Abstract
The editors of this volume have succeeded in presenting a robust collection of chapters, combining theoretical analysis with a wealth of lived accounts. The core argument advanced rests on the pressing need to accept activities that fall outside the wage relationship – what this book refers to as ‘ordinary work’ – which are not only valid but necessary in our contemporary precarity-laden times.
The book begins by demonstrating that regardless of whether we cast our gaze on countries already in an advanced state of capitalism, or if we turn to countries where it is now expanding, the problem of contemporary work has the same ‘cultural logic’ (p. 26): the human has chosen to pose itself as an economic creature. A creature whose productive activity is valued, only if it originates exclusively in state-defined wage labour. Anything else is invisible, or as evidenced in the example of the UK in which conservative neoliberalism has successfully linked citizenship to work, morally condemnable.
The state thus proceeds to shape the moral standards of society around work. Work becomes a responsibility towards one’s fellow citizens. This rendering of ‘non-work as indolence’ (p. 46), combined with the radical global de-industrialisation, leads to a glaring paradox. As austerity blooms, and everything is modelled on waged labour that is either scarce or underpaid, our societies emerge as bipolar. On the one pole, to be a wage labourer, or occupied exclusively in the search for wage labour, or even engaged in the semblance of wage labour (as in the example of refugee camp labour presented), leaves one accepted but destitute. On the other pole, in the domain of hustling, social kitchens, volunteering, and unpaid domestic labour, one finds life beyond mere survival, but one is also rendered non-existent in terms of citizenship. What is arresting is that these two worlds meld into one another. The hustler employs the language and methods of the entrepreneur. The wage becomes street credit and vice versa. Those that manage to manipulate the system and walk on both sides are those that navigate the current work landscape most successfully.
Perhaps the only differentiation between the formal and informal spheres of work rests with ethics. If in the formal sphere we find exclusion, rules and discrimination, the informal sphere is characterised by a non-judgemental, respectful form of camaraderie. People do what has to be done, to ‘make work’ (p. 27) in a society that has failed. To exist informally is both an act of resistance and a strategy of survival.
There is a strong focus on the difficulties that come with choosing to exist outside wage labour. Turning to India, the seamless oscillation between domestic and paid work marks a disparity between the aspiration to assert one’s distinct identity, and hollow work titles. Wage labour in this context is seen as a marker of escaping class constraints but is also loaded with responsibilities towards one’s immediate family. Nevertheless, the option to quit emerges as power. A privilege that, as documented in the case of Cambodian brick-kiln workers, is becoming increasingly rare. Extreme perpetual debt makes unfree labour in Cambodia an attractive option. The example of South Africa, argues that the state comes to rely on the informal sector, making it part and parcel of the neoliberal project. The human need for autonomy and control may at some point emerge as more important than money, as in the case of Catalonian alternative work arrangements in co-operatives. Yet, even informal non-capitalist economies are also erected ‘on the basis of work’ (p. 153). To have no master, for both Catalans or the rickshaw riders of Bangladesh, may appear as morally superior, yet as long as the notion of work is present, it only severs the work–life divide more efficiently.
Where this volume shines in terms of originality is in the revelation of how little has been achieved in terms of post-work theory when it comes to examining the tangible social substrate of work. The imagery of a post-work world has been thoroughly argued by academia, but few have given attention to the doxa our social is built upon. Outside the confines of theory, people do not rally against the wage, but insufficient wages. The street vendor in the Brazilian favelas will vote against her class, on the basis of work. The utterly dispossessed in Namibia insist that ‘money must come from work’ (p. 278). For as much as initiatives ‘by and for those outside the wage’ (p. 258) form havens in the maelstrom that the absent social state has created, it is from the wage that our labour-forged subjectivities draw their worth. And it is the gestation of these subjectivities that we need to scrutinise. A highly recommended arresting text, that will usher its readers into new modes of thought.
