Acts of Resistance: Against the New Myths of Our Time

Platform couriers' self‐exploitation: The case study of Glovo

“…Second, addressing the exploitative nature of so many platform occupations, particularly couriers, requires depriving employers of a determinant source of advantage vis‐à‐vis workers: the latter's lack of alternatives. Building on the accounts of Bourdieu (1998), this article has shown that job insecurity is not only generated by employers but also leveraged by them to divide and exploit workers. What happens in the realm of platform work is in no way different—if anything, just more extreme.…”

“…As the risk exposure expands, assuming broader and ever-more complex shapes (Standing, 2011), workers are not only induced to internalise it but also forced to cope with its material consequences (or at least the dread of them): unemployment and material deprivation. In a genuinely postdisciplinarian way, workers are thus exposed to employers' 'insecurity-inducing strategies' putting the former 'at [the] mercy' of the latter, 'who exploit and abuse the power this gives them' (Bourdieu, 1998). Thus, employability turns into a permanent source of worry (Southwood, 2017), inducing workers to accept indecent working conditions (Baines, 2016) and adhere to a 'long-hours culture, (…) working by projects or by objectives, (…) with a great investment of time and energy' (Murgia et al, 2017)-a pattern, studies have shown, contributes to further increasing gender inequalities (Lott & Chung, 2016).…”

Valuing the Surplus: Perspectives on Julian Horton's Article ‘On the Musicological Necessity of Music Analysis’, Musical Quarterly, 3/i–ii, pp. 62–104.Contributors: Kofi Agawu, Gurminder K. Bhogal, Esther Cavett, Jonathan Dunsby, Julian Horton, Alexandra Monchick, Ian Pace, Henry Stobart and Simon Zagorski‐Thomas, compiled and edited by Esther Cavett

“…Horton situates these musicological developments in the context of neoliberal and postmodern thought (citing Jameson 1991 and Habermas 1984 and 1996 on the confluence of the two), links postmodern attacks on formalism to neoliberal ones on socialism, notes how various forms of analysis are rooted in historical theories and practices known by many composers and questions whether a musicology which eschews analysis and replaces it with valorisation by cultural context can offer a meaningful alternative to large‐scale instrumentalisation and marketisation of culture and knowledge, also referencing the ‘end of history’ narrative (Fukuyama 1989 and 1992) as reflected by Richard Taruskin (2005). He draws on Karol Berger (2000) – as well as Adorno (1982) on artistic surplus and Popper and Eccles (1983) – to argue for a type of relative technical autonomy of music (the loss of which is registered with concern in Bourdieu 1998), linking this to Habermas (1984) as part of a critique of instrumentalised rationality , maintaining that analytical propositions can equally constitute communicative understanding which can be discursively contested, neglect of which informs antiformalist claims of hegemony. Noting various elements of music which remain invariant regardless of performance, Horton fleshes these arguments out through analytical examples from works of Henry Purcell and J. S. Bach, challenging one to account for its intricacies in purely historical and/or performative terms, without recourse to technical autonomy, which he associates with critical resistance to utility.…”

Support seeking, system avoidance, and citizenship: Social safety net usage after incarceration

“…In doing so, I pull discussions of rights‐claiming and citizenship into the conversation about the punitive state and the welfare state. I also engage with system avoidance theory (Brayne, 2014) and administrative burden (Herd & Moynihan, 2019; Moynihan et al., 2015), all with the goal of better understanding how the structure of social policies and social context shape the ways in which those who have encountered the penal right hand of the state subsequently interact with its welfarist left hand (Bourdieu, 1998). In so doing, I also provide the first nationwide estimates of the extent to which previously incarcerated adults use social safety net resources.…”