This article introduces a special section concerned with precariousness and cultural work. Its aim is to bring into dialogue three bodies of ideas — the work of the autonomous Marxist `Italian laboratory'; activist writings about precariousness and precarity; and the emerging empirical scholarship concerned with the distinctive features of cultural work, at a moment when artists, designers and (new) media workers have taken centre stage as a supposed `creative class' of model entrepreneurs. The article is divided into three sections. It starts by introducing the ideas of the autonomous Marxist tradition, highlighting arguments about the autonomy of labour, informational capitalism and the `factory without walls', as well as key concepts such as multitude and immaterial labour. The impact of these ideas and of Operaismo politics more generally on the precarity movement is then considered in the second section, discussing some of the issues that have animated debate both within and outside this movement, wh...

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In the social factory? Immaterial labour, precariousness and cultural work

Paid Work, Parenting, and Housework: Gender Strategies and Myths@@@The Second Shift: Working Parents and the Revolution at Home.

In the last three years a new vocabulary of social class has emerged in Britain. The word “chav,” alongside its various synonyms and regional variations, has become a ubiquitous term of abuse for the white poor. This article explores the emergence of the grotesque and comic figure of the chav within a range of contemporary British media focusing on the role played by disgust reactions in the generation and circulation of the chav figure through popular media. Concentrating on the figure of the female chav, and the vilification of young white working-class mothers, this article argues that the “chav mum” is produced through disgust reactions as an intensely affective figure that embodies historically familiar and contemporary anxieties about female sexuality, reproduction, fertility, and “racial mixing.” The reason Vicky Pollard caught the public imagination is that she embodies with such fearful accuracy of several of the great scourges of contemporary Britain: aggressive all-female gangs of embittered, h...

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“Chav Mum Chav Scum”: Class disgust in contemporary Britain

A Bourdieusian concept of cultural capital is used to investigate the transformations and contestations of migrants’ cultural capital. Research often treated migrants’ cultural capital as reified and ethnically bounded, assuming they bring a set of cultural resources from the country of origin to the country of migration that either fit or do not fit. Critiquing such ‘rucksack approaches’, I argue that migration results in new ways of producing and re-producing (mobilizing, enacting, validating) cultural capital that builds on, rather than simply mirrors, power relations of either the country of origin or the country of migration. Migrants create mechanisms of validation for their cultural capital, negotiating both ethnic majority and migrant institutions and networks. Migration-specific cultural capital (re-)produces intra-migrant differentiations of gender, ethnicity and class, in the process creating modes of validation alternative to national capital.The argument builds on case studies of skilled Turk...

Migrating Cultural Capital: Bourdieu in Migration Studies:

Although the classed dimensions of ‘taste’ have, following Bourdieu, been widely discussed, expressions of disgust at perceived violations of taste have been less frequently considered in relation to class. This paper considers various expressions of disgust at white working-class existence and explores what they might tell us about middle-class identities and identifications. I argue that the narratives of decline and of lack present in such representations can be seen in terms of a long-standing middle-class project of distinguishing itself. Drawing on Bourdieu's critique of Kantian aesthetics, I argue that the ownership of ‘taste’ is understood as reflecting true humanity, and as conferring uniqueness. Ironically, however, this uniqueness is only achieved through an incorporation of collective, classed understandings. The paper calls for a problematization of a normative and normalized middle-class location that is, I argue, given added legitimacy by a perceived decline in the significance of class its...

Disgusted subjects: the making of middle‐class identities

How might Bourdieu's social philosophy and social theory be of use to feminism? And how might it relate to - or possibly even fruitfully reframe - the ongoing problematics and current theoretical issues of feminism? In this volume contributors will use, critique, critically extend and develop Bourdieu's social theory to address some of the most pressing issues of our times. And in so doing they will address both ongoing and key contemporary problematics in contemporary feminist theory. These include the problematic of theorizing social agency (and especially the problematic of social versus performative agency); the issue of the relationship of social movements (and especially women's movements) to social change; the politics of cultural authorization; the theorization of technological forms of embodiment (that is the theorization of embodiment post bounded conceptions of the body); the relations of affect to the political; and the articulation of principles of what might be termed a new feminist materialism which goes beyond Bourdieu's own social logics.

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Feminism After Bourdieu

The article examines how fathers’ attempts to establish intimate relationships with their young children (0–3 years) bring to light tensions between prevailing models of fatherhood and hegemonic masculinity. The result of these contradictory negotiations is a complex redefinition of what it means to be a father today, whereby aspects of both past experiences and new social expectations are accepted and rejected. The article approaches gender as a relational concept and so incorporates the perspective of mothers. By way of biographical-narrative research conducted with Italian new fathers and new mothers, the article shows that some aspects of cultural models of masculinity can obstruct the process of building intimate relationships with young children because such relationships need to be grounded in precisely those aspects that dominant forms of masculinity repress: emotions, affectivity and physical closeness. However, the visceral contradictions between gendered social norms, individual desires and men’s discovery of the pleasures of care can entail the learning of a different embodiment, and so hold the potential for a transformation of intimacy in father–child relationships. The article reflects on whether new fathering practices can change the hierarchical relationships that mark the contemporary social construction of masculinity and femininity.

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0011392112464231

Tensions between fatherhood and the social construction of masculinity in Italy

This collectively written article aims to offer a bird's eye view of the Italian debates about precarity in employment and life, as captured in discussions among participants in a focus group held in Milan in 2006. The chief topics that emerged from this discussion include the feminization of labour, feminist practices and methodologies, representation/participation, and guaranteed income. Here, we give as much space as possible to the diverse voices of participants and their strategies for transformation.

https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1057%2Fpalgrave.fr.9400368.pdf

A Snapshot of Precariousness: Voices, Perspectives, Dialogues:

This paper analyses gender relations in Italy with an emphasis on work–life balance. Despite the fact that the expression ‘double yes’—meaning yes to participation in the labour market and yes to motherhood—has recently become a popular and optimistic thesis in several Italian public debates on women at work, realities are more complex. Discussions on the work–life balance enable us to better understand the full scope of labour relations by considering both the spheres of domestic and paid labour. Quantitative and qualitative data show that the issue of the work–life balance is still a critical question for many women in Italy. We explore the dilemmas young women face in their attempts to balance motherhood and paid work/careers. Drawing on national quantitative data sets and on original in-depth interviews, we contend that the ‘double yes’ solution not only does not take into account the restricted options available to many working women, but it also does not imply any cultural innovation in gender roles.

Sveva Maria Magaraggia

Papers

Feminism After Bourdieu

Tensions between fatherhood and the social construction of masculinity in Italy

A Snapshot of Precariousness: Voices, Perspectives, Dialogues:

“Double yes” but for whom? Gender Innovation in Italian Families

Relazioni Brutali. Genere e violenza nella cultura mediale.