The Cultural Value of Work

Livelihoods and Migration in the World's Economies

David Griffith author

Format:Hardback

Publisher:Cambridge University Press

Published:28th Jul '22

Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back

The Cultural Value of Work cover

Focusing on migrant workers, this book explores the different forms work takes, in the context of economic precarity and fragmentation.

With increasing economic precarity and poor employment prospects around the world, workers have pioneered constellations of livelihoods that draw on multiple sources and kinds of work. This book profiles these workers across space and time as they struggle to survive and, in the process, offer superior alternatives to conventional work.Traditional wage labor has experienced a significant decline in industrialized countries over the past few decades. The spread of temporary work, the proliferation of subcontracting arrangements, the use of artificial intelligence (AI), the shipment of manufacturing jobs overseas, and the employment of foreign contract workers are among the key factors driving this decline. The result is a rise of labor insecurity and fragmentation among increasingly diverse forms of flexible labor arrangements. This book examines this important transformation by considering the impact of foreign contract labor on temporary migrant workers in their places of employment and home communities. It assesses work as a source of value in capitalist, reproductive, domestic, and cultural economics, and argues for a new, work-centric field of economics. Rich in examples, it is a sophisticated anthropological appreciation of the many forms that work can take and what these forms mean for the creation of value in people's lives.

ISBN: 9781009100281

Dimensions: 235mm x 152mm x 20mm

Weight: 530g

275 pages