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.     

Diet and mobility in Middle Archaic Florida: stable isotopic and faunal evidence from the Harris Creek archaeological site (8Vo24), Tick Island

We explore diet and mobility in Middle Archaic Florida using human burials and faunal remains from the Harris Creek archaeological site (8Vo24) on Tick Island. We conducted stable carbon and oxygen isotopic (δ¹³C, δ¹⁸O) analyses of 50 human enamel samples and strontium isotopic (⁸⁷Sr/⁸⁶Sr) analysis of a subset of 10. Most individuals (46/50) subsisted on local freshwater and terrestrial resources, with relatively depleted δ¹³C values (C₃) and δ¹⁸O values matching those of central and north Florida water resources within the St. Johns River valley. Eight of 10 burials have local, within valley ⁸⁷Sr/⁸⁶Sr values. Two human burials yield marine δ¹³C and ⁸⁷Sr/⁸⁶Sr values, which we interpret as evidence for across valley movement from the coast. Another two individuals show depleted δ¹⁸O values, likely obtained from northern rivers. We also identified potential food resources and non-local foods from the Harris Creek faunal assemblage. We found six species with estuarine and marine habitat preferences; two of which, whelk and quahog, indicate that people of Harris Creek traveled to or traded with coastal areas.