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      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        November 2021

        The ABC of the projectariat

        Living and working in a precarious art world

        by Kuba Szreder

        The ABC of the projectariat contributes new thinking on and practical responses to the widespread problem of precarious labour in the field of contemporary art. It works as both a critical analysis and a practical handbook, speaking to and about the vast cohort of artistic freelancers worldwide. In an accessible ABC format, the book strikes a unique balance between the practical and the theoretical: the analysis is backed up by lived experience, the arguments are rooted in concrete examples and there are suggestions for constructive action. Roughly half of the entries expose the structural underpinnings of projects and circulation, isolating traits such as opportunism, neoliberalism, inequality, fear and cynicism at the root of the condition of the projectariat. This discussion is paired with a practical account of different modes of action, such as art strikes, productive withdrawals, political struggles and better social time machines. Just as proletarians had nothing to lose but their chains, the projectarians have nothing to miss but their deadlines.

      • Trusted Partner
        Business, Economics & Law
        January 2024

        Capitalism in contemporary Iran

        Capital accumulation, state formation and geopolitics

        by Kayhan Valadbaygi

        By situating Iran within the neoliberal global capitalism and resulting geopolitics, this book traces the patterns of capital accumulation and transformations in class and state formation emanating from it. It shows that Iranian neoliberalisation has brought about two capital fractions, namely the internationally-oriented capital fraction and the military-bonyad complex. It substantiates that the co-existence of these competing class fractions with different accumulation strategies has generated hybrid neoliberalism. The book further demonstrates how this new class formation has reorganised the function and operation of state institutions and transformed state ideology. By documenting the ways in which Iranian neoliberalisation has reshaped the subaltern classes and formed Iran's volatile foreign policy, it also provides a novel account of major events and processes in contemporary Iran, such as the post-2017 wave of uprisings, the nuclear programme and international sanctions.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        June 2023

        Neoliberalism and neo-jihadism

        by Imogen Richards

      • Trusted Partner
        The Arts
        March 2021

        Queer exceptions

        Solo performance in neoliberal times

        by Stephen Greer

        Queer exceptions is a study of contemporary solo performance in the UK and Western Europe that explores the contentious relationship between identity, individuality and neoliberalism. With diverse case studies featuring the work of La Ribot, David Hoyle, Oreet Ashery, Bridget Christie, Tanja Ostojic, Adrian Howells and Nassim Soleimanpour, the book examines the role of singular or 'exceptional' subjects in constructing and challenging assumed notions of communal sociability and togetherness, while drawing fresh insight from the fields of sociology, gender studies and political philosophy to reconsider theatre's attachment to singular lives and experiences. Framed by a detailed exploration of arts festivals as encapsulating the material, entrepreneurial circumstances of contemporary performance-making, this is the first major critical study of solo work since the millennium.

      • Trusted Partner
        Business, Economics & Law
        June 2021

        Rigged

        Understanding 'the economy' in Brexit Britain

        by Anna Killick

        In Brexit Britain, talk of 'the economy' dominates; however, we know surprisingly little about how people understand this term. In the aftermath of the 2008 crash and decades of neoliberalism, how are understandings of 'the economy' changing, and is it the case that Remain supporters care more about 'the economy' than Leave supporters? This timely and insightful book argues that people with similar experiences of the economy share an understanding of the term, regardless of whether they supported Leave or Remain. Through extensive ethnographic research in a city on the South coast of England, Anna Killick explores what people from a range of backgrounds understand about key aspects of 'the economy', including employment, austerity, trade and the economic effects of migration.

      • Trusted Partner
        Business, Economics & Law
        March 2023

        Water struggles as resistance to neoliberal capitalism

        A time of reproductive unrest

        by Madelaine Moore

        This book provides an important intervention into social reproduction theory and the politics of water. Presenting an incorporated comparison, it analyses the conjuncture following the 2007 financial crisis through the lens of water expropriation and resistance. This brings into view the way that transnational capital has made use of and been facilitated by the strategic selectivities of both the Irish and the Australian state, as well as the particular class formations that emerged in resistance to such water grabs. What is revealed is a crisis-ridden system that is marked by increasing reproductive unrest - class understood through the lens of social reproduction theory. As an important analysis of two significant water struggles, the book makes a compelling argument for integrating the study of social movements within critical political economy.

      • Trusted Partner
        Business, Economics & Law
        September 2020

        Neoliberal lives

        by Robert Chernomas, Ian Hudson, Mark Hudson

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        May 2021

        Disciplined agency

        Neoliberal precarity, generational dispossession and call centre labour in Portugal

        by Patrícia Alves de Matos

        Since the mid-2000s, the harsh reality of call centre employment for a generation of young workers in Portugal has been impossible to ignore. With its endless rows of small cubicles, where human agents endure repetitive telephone conversations with abusive clients under invasive modes of technological surveillance, discipline and control, call centre work remains a striking symbol of labour precarity, a condition particularly associated with the neoliberal generational disenchantment that 'each generation does better than its predecessor'. This book describes the emergence of a regime of disciplined agency in the Portuguese call centre sector. Examining the ascendancy of call centres as icons of precarity in contemporary Portugal, this book argues that call centre labour constitutes a new form of commodification of the labouring subject. De Matos argues that call centres represent an advanced system of non-manual labour power exploitation, due to the underestimation of human creativity that lies at the centre of the regimented structures of call centre labour. Call centres can only guarantee profit maintenance, de Matos argues, through the commodification of the human agency arising from the operators' moral, relational and social embedded agentive linguistic interventions of creative improvisation, decision-making, problem-solving and ethical evaluation.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        January 2024

        The urban life of workers in post-Soviet Russia

        Engaging in everyday struggle

        by Alexandrina Vanke

        Despite the intense processes of deindustrialisation around the world, the working class continues to play an important role in post-industrial societies. However, working-class people are often stigmatised, morally judged and depicted negatively in dominant discourses. This book challenges stereotypical representations of workers, building on research into the everyday worlds of working-class and ordinary people in Russia's post-industrial cities. The urban life of workers in post-Soviet Russia is centred on the stories of local communities engaged in the everyday struggles that occur in deindustrialising settings under neoliberal neo-authoritarianism. The book suggests a novel approach to everyday life in post-industrial cities. Drawing on an ethnographic study with elements of arts-based research, the book presents a new genre of writing about workers influenced by the avant-garde documentary tradition and working-class literature.

      • Trusted Partner
        Business, Economics & Law
        March 2025

        Tadeusz Kowalik and Poland’s return from socialism to capitalism

        Full circle

        by Gavin Rae

        Tadeusz Kowalik lived through ten decades and three economic and political systems in Poland. He combined his academic study of economic ideas with his socialist ideals of building a fairer and more just society. This book covers the intellectual and political work of Kowalik, within the context of modern Polish history. Kowalik was part of a Polish School of critical left-wing political economists, that included Michal Kalecki and Oskar Lange. Kowalik contributed to the body of work produced by this group, which included his interpretation of their work. Kowalik participated in some of the most momentous events in post-war Polish history, helping to organise a group of intellectuals to advise the shipyard workers at the Gdansk shipyards in 1980. He became a vehement opponent of Poland's neoliberal form of capitalism and left a body of work that illuminates our understanding of capitalism and socialism today.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        January 2021

        Karl Polanyi and twenty-first-century capitalism

        by Radhika Desai, Kari Polanyi Levitt

        As far right movements, social disintegration and international conflict emerge from the decay of the neoliberal order, Karl Polanyi's warnings against the unbridled domination of markets, is ever more relevant. The essays in Karl Polanyi for the 21st Century extend the boundaries of our understanding of Polanyi's life and work. They will interest Polanyi scholars and all interested in socialism and our future after neoliberalism. One asks whether, following Keynes and Hayek, Polanyi's ideas will shape the twenty-first century. Some clarify, for the meaning of money as a fictitious commodity. Others resolve difficulties in understanding the building blocks of Polanyi's thought: fictitious commodities, the double movement, the United States' exceptional development, the reality of society, and socialism as freedom in a complex society. And yes others explore how Polanyi sheds light on income inequality, world systems theory, comparative political economy.

      • Trusted Partner
        Central government policies
        July 2015

        Ireland under austerity

        Neoliberal crisis, neoliberal solutions

        by Edited by Colin Coulter and Angela Nagle

        Once held up as a 'poster child' for untrammeled capitalist globalisation, the Irish Republic has more recently come to represent a cautionary tale for those tempted to tread the same neoliberal path. The crash in the world economy had especially grave repercussions for Ireland, and a series of austerity measures has seen the country endure what some consider the most substantial 'adjustment' ever experienced in a developed society during peacetime. In this collection of essays, a range of academics, economists and political commentators delineate the reactionary course that Ireland has followed since the ignominious demise of the Celtic Tiger. They argue that the forces of neoliberalism have employed the economic crisis they caused to advance policies that are in their own narrow interests, and that the host of regressive measures imposed since the onset of global recession has fundamentally restructured Irish society. The book provides a critical account of a society that has more often than most mapped out the pernicious cycle of boom and bust that remains an essential hallmark of contemporary capitalism.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        April 2024

        Bankruptcy, bubbles and bailouts

        by Aeron Davis

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        October 2022

        Bankruptcy, bubbles and bailouts

        by Aeron Davis, Karel Williams

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        June 2020

        The Trump revolt

        by Edward Ashbee

        This book considers the reasons for Donald Trump's surprise victory in the 2016 presidential election. It charts the prolonged campaign and the realigning processes that took place, analysing the ideas that defined the Trump platform, the electoral shifts in states regarded as solid 'firewalls' for the Democratic Party and the responses of Republican Party elites. Although he is subject to contradictory pressures, the book places Trump firmly within the right-wing populist tradition. However, it argues that the sentiments that drove his campaign were not only a response to economic fears, high levels of inequality and racial resentment - they were also shaped by the structural character of American governance, which fuels hostility towards Washington DC and the 'political class'. The book concludes by assessing the extent to which Trump's victory and parallel developments in Europe mark a reconfiguration of neoliberalism.

      • Trusted Partner
        Social & political philosophy
        July 2016

        Karl Polanyi

        The Hungarian writings

        by Edited by Gareth Dale

        This is the first work to offer a collection of Polanyi's texts never before published in English. The book presents articles, papers, lectures, speeches, notes, and draft manuscripts, mostly written between 1907 and 1923, with the exception of a few later texts. Organised thematically around religion, ethics, ideology, world politics and Hungarian politics, the topics include contemporary thinkers, the Galilei Circle, the Tisza government, the Aster and the Bolshevik Revolutions, the Councils Republic, the Radical Citizens' Party, Hungarian democracy, the national question, political conviction, fatalism, British socialism, political theory and violence, and more. Each section includes a discussion of the political and intellectual contexts in which the texts were written. Karl Polanyi: The Hungarian writings is an outstanding and essential resource that brings to light for the first time the works of a key thinker who is relevant to today's study of globalisation, neoliberalism, social movements, and international social policy.

      • Trusted Partner
        History of Art / Art & Design Styles
        October 2016

        Hot metal

        Material culture and tangible labour

        by Jesse Stein. Series edited by Bill Sherman, Christopher Breward

        The world of work is tightly entwined with the world of things. Hot metal illuminates connections between design, material culture and labour between the 1960s and the 1980s, when the traditional crafts of hot-metal typesetting and letterpress were finally made obsolete with the introduction of computerised technologies. This multidisciplinary history provides an evocative rendering of design culture by exploring an intriguing case: a doggedly traditional Government Printing Office in Australia. It explores the struggles experienced by printers as they engaged in technological retraining, shortly before facing factory closure. Topics explored include spatial memory within oral history, gender-labour tensions, the rise of neoliberalism and the secret making of objects 'on the side'. This book will appeal to researchers in design and social history, labour history, material culture and gender studies. It is an accessible, richly argued text that will benefit students seeking to learn about the nature and erosion of blue-collar work and the history of printing as a craft.

      • Trusted Partner
        Humanities & Social Sciences
        November 2011

        Public Private Partnerships in Ireland

        Failed experiment or the way forward?

        by Rory Hearne, Rob Kitchin

        Public Private Partnerships (PPPs) have come to public attention in recent years in Ireland with the impact of toll roads, the collapse of social-housing projects and their use in the provision of courts buildings, schools, water/waste water treatment plants, hospitals, light rail and other public infrastructure and services. This book provides a ground breaking and unique analysis of the development of such PPPs internationally, with a detailed focus on the rationale behind their introduction and outcomes in Ireland. The detailed evidence outlined from the author's extensive research (including interviews with senior central and government officials, private sector, community and trade union representatives and the Irish Minister for Environment) highlights the important role PPPs are playing in the implementation of privatisation and neoliberalism. The book also provides considerable practical lessons from individual PPP projects. It is therefore an essential read for students, academics of politics, economics, sociology, geography and policy practitioners in Ireland, and further afield. It is of considerable interest to anyone concerned with the progress of Irish society, its economy and, indeed public services and governance internationally. ;

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