Anthropologies of Unemployment: New Perspectives on Work and Its Absence

Published by Cornell University Press 2016

Anthropologies of Unemployment

New Perspectives on Work and Its Absence

Edited by: Jong Bum Kwon and Carrie M. Lane

https://doi.org/10.7591/9781501706134

Overview
Contents

About this book

Anthropologies of Unemployment offers accessible, theoretically innovative, and ethnographically rich examinations of unemployment in rural and urban regions across North and South America, Europe, Africa, and Asia.

Author / Editor information

Jong Bum Kwon is Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Webster University. Carrie M. Lane is Professor of American Studies at California State University, Fullerton, and the author of A Company of One: Insecurity, Independence, and the New World of White-Collar Unemployment, also from Cornell.

Reviews

Ofer Sharone, author of Flawed System/Flawed Self:

Anthropologies of Unemployment is a major contribution to our understanding of the experiences of unemployment. This collection of fascinating ethnographic studies spanning seven national contexts makes vividly clear how the experience of unemployment is far from universal but is profoundly shaped by specific social, cultural, and economic institutions. More broadly, this volume should be of great interest to anyone wishing to understand the varied ways in which precarious employment conditions intersect with local contexts to shape the experiences of modern work or its absence.

Ilana Gershon, editor of A World of Work:

What do you know about work when you begin by thinking about unemployment? This fascinating collection shows that, around the world, we labor all the time, but only some labor is widely understood to be work. Classifying some tasks as work and not others profoundly structures much of social life. This book is a bouquet of anthropological insights about what counts as work and why—a valuable set of interventions that overturns many taken-for-granted ideas about what it means to have a job or look for one.

Jane Collins, University of Wisconsin–Madisonco, author of Both Hands Tied: Welfare Reform and the Race to the Bottom in the Low-Wage Labor Market:

Anthropologies of Unemployment is a timely, coherent, and powerful collection; it is both a strong contribution to the anthropology of unemployment and the anthropology of work and globalization.

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Acknowledgments Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	ix
Introduction Jong Bum Kwon and Carrie M. Lane Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
1. The Limits of Liminality Anthropological Approaches to Unemployment in the United States Carrie M. Lane Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	18
2. The Limits to Quantitative Thinking Engaging Economics on the Unemployed David Karjanen Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	34
3. Occupation Jong Bum Kwon Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	53
4. The Rise of the Precariat? Unemployment and Social Identity in a French Outer City John P. Murphy Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	71
5. Contesting Unemployment The Case of the Cirujas in Buenos Aires Mariano D. Perelman Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	97
6. Zones of In/Visibility Commodification of Rural Unemployment in South Carolina Ann E. Kingsolver Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	118
7. Youth Unemployment, Progress, and Shame in Urban Ethiopia Daniel Mains Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	135
8. Labor on the Move Kinship, Social Networks, and Precarious Work among Mexican Migrants Frances Abrahamer Rothstein Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	155
9. Positive Thinking about Being Out of Work in Southern California after the Great Recession Claudia Strauss Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	171
10. The Unemployed Cooperative Community Responses to Joblessness in Nicaragua Josh Fisher Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	191
Epilogue: Rethinking the Value of Work and Unemployment Caitrin Lynch and Daniel Mains Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	212
Notes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	229
Bibliography Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	241
Notes on Contributors Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	265
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	269

(Deutsch)

Language: English
Publisher: Cornell University Press
Audience: General/trade;
Pages
- Main content: 288
Illustrations
- Illustrations: 3
- Images: 3
- Other: 3 halftones, 1 table, 1 chart
Keywords: Unemployment; anthropology of unemployment; global unemployment; rural and urban unemployment; free-market ideologies and policies; economic insecurity

eBook

Published: September 9, 2016
ISBN: 9781501706134