This special issue on precarious labor in global perspective includes analyses of precarious work in South Africa, Mexico, the United States, China and India. The key strengths of the contributions to this issue are that they demonstrate precarious workers’ capacity for collective action, the hidden forms of work that are not tracked by states, long-term historical continuities of precarious work, and differences between precarious work in the Global North and South. This introduction explores the challenges of conceptualizing precarious work; the history of precarious labor; its variations in the Global North and South; possible differences across sectors of precarious work; and the intersections between precarious work and categories of gender, race, and citizenship status. We conclude with a summary of the articles included in the issue.
Recent scholarship contends that the rise of shopping malls, gated communities, and gentrification as well as citizens' withdrawal to the private realm have eroded public life in U.S. and Latin American cities. Malls' suburban location and security policies exclude the poor and restrict free speech; residents and fences in gated communities exclude outsiders; and police and businesses in downtowns and high-rent districts limit poor people's access to public areas. I expand this discussion with an analysis of the accessibility of Santiago, Chile's retail areas, the social relationships present there, and marginalized groups' informal resistance to their exclusion. The city's distinct segregation pattern, transit system, and state-licensed street markets permit greater contact between rich and poor and foster vital public spaces. I adapt Lofland's typology of fleeting, quasi-primary, and intimate secondary relations in public to examine social interactions in street markets, flea markets, and shopping malls. The distinct mix of relationships within these markets reflects the characteristics of users, varying degrees of accessibility to diverse populations, and state policies toward markets. Marginalized groups' informal resistance is pervasive in each setting. In contrast to the dominant view that public space is declining in contemporary cities, Santiago residents are not universally reclusive, antisocial, or reluctant to engage in cross-class public encounters, and the city retains vital public areas. The findings demonstrate that our understanding of public space is incomplete without an awareness of social relationships and informal resistance alongside structural constraints to the accessibility of urban locales.Contemporary analyses of U.S. metropolitan areas explore how post-World War II suburbanization and contemporary urban revitalization have changed the public character of cities. Shopping malls are designed for automobile access and mall owners tend to exclude the poor and political protests. Privately run business improvement districts (BIDs) impose curfews, set restrictive rules in public parks, and hire private security guards, thereby decreasing homeless and poor people's access to these public places. Established merchants and city officials shut down illegal street markets, pedestrian bridges and tunnels segregate the poor from middle-class employees and tourists, and gated community residents exclude outsiders through security devices and staff. These trends have undermined an earlier pattern of social interaction by diverse groups and public political expression in
Recent discussions of contentious politics have focused on struggles in and over space and place. This article builds upon these concerns by using ethnographic, interview, and documentary data to analyze the spatial politics of street market vendors in Santiago, Chile. Drawing upon Lefebvre's concepts of perceived, conceived, and lived space as well as ideas drawn from research on space and protest, I show how street market vendors build upon spatial routines, a sense of place, political alliances, and scale jumping in their self-defense strategies at the local, national, and international scales. The findings illustrate Lefebvre's argument that the advance of abstract space (constructed by dominant economic and political elites) provokes resistance by groups who defend and seek to reconstruct lived space.Students of contentious politics have become increasingly interested in conflicts over space and place. Scholars have examined the role of space in facilitating and constraining the contentious actions of protestors; the role of space, place, and scale in informing activists' strategies and opportunities; and the differentiation of movements across space (This article builds on this interest through an examination of local, national, and international conflicts over space among state officials, licensed street market vendors, and illegal vendors in Santiago, Chile. While I examine more institutionalized and routine forms of claims-making than are often associated with contentious politics, many of the principles that guide analyses of contention in and over space and place inform these conflicts in Santiago. In this article, I ask: how have local actors used spatial strategies to overcome their social isolation and economic marginalization? The findings indicate that street market vendors have broken out of their spatial isolation by building on an existing sense of place in local settings; conducting symbolic protests; and constructing alliances at the local, national, and international scales.
Abstract. In contrast to common perceptions that individuals' consumption choices are primarily motivated by their search for status or personal gratification, this article contends that gender, family and class significantly shape these decisions. The study integrates discussions of class and consumption with analyses of family monetary allocation and adaptive strategies to analyze interviews with working-class couples in Santiago, Chile. I found that men exercised overt and subtle forms of control over family monetary allocation, spending choices and earning strategies; adults' perceived obligations towards children and elderly parents shaped their consumption decisions; and couples' class-based perceptions of their limited financial resources led them to value thrift and skill in shopping. The analysis suggests the advantages of linking a focus on stratification with attention to meaningful social relations (based, for example, on the family, friendship networks or the workplace) in the study of consumption processes. Such an approach demonstrates how meaningful negotiated social processes are critical elements in economic behavior. I propose avenues for future research building upon this approach.
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