[csaa-forum] Reminder: GCS Seminar tomorrow

[Melissa Gregg]

The next Department of Gender and Cultural Studies Seminar is on tomorrow
from 2pm-4pm. All welcome.

Theme: Class and gender in the margins of the Œnew¹ economy

The Pains of Precarious Labour: Work, Identity and Narratives of Aspiration
in the 'New Economy'
George Morgan (UWS)

Paid work is becoming increasingly precarious as young people face the
prospect of working lives fragmented by the effects of technological change,
economic restructuring and the erosion of industrial rights.  In this
context, workers are being told to take control of their working lives, to
embrace the condition of vocational restlessness, become entrepreneurial and
opportunistic rather than always seeking occupational stability. The
prophets of the new economy reify qualities
like flexibility, creativity and reflexivity and encourage the development
of ambition without fixed direction or goal. This paper will explore the
corrosive effects of precariousness. Drawing on personal narrative interview
data, it will argue that the challenges of the new economy are less likely
to be embraced by those from disadvantaged backgrounds than by the middle
class. This is partly for economic reasons but also because they are less
inclined to view their skills and experiences in abstract/ transferable
terms or to believe that, amdist the churning uncertainties of working life,
they are acquiring any sense of agency or vocational momentum.

George Morgan is a Senior Lecturer at the University of Western Sydney. He
is conducting a project under an ARC Discovery Grant entitled: The
Just-in-Time Self: Young Men, Skill and Narratives of Aspiration in the New
Economy. His books include Unsettled Places: Aboriginal People and
Urbanisation in New South Wales (Wakefield Press, 2006) Outrageous! Moral
Panics in Australia (ACYS Press, 2007) - the latter co-edited with Scott
Poynting.

³The guys in there just expect to be laid²: Place, drinking cultures and
young women
Gordon Waitt, Loretta Jesspon and Andrew Gorman-Murray (Wollongong)

This paper extends a growing research agenda on drinking cultures in
pubs/clubs drawing on materials derived from a mixed methods approach
deployed with young, white, single Australian women in Wollongong,
Australia. The concept of the spatially-situated subjectivity is deployed to
examine drinking cultures as the outcome of embodied and gendered
socio-spatial practices. Drawing on narrative analysis our research suggests
the paradoxical qualities for women Œgoing out on the town¹. Where and why
women drink is argued to be an outcome of the negotiations, transgressions
and accommodations as they reconcile a sense of self within the gendered and
heterosexed socio-spatial practice of particular pubs. In practical terms,
this means that research into drinking cultures needs to learn from the
lived and embodied experience of drinking in particular places in order to
provide effective advice for ameliorating risks of regular intoxication.

Gordon Waitt, Associate Professor of geography, University of Wollongong,
studies the spatial dynamics of social inequalities. He is a specialist in
geographies of sexuality, gender and tourism.

Location:
All seminars are held in the New Law School Annexe, Seminar Room 442, on
Eastern Avenue. 
This is the triangular glass building half way along on your right if
entering campus from City Road Main Gate.
See the map here: http://www.law.usyd.edu.au/about/campus.shtml
<http://www.law.usyd.edu.au/about/campus.shtml>

Drinks afterwards at Manning Bar.


Dr Melissa Gregg

Lecturer in Gender and Cultural Studies
School of Philosophical and Historical Inquiry
Quadrangle Building A14
University of Sydney NSW 2006

p 02 9351 3657 | m 0408 599 359 | e mel.gregg at usyd.edu.au

http://www.arts.usyd.edu.au/departs/gcs/staff/profiles/mgregg.shtml

Enrol in our NEW Master of Cultural Studies:
http://www.arts.usyd.edu.au/departs/gcs/postgrad/coursework.shtml



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