This is the second part of a two-part Special Issue which explores the contradictory lives of precarious knowledge workers. It focuses, in particular, on the complex ways in which autonomy, identity and task orientation interact with each other and the deeply ambivalent effects of these interactions. Autonomy and the need for self-representation can represent sources of self-realisation for knowledge workers but may also simultaneously generate multiple and distinctive forms of precariousness. These forms of precariousness go far beyond the simple fact of being self-employed, extending into fields of employment where workers are formally employed as well as impacting all aspects of daily life in knowledge societies. In this collection, guest editors Annalisa Murgia, Lara Maestripieri and Emiliana Armano have brought together theoretical and empirical studies, from a variety of different national and disciplinary perspectives that further our understanding of how knowledge work is sustained by devices of subjectivity which derive their power from being self-constructed as well as providing tools for managing precarious lives. In the process, they shed light on how precariousness is experienced by knowledge workers across the globe.
Contents
The precariousness of knowledge workers (Part 2): forms and critiques
of autonomy and self-representation
by Annalisa Murgia, Lara Maestripieri and Emiliana Armano
The knowledge worker and the projectified self: domesticating and
disciplining creativity
by Yannick Kalff
Citius, Altius, Fortius in a deregulated labour market: narratives of
precarious graduates
by Ana Paula Marques and Diana Vieira
Click to save and return to course: online education, adjunctification
and the disciplining of academic labour
by Robert Ovetz
Situating self-precarisation: cultural production, subjectification and resistance
in kleines postfordistisches Drama’s Kamera Läuft!
by Sarah Charalambides
Precarity, precariousness and software workers: wages, unions and subjectivity
in the Argentinian software and information services sector
by Andrés Rabosto and Mariano Zukerfeld
Work organisation, labour & globalisation 