Precarious Labor, South and North: An Introduction

2016 ◽  
Vol 89 ◽  
pp. 5-19 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sarah Mosoetsa ◽  
Joel Stillerman ◽  
Chris Tilly
Keyword(s):  
The United States ◽  
Global Perspective ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Citizenship Status ◽  
Precarious Work ◽  
History Of ◽  
Global North ◽  
Precarious Labor ◽  
North And South

AbstractThis 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.

scholarly journals Precarity North and South: A Southern Critique of Guy Standing

2016 ◽  
Vol 7 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ben Scully
Keyword(s):  
Recent Work ◽  
Global South ◽  
Precarious Work ◽  
New Politics ◽  
Central Focus ◽  
The World ◽  
History Of ◽  
Global North ◽  
North And South

<p>Guy Standing is among the most provocative and influential analysts of the rise of precarious work around the world. His writing is part of a wave of global labour studies that has documented the spread of precarious work throughout the Global North and South. However, this article argues that by treating precarity around the world as a single phenomenon, produced by globalisation, the work of Standing and others obscures the different and much longer history of precarious work in the Global South. This article shows how many of the features that Standing associates with the contemporary “precariat” have long been widespread among Southern workers. This longer history of precarity has important implications for contemporary debates about a new politics of labour, which is a central focus of Standing’s recent work.</p>

“This Other Method”

2017 ◽  
Vol 47 (3) ◽  
pp. 389-422 ◽  
Author(s):  
Carsten Reinhardt
Keyword(s):  
New Technology ◽  
The United States ◽  
Social Processes ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Success Story ◽  
X Ray ◽  
X Ray Crystallography ◽  
History Of ◽  
Reductionist Approach

Nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) spectroscopy has been and continues to be one of the most widely spread research techniques in the physical and life sciences, including medicine, since the technique’s invention in 1945. There is no basis, however, to account for a linear success story. Although NMR was used for decades in biochemistry and molecular biology, it had not contributed substantially to solving the big scientific problems in these areas. The goal set by its early proponents—to find out about the dynamics and functions of large biomolecules—was not successfully tackled until the 1980s, when new technology became available. Much of the pre-1980s history of NMR is arguably a history of the dependence of NMR on a rival method, x-ray crystallography. In this paper I will discuss the epistemic and social processes that made the continuation of NMR as a dependent research method possible, perhaps even inevitable. Following a comparison of x-ray crystallography and NMR in the structural elucidation of large biomolecules, the paper analyzes three examples of the practices of biochemical and biomedical research using NMR from the 1950s to the 1970s in the United States: first is a fundamental, almost reductionist approach with a basis in physics and goals in technology; second, a pragmatic one with a strong bent toward biological problems; and third, a methods-oriented program, involving issues of the former two and proving the most fruitful in the long term. This essay is part of a special issue entitled THE BONDS OF HISTORY edited by Anita Guerrini.

The Politics of Debt and Europe's Relations with the 'South'

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Social Relations ◽  
Essential Feature ◽  
The South ◽  
Political Debates ◽  
Past Injustice ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
Global North ◽  
The Individual ◽  
North And South

While debt has the capacity to sustain social relations by joining together the two parties of a debt relation, it also contains the risk of deteriorating into domination and bargaining. Throughout history, different understandings of debt have therefore gravitated between reciprocity and domination, making it a key concept for understanding the dynamics of both social cohesion and fragmentation. The book considers the social, spatial and temporal meanings of this ambiguity and relates them to contemporary debates over debts between North and South in Europe, which in turn are embedded in a longer global history of North-South relations. The individual chapters discuss how debts incurred in the past are mobilised in political debates in the present. This dynamic is highlighted with regard to regional and global North-South relations. An essential feature in debates on this topic is the difficult question of retribution and possible ways of “paying” – a term that is etymologically connected to “pacification” – for past injustice. Against this backdrop, the book combines a discussion of the multi-layered European and global North-South divide with an effort to retrieve alternatives to the dominant and divisive uses of debt for staking out claims against someone or something. Discovering new and forgotten ways of thinking about debt and North-South relations, the chapters are divided into four sections that focus on 1) debt and social theory, 2) Greece and Germany as Europe’s South and North, 3) the ‘South’ between the local, the regional and the global, and 4) debt and the politics of history.

The National Data Center and the Rise of the Data Double

2018 ◽  
Vol 48 (5) ◽  
pp. 627-636
Author(s):  
Dan Bouk
Keyword(s):  
Life Insurance ◽  
Data Center ◽  
Turning Point ◽  
Personal Data ◽  
The United States ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
National Data ◽  
The Social ◽  
History Of ◽  
American Economy

A mid-1960s proposal to create a National Data Center has long been recognized as a turning point in the history of privacy and surveillance. This article shows that the story of the center also demonstrates how bureaucrats and researchers interested in managing the American economy came to value personal data stored as “data doubles,” especially the cards and files generated to represent individuals within the Social Security bureaucracy. The article argues that the United States welfare state, modeled after corporate life insurance, created vast databanks of data doubles that later became attractive to economic researchers and government planners. This story can be understood as helping to usher in our present age of personal data, one in which data doubles have become not only commodities, but the basis for a new capitalism. This essay is part of a special issue entitled Histories of Data and the Database edited by Soraya de Chadarevian and Theodore M. Porter.

Raising African Voices in the Global Dialogue on Care-Leaving and Emerging Adulthood

2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 6-15 ◽  
Author(s):  
Adrian Du Plessis van Breda ◽  
John Pinkerton
Keyword(s):  
Emerging Adulthood ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
The South ◽  
African Experience ◽  
Global North ◽  
North And South

Globalization of knowledge and scholarship raises the challenges of dialogue between Global North and South. Northern knowledge and voice remain privileged, while writing from the South often goes unread. This is true also in emerging adulthood and care-leaving scholarship. The special issue of Emerging Adulthood titled “Care-Leaving in Africa” is the first collection of essays on care-leaving by African scholars. It presents both care-leaving and emerging adulthood scholars from the Global North a unique opportunity to consider the implications of a rising African voice for global dialogue. This article, coauthored by scholars from North and South, argues in favor of North–South dialogue but highlights several challenges inherent in this, including the indigenizing and thus marginalizing of African experience and scholarship and divergent constructions of key social concepts. The authors argue the need for mutually respectful discourse between North and South and present specific recommendations for fostering such global dialogue.

International approaches to school-based mental health: Intent of the Special Issue

2017 ◽  
Vol 38 (4) ◽  
pp. 339-342 ◽  
Author(s):  
Courtney L. McLaughlin
Keyword(s):  
Mental Health ◽  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Global Perspective ◽  
Health It ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
School Based ◽  
The World

This article provides an overview of the special issue on international approaches to school-based mental health. It introduces the significance of the issues associated with mental health across the world and introduces the reader to the four articles highlighting different aspects of school-based mental health. Across these four articles, information about school-based mental health (SBMH) from the United States, Canada, Norway, Liberia, Chile, and Ireland are represented. The special issue concludes with an article introducing new methodology for examining mental health from a global perspective.

On fragile democracy: Contemporary and historical perspectives—Introduction

2019 ◽  
Vol 17 (4) ◽  
pp. 422-431
Author(s):  
Martin Conway
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Historical Perspectives ◽  
Alternative Means ◽  
History Of ◽  
Long Term Trends

The concept of fragility provides an alternative means of approaching the history of democracy, which has often been seen as the ineluctable consequence of Europe’s social and political modernisation. This is especially so in Scandinavia, as well as in Finland, where the emergence of a particular Nordic model of democracy from the early decades of the twentieth century onwards has often been explained with reference to embedded traditions of local self-government and long-term trends towards social egalitarianism. In contrast, this article emphasises the tensions present within the practices and understandings of democracy in the principal states of Scandinavia during the twentieth century. In doing so, it provides an introduction to the articles that compose this Special Issue, as well as contributing to the wider literature on the fragility of present-day structures of democracy.

scholarly journals Slave Trade and Slavery in Asia—New Perspectives

2020 ◽  
Vol 54 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-14
Author(s):  
Titas Chakraborty ◽  
Matthias van Rossum
Keyword(s):  
Indian Ocean ◽  
Slave Trade ◽  
Global Perspective ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Local Character ◽  
Indonesian Archipelago ◽  
Long Time ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Indian Ocean ◽  
Different Parts

Abstract Recent years have witnessed an expanding body of scholarship indicating the importance of slave trade and slavery in different parts of the Indian Ocean and Indonesian archipelago worlds. This work has not only challenged the dominant focus of slavery scholarship on the Atlantic context but has also encouraged scholars to reassess wider perspectives on Asian and global social histories. This special issue brings together contributions that explore these new horizons. Together, they take up the issue of slavery and mobility in different parts of the Indian Ocean and Indonesian archipelago worlds from a comparative perspective, dealing not only with the existence and patterns of slave trade itself but also with its social and sociopolitical implications. These articles require us to rethink some of the dominant perspectives in a historiography that for a long time has emphasized the unique and local character of “Asian” slaveries, positing dichotomies between slavery in the Atlantic and elsewhere, as well as between Western and non-Western slaveries. The contributions to this special issue challenge several of these existing dichotomies and provide new contributions to the understanding of the role and importance of slavery from a global perspective, as well as to the history of the Indian Ocean and Indonesian archipelago worlds. This introduction reflects on this collective contribution and aims to provide an outline for a relevant research agenda.

scholarly journals Structured medical electives: a concept whose time has come?

2019 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Chris Willott ◽  
Eva Khair ◽  
Roger Worthington ◽  
Katy Daniels ◽  
A. Mark Clarfield
Keyword(s):  
Medical Student ◽  
Medical School ◽  
International Health ◽  
Current Medical ◽  
Global North ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Travel Abroad ◽  
The University ◽  
North And South

Abstract Background Most international electives in which medical students from high-income countries travel abroad are largely unstructured, and can lead to problematic outcomes for students as well as sending and receiving institutions. We analyse the problems of unstructured medical electives and describe the benefits of an elective experience that includes more organisation and oversight from the sending medical school. Results A number of structured elective programmes have been developed, including those at the Medical School for International Health, Israel and the University of Dundee, United Kingdom. These programmes provide significant pre-departure training in global health and the ethical dimensions of electives, support and monitoring during the elective, and post-elective debrief. Crucially, the programmes themselves are developed on the basis of long-term engagement between institutions, and have an element of reciprocity. We further identify two major problems in current medical electives: the different ethical contexts in which electives take place, and the problem of ‘voluntourism’, in which the primary beneficiary of the activity is the medical student, rather than the receiving institution or health system. These two issues should be seen in the light of unequal relations between sending and receiving institutions, which largely mirror unequal relations between the Global North and South. Conclusion We argue that more structured elective programmes could form a useful corrective to some of the problems identified with medical electives. We recommend that medical schools in countries such as the UK strongly consider developing these types of programmes, and if this is not possible, they should seek to further develop their pre-departure training curricula.

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