Guy Standing Research Articles

Women on Women in Contemporary Romanian Documentary Film

Guy Standing (2016) observes how in Eastern Europe, the post-1989 neoliberal order determined the working class to morph into what he names the precariat. This newly formed segment of society has to adapt to forever changing market imperatives in order to survive. Concomitantly, the Romanian state apparatus abruptly mutated from an overwhelming patriarchal structure into an all-out absent one (Bucur and Miroiu 252), thus making it more difficult for women to manage both patriarchally imposed roles and to find a workplace. Women filmmakers like Ana Căpățână-Juller (Aici…adică acolo [Here… meaning there], 2012) and Teodora Mihai (Waiting for August, 2014) decide to turn their cameras onto women characters engaged in a struggle for survival. Both filmmakers deal with the same theme, the lives of children who have to raise themselves, as their parents have gone abroad in order to gain better incomes than in Romania. Working with Sybille Krämer’s “second person model of witnessing,” where testimony is associated with concepts such as social interaction manifested through trust and authority (Krämer 34), I will examine how the two filmmakers particularly engage with their subjects and the differences between two directorial perspectives: one that approaches reality from a top down perspective, while the other is enmeshed with the characters in the historical world.

Precarity of the (Employed and Unemployed) Educated in Zimbabwe in Valerie Tagwira’s Trapped (2020)

Zimbabwean writer Valerie Tagwira’s novel Trapped (2020, Harare: Weaver Press) is set in Harare between the latter part of 2016 and November 2017, the period leading to the ousting of Robert Mugabe, the late former president of Zimbabwe, from power. The novel provides a glimpse into the lives of three protagonists, all of whom are university graduates, (un)employed, and forced to hustle for survival. Through these characters, Tagwira dramatises the condition of the educated and (un)employed in a dysfunctional economy and in the grips of a persistent crisis, which transforms them into “vagrants, vendors and criminals.” The overarching argument in this article is that the experiences of Tagwira’s characters are prisms through which to determine the effects—on the lives of the educated, both employed and unemployed—of Zimbabwe’s unprecedented and prolonged political and economic stagnation. Drawing on Guy Standing’s concept of the precariat and Michel de Certeau’s idea of the practice of everyday life, this article contends that Tagwira’s representation of the experiences of the educated, unemployed, and employed highlights the economic injustices that are rampant in postcolonial Zimbabwe.

공유경제의 헌법적 문제

The sharing economy refers to an economy based on collaborative consumption in which several people share and use products once produced by changing goods from the existing “ownership” to the concept of “sharing.” Although the sharing economy has innovations that reduce transaction costs and expand the scope of new transactions, there is a controversy that it violates actual laws such as the Passenger Transport Service Act and the Tourism Promotion Act, which are regulations on traditional industries.
 However, given that the sharing economy based on innovation in IT technology is a new phenomenon, it is questionable whether it is desirable to apply and regulate traditional industries as they are. Furthermore, even if there is a need for regulation, it is necessary to review what kind of regulation should be introduced in order not to hinder the innovation of the sharing economy discussed above.
 Guy Standing, author of “Unearned Income Capitalism,” says, “It may be the first time in the history of capitalism that the core trend of capitalism has changed so quickly.” The author harshly criticizes, “It is packaged as a new 'sharing economy', but in fact, it should be called 'platform capitalism' that extorts unearned income.” Platform conglomerates, the children of the 4th Industrial Revolution, dominate the lives of the entire society in a completely different way from the early 20th century, and the power network of their domination is much tighter. Not only has the national state's unique authority, such as identification and financial transactions, but it also detects and creates all their thoughts, actions, and desires as a national state has never dreamed of. It's rather strange if there's no power problem. Attention is focusing on which side will win here or whether a new type of compromise and compromise will be made.

MEASURING THE JOB PRECARIOUSNESS EXPERIENCED BY GOJEK DRIVERS IN INDONESIA

The introduction provides an overview of the rapid growth of digital technology and its impact on various aspects of human life. The rise of the information society and the development of the digital economy, particularly in Indonesia, has led to the emergence of start-ups like Gojek. Gojek, a digital business offering various services, has become a significant player in the Indonesian market, impacting millions of lives and employing many driver-partners. However, the welfare of Gojek drivers has come under scrutiny as studies have highlighted their vulnerabilities. The concept of "precariat," introduced by Guy Standing, is used to describe the vulnerabilities experienced by these digital workers. Precariat workers, such as Gojek drivers, face multiple challenges, including ambiguous work relations, lack of worker rights, and inadequate state support. The methods section explains the research approach used, which is a qualitative descriptive method with a literature review approach. The research framework is based on data collected from various sources to analyze Gojek drivers' vulnerabilities. The results section provides insights into Gojek's profile, industry development in Indonesia, and the vulnerabilities Gojek drivers face. The partnership status of Gojek drivers leads to unequal relationships, extended working hours, and a lack of worker rights, particularly regarding social security benefits. Additionally, conflicts have emerged between Gojek and conventional motorcycle taxis, further highlighting the job insecurity experienced by Gojek drivers.

Guy Standing: Battling Eight Giants: Basic Income Now

Guy Standing: <i>Battling Eight Giants: Basic Income Now</i>

Precarity and Public Housing

Precarity and Public Housing Emily J. Hogg (bio) and Bryan Yazell (bio) INTRODUCTION: PRECARITY, TEMPORALITY, AND PUBLIC HOUSING In 2022, five years after the fire that killed seventy-two people, Grenfell Tower still stands in West London, scaffolded, covered with plastic, and surrounded by hoarding. The hoarding, intended to be a temporary protective measure while a decision was taken on whether to demolish the Tower, has become the site of collective commemoration: the impermanent structure displays messages, photos, and artworks, including a community-created mosaic, which commemorate those who died and confront the systemic injustice that caused the fire to become so destructive.1 Renovation of the building, which was owned by the local government, the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, and was predominately home to social housing tenants, did not meet legal standards.2 The materials used fed rather than hampered the fire, and residents state that a series of warnings they made about fire safety before the disaster were ignored.3 A recent report by the Grenfell Tower Memorial Commission states that given this history, some of the residents, survivors, and bereaved wish the Tower to remain standing in case "what happened will be forgotten. . . . if Grenfell Tower no longer marks the west London skyline, the general public will think that the tragedy has closure and it's time to move on—and there will be less pressure to deliver justice."4 Others want the Tower demolished for reasons that also have to do with justice and its timeframes. They worry about "how growing up literally in the shadow of the Tower impacts on their children. It's not possible to know how long justice might take, and there are no guarantees that it will ever come."5 Writing years before the Grenfell fire, Owen Hatherley described a particular sense of temporal disjunction associated with social housing, seeing "the council blocks that still stand all over Britain's cities" as the remains "in present-day Britain of the brief rush of Bevanite Socialism that followed the war."6 They are [End Page 13] remnants that recall the utopian ambitions of the postwar welfare state, even as they have degradingly become seen as what Lynsey Hanley calls "holding cages for the poor and disenfranchised," frequently threatened with demolition, privatized, stigmatized in cultural narratives and, as the Grenfell disaster so starkly shows, often poorly maintained by their municipal owners.7 When the dreams of social mobility and reliable security associated with postwar social democracy have become increasingly difficult to believe in, and no new way of imagining future flourishing has emerged, there is, according to Lauren Berlant, a situation of "impasse." The impasse is: a stretch of time in which one moves around with a sense that the world is at once intensely present and enigmatic, such that the activity of living demands both a wandering absorptive awareness and a hypervigilance that collects material that might help to clarify things. . . . The holding pattern implied in "impasse" suggests a temporary housing.8 This dossier takes this final sentence, and its connection between housing and the temporal feel of the present, literally. Focusing on European social housing developments, as sites connected both aesthetically and historically with the welfare state and its egalitarian aspirations, it asks how what Hanley terms the "holding cage" and Berlant the "holding pattern" are related and considers the ways artistic mediations of the social housing development register the precarious temporalities of the present. Although the particularities of housing estates differ in individual national contexts, there are strong continuities—both symbolically and, in terms of design and construction, literally—between developments in different European states.9 Turning to the precarious time implicit in housing places in dialogue several critical approaches that while often expressing adjacent concerns, are rarely discussed together: precariousness as a shared socio-ontological condition, uneven temporalities, and the lived experience within social housing. Guy Standing touches on the confluence of these concepts in his expansive definition of the "precariat," which names the denizens most affected by neoliberalism's dismantling of the welfare state. For Standing, any potential solidarity within the precariat runs against the fragmented temporality that internally divides this "class-in-the-making."10...

Classified Transformation from Proletariat to Precariat

One of the strictest realities of social life is class structure. Therefore, Karl Marx based his analysis of social structure on the labour form of the class that constantly produces itself and its opponent. He speaks of a class structure based on material labour determined by means of production and production relations. This class is known as the proletariat. However, in this cycle, which progresses continuously on the axis of change and transformation, the class has become flexible and labour has moved away from its material state. In Marx's words, the solid has evaporated. In other words, the new social class that has adapted to the flexible life and labour process and was stuck between the continuous work and life changes is the precariat. The basis of the precariat class is not only the proletarian workers and their labour, but also their identity, colour, religious affiliations. Those who are outside the wall of equality aim to achieve the digital era and somehow their whole life has been cognitive, and they are living new fluid human's states resulting in alienation from their labour. In this study, the class transformation will be emphasized that Marx went through while evolving into precariat in the informatics society of the proletariat, which he put forward for the industrial society. The class transformation in question will be discussed in the context of Hard and Negri's class components and Guy Standing's precariat concept. This study will include the fluid course of class transformation. In addition to these, this study is important as it aims to analyze the contexts of human life, post-human and trans-human processes by including digitalization.

Severed Green: a Pandemic-Born Structure

An open letter signed by a large group of Romanian cultural NGOs and published in Scena.ro review (no. 49 (3)/2020) signaled the danger of disappearance of the entire independent cultural sector. The authors reported the authorities’ lack of involvement concerning this sector’s support during the pandemic crisis, the inability of those in a decisional position to understand how it functions or the fact that the artists working here are the innovators that the culture urgently needs. Indeed, the Coronavirus pandemic has hit hard the independent cultural sector, as well as the one formed by entrepreneurs, small or medium-sized businesses. The prolongation of the state of emergency, the new regulations concerning the functioning of performance halls at the capacity of 30-50-70% depending on the evolution of the pandemic have brought the cultural organizations at the brink of bankruptcy. The uncertainty of living and project continuity has existed in our society even under what we now call ”normal conditions”, but in the last two years, this uncertainty increased dramatically. That is why the condition of the Romanian independent artist draws near to the precariat class - a concept widely theorized by the economist Guy Standing - who calls it a dangerous class by the authorities' tendency to ignore it, pushing it into the trap of insecurity, debt and humiliation. Most of the time, however, the freedom of creation is born of external constraints. Independent artists were once again forced to take risks and give birth to hybrid artistic experiments - new forms that renegociate the relationship with the spectators, space and even their own bodies. This presentation aims to analyze the manner in which the work on the show Severed Green (produced by Pro Theatre Association, Zalău, 2020) managed to propose a new dramaturgical direction, which the artistic team named it documented theatre. Situated at the congruence of documentary and classical forms, documented theatre represented a liberating discovery for the practitioners.

Eutopia and engagement today

The contemporary conceptions of universal basic income (by Guy Standing), tax havens extraction (by Gabriel Zucman), and climate emergency (by Christiana Figueres) are briefly presented in the form of exposition in Massive Attack?s Eutopia EP. These conceptions address the most concerning issues of today?s world, while the concept of eutopia, proposed by Massive Attack?s Robert Del Naja and Mark Donne, represents ?a place of well-being, as a practical aspiration,? a realistic utopia in which those issues are resolved. The present paper discusses the conceptions presented in Eutopia, assessing the possibility of the materialisation of eutopia. As suggested by Massive Attack, the ideas of Eutopia can be traced back to More?s Utopia, being rooted in a humanistic endeavour of improving humanity, inspiring engagement and search for a better and just society. Apart from discussing Eutopia, the paper explores Another Now, the political science-fiction novel by Yanis Varoufakis. Varoufakis? critique of capitalism and the alternative he proposes in the novel Another Now argue along the same line as Eutopia, encouraging engagement in today?s world.

Surveillance of Migrants, Construction Workers and Patients under COVID-19: New Technologies on Guard of “Dangerous Classes”

Surveillance research is more than seven decades old, but this area has not yet attracted the attention of the scientific community in Russia. At the same time, surveillance technologies in the country are developing rapidly, having a significant impact on social processes and relations. This article seeks to contribute to the Russian academic discourse on surveillance. It focuses on a particular surveillance technology that, while originally aimed at the commercial realm, has moved into the realm of public–private partnerships and has rapidly evolved beyond what it was designed for. The concept of social sorting proposed by David Lyon is chosen as the main theoretical approach for the analysis of the empirical material. It also uses Guy Standing’s concept of the precariat, and Malcolm M. Feely and Jonathan Simon’s concept of the new penology. It is concluded that the studied surveillance technology is focused on preventing risky situations that may occur in the future (violations of labor discipline, the spread of coronavirus infection, or the non-compliance with Russian legislation and ignoring constitutionally significant values). Surveillance-targeting is driven by perceptions of a heightened risk posed by a range of populations in the context of these situations, and can be explained by referring to the concept of “dangerous classes”. Unlike the results obtained in a number of other works, this study shows that the surveillance technology considered does not lead to the complete exclusion of targeted categories of the population from the social space while performing the traditional function of disciplining the supervised and maximizing profits.

Trade Union Transformation and Informal Sector Organising in Uganda: The Prospects and Challenges for Promoting Labour-led Development

Despite celebrations from governments, corporations and international financial institutions around increasing economic growth, the majority of the world’s urban labour force continues to work under informal conditions, lacking enforceable contracts, adequate earnings, democratic representation, secure employment and social protection. The pervasiveness of informal labour globally has given rise to numerous calls to adopt a wider and more diverse understanding of what constitutes labouring classes and what is required to organise them. Our case study assesses the outcomes and effectiveness of informal sector organising in Uganda, focusing on the transportation, market and textile sectors. Drawing on Guy Standing’s distinction between “business” and “community” unions and Benjamin Selwyn’s contrasting of “capital-centred development theory” (CCDT) and “labour-led development” (LLD), we argue that community unionist approaches are most effective in addressing the decent work deficit in the informal economy. Simultaneously, the trade unions face constant barriers to successful community organising in the informal economy that cannot be easily overcome without wider changes to the structural conditions under which union organisers must operate. KEYWORDS: Trade unionism; informal labour organising; labour-centred development; Uganda; decent work

Paid, domestic, and emotional work in the precariat: Ken Loach’s Sorry We Missed You

ABSTRACT Sorry We Missed You, directed by Ken Loach and written by Paul Laverty, focuses on precarious work in modern Britain and its effects on a working-class nuclear family. Both Ricky (Kris Hitchen), the father, and Abby (Debbie Honeywood), the mother, work gruelling jobs that arguably situate them within the precariat. However, Loach and Laverty also draw attention to the gendered differences between Ricky’s and Abby’s situations. Drawing on the works of both Guy Standing and Arlie Russell Hochschild, we analyse Abby’s three domains of work as represented in the film: her paid work, which is precarious in similar ways to her husband’s; her domestic work, where she undertakes disproportionate care for their children; and her emotional work, which is required both at home and in her employment. In our analysis, we contend that Loach and Laverty do emphasise the ways Abby’s experience of precarious work is different due to being a woman and mother, however, the film’s ending deprioritises Abby’s struggles.

Beyond “Legal Equality” vs. “Difference” Feminism: Leah F. Vosko Interviews Eileen Boris on Women and the ILO

Beyond “Legal Equality” vs. “Difference” Feminism: Leah F. Vosko Interviews Eileen Boris on Women and the ILO

When Sport Event Work Stopped: Exposure of Sport Event Labor Precarity by the COVID-19 Pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic of 2020 has exposed major weaknesses in economic, governmental, and social structures that many have taken for granted in everyday life. The sport industry, which has gained unprecedented popularity in recent decades, is no exception. Decisions, driven in response to the COVID-19 outbreak, to suspend play in major sports leagues across the globe have exposed the precarious nature of the work situation that hourly event workers find themselves in. As the games stopped, so did the earnings of workers who impact essential aspects of the sport spectators’ experience. These workers include the part-time front of house staff for public assembly facilities, including ushers, concessions workers, ticket takers, and security personnel. This essay, drawing on ideas from C.W. Mills, Arne Kalleberg, and Guy Standing, will examine the impact of the pandemic on the employment of these workers by looking at the state of labor associated with sport and sports events. Furthermore, the essay will explore the challenges facing a class of workers who depend on numerous part-time or seasonal sports event jobs to scrape together an existence when sport suddenly stops. Finally, the essay will address the potential aftereffects of the COVID-19 pandemic on sport labor and consider how sport work could change as a result. This scholarly commentary lays the groundwork for further study and analysis of an important, yet rarely remarked on, aspect of employment morality and sport labor studies.

The Precarious Concept of Precarity

This paper traces the roots of precarity as a concept emerging from French sociological discourse, then permeating through networks informed by Italian autonomism, before re-emerging in the writings of figures such as Guy Standing and Arne Kalleberg. It is shown that, despite the claims of the literature, precarity in employment is not typical in the United Kingdom. Here, temporary employment remains the exception and employment tenure remains stable. This can best be explained by radical political economy. Capital is not interested simply in engendering precarity; it is also concerned with the retention and reproduction of labor power, leading to contradictory imperatives. The resonance of the narrative of precarity, in spite of this, reflects a long retreat from class within radical theory and the insecurities present in working life.

It's Time to Talk about Youth in the Middle East as The Precariat

In 2011, the year of the Arab uprisings, The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class by Guy Standing hit the bookstands. The concept precariat describes the condition of life and labour among educated urbanized youth in the twenty-first century more lucidly and persuasively than the key policy literature on the region, as exemplified in The Arab Human Development Report (AHDR) 2016: Youth and the Prospects for Human Development in a Changing Reality. This paper argues that any meaningful conceptualization of youth in North Africa and West Asia going forward should incorporate the notion of precariat and the condition of precariousness.

Review of Plunder of the Commons: A Manifesto for Sharing Public Wealth by Guy Standing

Review of Plunder of the Commons: A Manifesto for Sharing Public Wealth by Guy Standing

Universal basic income and Covid‐19

The Covid-19 crisis promises to be as big a shock to the UK economy as the 2007-08 financial crisis. The Office for Budget Responsibility recently published a scenario of the likely economic impact of the coronavirus shock to the economy. Making a number of assumptions, it suggested that real national income would fall by about a third in the second quarter of 2020. Public sector net borrowing would rise to about 14 per cent of national income, and this would be the highest annual deficit since the second world war. One idea for relieving the economic effects of the crisis is to implement a universal basic income. A basic income promises: ‘regular, non-meanstested cash transfers to all residents of a political territory on an individual basis, without means-test or work requirement’. A universal basic income has five key parts, namely, that it: is regular; is paid in cash; is provided to the individual; is universal with no means test; and is unconditional with no requirement to work or seek work. Long-standing supporters of a basic income, such as Guy Standing, call for this policy to help people cope with the economic fallout of the global pandemic. This piece considers whether Covid-19 affects two key objections to a universal basic income among the left: adequacy and opportunity cost.

The precariat’s downfall

Abstract The piece is a review of the Slovenian edition of the book The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class by British economist Guy Standing. In addition to the standard review process – the presentation of the topic and evaluation – the text encompasses a broader interpretation of theses in the local political context and attempts to develop them and engage in a dialogue with them. Particular emphasis is placed on the issue of invisibility and establishing ‘the voice of the precariat’ with regard to cultural criticism. The situation of the precariat in Great Britain is compared to that in Slovenia, which has undergone a rather benevolent transition, and the difficulty of the search for solutions to the described state of affairs is pointed out.

The Writer as Worker? Perspectives on the Topical Question of Precarity Among Danish Writers

In light of recent public interest in working conditions among writers in Denmark, this article discusses the appropriateness of the widespread myth of the poor, suffering artist, which theories of precarity also tend to feed on when grouping the work of artists as precarious work. The ways in which Isabell Lorey, Guy Standing, and Bojana Kunst connect precarity to creative workers are compared to the ways in which Danish writers actually relate to their writing as work. It turns out that neither Standing’s hopeful conception of the Progressives as a fraction of the precariat nor Lorey’s and Kunst’s idea of the self-precarised, but nevertheless worn-out virtuosos provide a satisfactory terminology when confronted with the concrete experiences expressed by the writers. A specifically interesting case is found in the Danish writers running the publishing house Basilisk in terms of their consistently non-profit ethos paired with an absence of precarity issues in their writings, questioning whether writing needs to be conceived of as wage labour at all.