Outside the Wage: Seeing Politics and Possibilities with Critical Comparisons

Emerging debates on the contemporary reconfigurations of work question previous understandings of the relationships among and between waged, unwaged, and reproductive labour, situated processes of value formation and/or enclosure, and the constitution and limits of contemporary capitalism. Taking Cindi Katz's notion of countertopographies and Gillian Hart's notion of relational comparison as inspirations, this Symposium draws attention to new and existing conceptual frames and modes of analysis to situate contemporary permutations of work within the shifting dynamics of uneven development in specific state, local, and institutional contexts. This Introduction summarises the interrelated and overlapping contributions that papers in this Symposium offer methodologically, analytically, and politically. The open-ended aspiration that emerges from these contributions is that close attention to heterogeneous formations of work outside the wage might help to multiply forms of vigilance and critical praxis necessary to resist the co-optation and enclosure of people's creative energies, and move toward realising the latent liberatory potentials that several of the contributions suggest.     

“You don't go there”: Spatial Strategies of Stigma Negotiation in a Post-Industrial Town

This paper draws on a multimethod ethnographic study, conducted between 2016 and 2017 in Shirebrook, Derbyshire, England—a small and relatively isolated deindustrialising colliery town—examining how residents negotiate living in stigmatised territory. In doing so, microspatial strategies of distancing, avoidance, and deflection are illustrated, revealing how residents reassign and deepen stigma in particular locations within a stigmatised territory. This highlights the relationship between social and physical space, and while spatial strategies of negotiation do not mitigate stigma, they do (re)produce internal social hierarchies within a place that is homogenised from the outside through disparaging narratives. A key contribution reveals the significance of the racialised production of space in shaping how territorial stigma is negotiated within this distinct socio-spatial location. Residents use strategies to redirect the stigma toward those seen as out of place and draw attention away from sticky sites of racialised urban stigma towards symbols of unspoilt rural Englishness.     

REVIEW

The Empty Place: Poetry, Space and Being Among the Foi of Papua New Guinea. By James F. Weiner. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. 1991. Pp. 218. Price $US14.95.     

A NOTE ON REAL WAGE RIGIDITY AND STATE UNEMPLOYMENT RATES*

ABSTRACT This paper extends the research of Hyclak and Johnes (1989) in analyzing the relationship between the rigidity in real wages and state unemployment rates. It presents evidence contrary to the empirical findings of Hyclak and Johnes in that measures of real wage rigidity are not robust over time in explaining changes in state unemployment rates. Moreover, an alternative proxy accounting for divergent growth patterns across states does not significantly affect changes in state unemployment rates.     

Rethinking “Resistant Accommodation”: Toward an Archaeology of African-American Lives in Southern New England, 1638–1800

Scholarship concerning the lives of enslaved African Americans in southern New England has shifted rapidly from outdated models of acculturation to conflict-driven models of domination and resistance. With the assumption of conflict as the outcome of all power relations, both economic production and historical contextuality have been overlooked, with slavery systems in New England simply equated with other regions of the Atlantic world, rather than compared and contrasted. This essay reconsiders contests over power in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century New England. Drawing on the work of Greene (1966), Piersen (1988), and others, I argue that the system of slavery in the region may represent an anomalous case in terms of the means of control or the means of resistance. By examining demographic patterns, economic production, and agricultural landscapes in Rhode Island's East Bay, I argue that there may be more to be learned from William D. Piersen's (1988, p. 143) concept of resistant accommodation as a middle ground between the two extremes of the theoretical spectrum. The essay concludes with suggestions for further research on the archaeology of African-American lives in the region.     

Reducing Toxic Chemical Releases and Transfers: Explaining Outcomes for a Voluntary Program

Relatively little is known about the possibilities and limitations of voluntary public programs. The so-called 33/50 Program for reducing releases of certain toxic chemicals into the environment provides a useful instance for examination. In an investigation of toxics-reduction outcomes, with states as units of analysis, economic and policy variables help to explain the results. In particular, channels and approaches used In communicating policy intentions are related to outcomes. Voluntary programs can make a difference, but the details of execution, including the extent and nature of field efforts, influence outcomes.     

New Technologies,Employment and Labour Markets in Developing Countries

This article is concerned with the impact of new technologies - especially, but not entirely, those that are related to microelectronics - on employment and labour markets in developing countries. Taking the form of a literature survey it looks at those impacts that have already occurred as well as effects that seem likely to occur in the future. Both sets of issues are addressed within an analytical framework that views the impact of technical change as the end result of a process which begins with the generation and proceeds via the diffusion of new technologies. The need for so broad an approach is shown to stem from the multiplicity of ways in which the generation and diffusion of new technologies influence each other and condition the ultimate impact of these technologies on employment and labour markets. Because many such mechanisms have not yet received much attention in the literature, there appears to be substantial scope for further research.