Politics of precarity: neoliberal academia under austerity measures and authoritarian threat

Loher, David; Strasser, Sabine

doi:10.1111/1469-8676.12697

Cited by 17 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 25 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…His favourite target, academics, are in his view part of these privileged elites: ‘academics who have got tenure are doing better than in many years’ (120). This is certainly not the case; not only has academic precarity tremendously increased, but many of those with stable positions work in neoliberal conditions of pressure and competition (Loher et al., 2019). In France, their salaries are significantly lower than in the private sector.…”

Section: Anti-elite Methodological Nationalismmentioning

confidence: 99%

‘PC worlds’: Ethno-nationalist identitarian theories of anti-political correctness

Trémon

2020

Anthropological Theory

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Over the past two decades, politicians and intellectuals have lent support to rising anti-immigrant sentiments, ethno-nationalist integralism and far-right populism by coining expressions such as ‘cultural exclusion’ and claiming to be speaking in the name of the ‘people’, often under cover of anti-political correctness. In this article I identify a series of recurrent features of such ethno-nationalist identitarian theories. The book I am critiquing, PC Worlds: Political Correctness and Rising Elites at the End of Hegemony (2019) by Jonathan Friedman, is a clear example of these trends. The scholar who had previously critiqued racialized politics and the reification of cultures now offers a book in favour of anti-immigrant ethno-nationalism and radical cultural othering. The article shows how this is the result of contradictions related to the evolution in his own thinking and situates these contradictions in regard to different theories of the nation-state. It also demonstrates how Friedman has proceeded to hollow out his own previous model, by making a distorted and normative use of it, and points out a number of weaknesses, particularly regarding the notions of ‘elites’ and ‘hegemony’. Finally, it questions the very project of conducting a study of political correctness.

show abstract

Section: Anti-elite Methodological Nationalismmentioning

confidence: 99%

‘PC worlds’: Ethno-nationalist identitarian theories of anti-political correctness

Trémon

2020

Anthropological Theory

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…In the realm of precarity studies, this analysis is invaluable not only as a rich theoretical contribution but also because it is in tune with emerging scholarship that attempts to give voice and visibility to its own precarious subjectivities (Casas-Cortés 2014;Coin 2017;Ferreira 2017;Loher, Stoica, and Strasser 2019;Nader 2017;Platzer and Allison 2018). Casas-Cortés shows that precarity should be studied as an intersectional notion that embraces all workers in precarious conditions, even the knowledge workers, the cognitariat, a category of workers in which many of us belong.…”

Section: Aimilia Voulvoulimentioning

confidence: 99%

Precarious Writings

Casas-Cortés¹

2021

Current Anthropology

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Scholarly debates over precarity are gaining unprecedented visibility across fields. From labor insecurity forming a growing dangerous class to the existential condition of vulnerability induced by millennial capitalism, precarity has become an object of both empirical study and theoretical reflection. While European social movements have been organizing and writing about precarity from the late 1970s to today, still, from the US perspective, the term precarity might be mistakenly taken as strictly a scholarly invention. "Precarious Writings" offers an important corrective to the ways that precarity has been taken up in anthropology and cognate disciplines, addressing the specific epistemological and political limitations of existing usages and returning the concept to its overlooked grassroots history in social movement struggles in southern Europe. By returning precarity to these activist roots, this paper makes the case for the recognition of social movements as knowledge producers as well as sources of theoretical insight and innovation in their own right. By failing to recognize precarity's development within contentious struggles, scholarly uses miss how the activist notion enables identity reformulations toward a kind of "precarity pride." That is, the politicization of insecurity has become a source for nurturing a fluid space of political creation.A decade before Guy Standing wrote The Precariat (2014), the precariat had already named itself. In the Fall of 2004 in London, anti-globalization activists drafted "The Middlesex Declaration of Europe's Precariat," a manifesto that set forth a call for a Pan-European May Day and listed a set of basic demands. . . . Although Standing doesn't acknowledge his intellectual debt to the movement . . . what needs to be done is to rescue its theoretical legacy.

show abstract

“…The current neoliberalization of academia and the obsession with rankings have intensified these processes, with journal articles becoming the standard mode of scientific writing and English-speaking journals the epitome of so-called scientific excellence. This is, however, deployed differently across continental Europe: while for example France has been keeping a vibrant landscape of academic journals in French (many of them open access), "journals of national associations have been publishing more and more in English or even English only (without necessarily changing their name: Tijdschrift voor Economische en Sociale Geografie in the Netherlands, Fennia in Finland, Erdkunde: Archiv für wissenschaftliche Geographie in Germany)" (Mamadouh, 2018).…”

Section: Marginalitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Making the provincial relevant? Embracing the provincialization of continental European geographies

Houssay-Holzschuch

2020

Geogr. Helv.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Abstract. English-speaking hegemony shapes the geography of legitimate knowledge production in our discipline, pushing geographies in other languages and traditions to the periphery. The overall phenomenon has overshadowed these peripheries' diversity and what is at stake within them. I argue that continental European geographies occupy a specific position – they have been provincialized rather than peripheralized. This provincialization should not be lamented. Given our colonial past and Northern privilege, we should instead embrace this provincialization as long overdue and a moral imperative. I subsequently explore a few provincialization-embracing postures – all with merit, none unproblematic – that we can adopt for fieldwork and writing. I then propose practical steps that continental European geographies can take toward a more ethical and cosmopolitan praxis.

show abstract

Politics of precarity: neoliberal academia under austerity measures and authoritarian threat

Cited by 17 publications

References 25 publications

‘PC worlds’: Ethno-nationalist identitarian theories of anti-political correctness

‘PC worlds’: Ethno-nationalist identitarian theories of anti-political correctness

Precarious Writings

Making the provincial relevant? Embracing the provincialization of continental European geographies

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About