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<TITLE>Reminder: GCS Seminar tomorrow </TITLE>
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<FONT FACE="Verdana, Helvetica, Arial"><SPAN STYLE='font-size:12.0px'>The next Department of Gender and Cultural Studies Seminar is on tomorrow from 2pm-4pm. All welcome.<BR>
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<B>Theme:</B> Class and gender in the margins of the ‘new’ economy<BR>
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<B>The Pains of Precarious Labour: Work, Identity and Narratives of Aspiration in the 'New Economy'<BR>
George Morgan (UWS)<BR>
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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<BR>
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. <BR>
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<I>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.<BR>
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“The guys in there just expect to be laid”: Place, drinking cultures and young women<BR>
Gordon Waitt, Loretta Jesspon and Andrew Gorman-Murray (Wollongong)<BR>
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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 ‘going out on the town’. 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.<BR>
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<I>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.<BR>
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<B>Location:<BR>
</B>All seminars are held in the New Law School Annexe, Seminar Room 442, on Eastern Avenue. <BR>
This is the triangular glass building half way along on your right if entering campus from City Road Main Gate. <BR>
See the map here: <FONT COLOR="#0000FF"><U><a href="http://www.law.usyd.edu.au/about/campus.shtml">http://www.law.usyd.edu.au/about/campus.shtml</a></U></FONT> <<FONT COLOR="#0000FF"><U><a href="http://www.law.usyd.edu.au/about/campus.shtml">http://www.law.usyd.edu.au/about/campus.shtml</a></U></FONT>> <BR>
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Drinks afterwards at Manning Bar.<BR>
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Dr Melissa Gregg<BR>
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Lecturer in Gender and Cultural Studies<BR>
School of Philosophical and Historical Inquiry<BR>
Quadrangle Building A14<BR>
University of Sydney NSW 2006<BR>
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p 02 9351 3657 | m 0408 599 359 | e mel.gregg@usyd.edu.au<BR>
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<a href="http://www.arts.usyd.edu.au/departs/gcs/staff/profiles/mgregg.shtml">http://www.arts.usyd.edu.au/departs/gcs/staff/profiles/mgregg.shtml</a><BR>
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Enrol in our NEW Master of Cultural Studies: <a href="http://www.arts.usyd.edu.au/departs/gcs/postgrad/coursework.shtml">http://www.arts.usyd.edu.au/departs/gcs/postgrad/coursework.shtml</a><BR>
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