Thread by @Wits_SCIS

Officially happening now: #BookLaunch @Wits_SCIS
& #SWOPInstitute
Online panel discussion to celebrate the launch of a new book: Beyond the Wage: Ordinary Work in Diverse Economies.

Our @kelya is currently introducing the launch.

@sociologymadala is introducing the panellists and discussants who will be speaking at the #BookLaunch

@sociologymadala: "The essays in the volume speak to the common interests at @SWOPInstitute and @Wits_SCIS about how men and women are earning their livelihoods across the Global South"

According to @sociologymadala, the volume challenges a teleological view of work in the Global South.

@sociologymadala William Monteith from @QMUL is currently discussing his chapter in the volume. Highlights the importance of reimagining work through talking about ordinary work

William Monteith: "Talk about work in the realm of the everyday".

Monteith argues that resignation is both an active act and an act of submission in the context of broadening our understanding of work.

@HannahJoburg discussing her chapter in the volume which highlights entrepreneurial imaginaries in the urban peripheries of SA

What does being outside of the waged work do to the economic and social life of SA? @HannahJoburg

@HannahJoburg's research which informed her chapter aims to turn current discourses around unemployment in SA on its head

@HannahJoburg: "What informs unemployed youths' participation [or lack thereof] in the formal and informal labour economies?"

Sometimes people operate outside of formal waged work in order to enable life to shape work habits instead of the opposite dynamic which commonly occurs

@HannahJoburg adds that it is important not to romanticise the informal economy

@HannahJoburg's chapter discusses the social, relational and reciprocal dimensions of entrepreneurship as well as the gendered dynamics that inform conversations around autonomy when operated outside of the formal wage labour market

@EFouksman from @SWOPInstitute and @KCL discussing her chapter which is part of a bigger project focused on the forced separation between livelihoods and formal waged labour

@EFouksman's chapter focuses on people's attachment to waged labour and how that underscores resistance to combining non-waged livelihoods and wages outside of the formal labour market

@EFouksman: "A surprising logic was one with a rhetoric of work that is focused on busyness as psychologically positive"

@EFouksman questions optimism around non-commodified forms of work. This labour is not as spontaneous as proponents of this optimism would have us believe.

@thabangsefa1 is now providing a broad overview of the key themes that are discussed in the volume. The first area of focus is around the refusal to work

@thabangsefa1: Would people refuse waged work if they had decent jobs? Are they using the injunction of entrepreneurship to mask their disappointment in the formal waged labour market?

@thabangsefa1: there exists an attachment to waged labour that culminates in the resistance to receiving various social protection measures (e.g. #universalbasicincome)

@thabangsefa1: "To what extents do imaginaries of post-wage economies make sense in contexts such as South Africa and Namibia...what is it that would replace waged work?"

Franco Barchiesi from @OhioState follows @ThabangSefa1 with discussing the key themes and arguments in the volume

Franco Barchiesi: "modernity has not succeeded in defining the human in ways that are inclusive"

Franco Barchiesi emphasises that the book both challenges and invites the reader to challenge dominant narratives around work

The book is also an important reminder of the racialised nature of conceptualising the human as worker

The book also allows us to think about expanded notions of livelihood creation that exist beyond waged labour...it enables progressive imaginations of solidarity and value creation that don't focus on market-value

Franco Barchiesi: The racialised conceptualisation of the worker as human that emerged during slavery continues to exist even under capitalism.

Franco Barchiesi has lauded the volume for putting forward more nuanced understandings of precarity under our current context.

@kelya invites the authors to respond to the discussants points as well as to questions that have been raised by the audience.

@EFouksman: "It is possible to long for something and to refuse it at the same time (on waged labour)"

@HannahJoburg: "entrepreneurialism is not only a piece of language...it is a discourse that has tangible effects"

@HannahJoburg highlights that waged work is not only tied to decent work...it is also tied to ideas around personhood and dignity

William Monteith is currently answering a question from the audience as to whether it is better to problematise waged labour in general or better to problematise surplus value generating labour.

William Monteith: "Waged labour does not have a monopoly on bad work"

Discussants and panellists now have 1-2 minutes to provide closing remarks

Thank you to the panelists and discussants for participating in today's book launch. @Wits_SCIS @SWOPInstitute. You can purchase copies of #BeyondtheWage from the @BristolUni website