective in London. It attempts to explore and debunk some commonly held myths around creative careers and provide some survival tools for those currently working in the creative sector. This guide asks: is unpaid interning essential for a job in the creative sector? Does interning and free labour automatically lead to paid work? Do those who work in the creative industry actually do creative work? Why do we often think that cultural work isn‘t ‘real work‘, and therefore that cultural workers don‘t deserve the same rights as everyone else? The contents of the guide are based on real life experiences of cultural workers in London who tell it like it really is, sharing the fears and desires that motivate their work, their experiences of disappointment and survival, and also, importantly, suggesting how we could organise our work otherwise.” (from the introduction)

Creative Commons BY 3.0 Unported License
68 pages

interview with the authors (January 2012)

authors

PDF

Guy Standing: The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class (2011–) [EN, PL, BR-PT, FR, CN]

“Neo-liberal policies and institutional changes have produced a huge and growing number of people with sufficiently common experiences to be called an emerging class. In this book Guy Standing introduces what he calls the Precariat – a growing number of people across the world living and working precariously, usually in a series of short-term jobs, without recourse to stable occupational identities or careers, stable social protection or protective regulations relevant to them. They include migrants, but also locals.

Standing argues that this class of people could produce new instabilities in society. They are increasingly frustrated and dangerous because they have no voice, and hence they are vulnerable to the siren calls of extreme political parties. He outlines a new kind of good society, with more people actively involved in civil society and the precariat re-engaged. He goes on to consider one way to a new better society — an unconditional basic income for everyone, contributed by the state, which could be topped up through earned incomes.

This is a topical, and a radical book, which will appeal to a broad market concerned by the increasing problems of labour insecurity and civic disengagement.”

Publisher Bloomsbury Academic, London, 2011
ISBN 1849663513, 9781849663519
Creative Commons BY-NC Licence
ix+198 pages

Essay by the author (The Guardian, June 2011)
Excerpts from a seminar with the author (video, United Nations, September 2011)
Interview with the author (James Foley, International Socialist, November 2011)
Essay by the author (OpenDemocracy.net, January 2012)

Reviews: Keith Randle (Work Organisation, Labour & Globalisation, 2011), Gaverne Bennett (Socialist Review, 2011), Arne L Kalleberg & Hazel Conley & David A Spencer (Work, Employment and Society, 2012; Response), Xavier St-Denis (Canadian Rev of Sociology, 2012), Geoff Bailey (International Socialist Review, 2012), Jan Breman (New Left Review, 2013; Response), Catherine Lawlor (Global Discourse, 2013), Chris Deeming (J Social Policy, 2013), Andreas Bieler (Capital & Class, 2013), Kieran Allen (Irish Marxist Review, 2014), Monica Threlfall (E-International Relations, 2015), Dylan Taylor (POA Review, n.d.), Bengt Furåker (Arbetsmarknad & Arbetsli, 2014, SW), Edgar Augusto Valero Julio (Rev Colombiana de Sociologia, 2015, ES), Lech Mikulski (Państwo i Społeczeństwo, 2015, PL), Jean-Pierre Durand (Nouvelle Revue du Travail, 2017, FR), Anne Rodier (Le Monde, 2017, FR).

Publisher (EN)
WorldCat (EN)

The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class (English, 2011, updated on 2018-12-29; EPUB)
O Precariado: A nova classe perigosa (BR-Portuguese, trans. Cristina Antunes, rev. Rogério Bettoni, 2013)
Prekariat: nowa niebezpieczna klasa (Polish, trans. Paweł Kaczmarski and Mateusz Karolak, 2014, Introduction & Chapters 1-3, HTML, PDFs, updated on 2021-1-18)
Le précariat: les dangers d’une nouvelle classe (French, trans. Mickey Gaboriaud, 2017, added on 2020-1-18)
Bu wen ding wu chan jie ji (Chinese, trans. Weiren Liu, 2019, added on 2020-1-18)

See also Standing’s A Precariat Charter: From Denizens to Citizens (2014, EPUB, added on 2018-12-29).