Hi Gesa,
I hope this goes well for you. How are things in Glasgow? How is the
found art going?
Cheers, Kathy
Dr Kathleen Mee,
Deputy Director, Centre for Urban and Regional Studies,
Discipline of Geography and Environmental Studies,
School of Environmental and Life Sciences,
University of Newcastle,
Callaghan, NSW, 2308.
Email: [log in to unmask]
Telephone (02) 49 216451
Fax (02) 49 215877
http://www.newcastle.edu.au/school/environ-life-science/our_staff/mee_kathy.html
>>> Gesa Helms <[log in to unmask]> 4/11/2008 5:24 am >>>
Dear list,
please see this CFP for a seminar in Glasgow.
Thanks,
Gesa
---------------------------
Good jobs, nae jobs, bad jobs: Skills, workfare and struggles over work
Alternative Economy Strategy seminar
Friday, 13 February 2009, STUC, Woodlands, Glasgow
Political concerns over work and employment in recent years have firmly
centred around two main issues. Firstly, training policy has
increasingly focussed on questions concerning skills and individual
employability. New skills sets are ostensibly required to fulfil the
needs of a restructured post-industrial and knowledge economy with their
emphasis on soft skills as individual attributes. These have almost
entirely eclipsed a shortage of skilled manual workers and the
diminished institutional capacity to afford training opportunities in
such skills. Secondly, the criminalisation of social policy has seen
existing benefits and welfare systems being replaced by increasingly
punitive and conditional ones. These are geared towards delivering
individuals into work and training with little care about the quality of
such ‘opportunities’. Here, the successive waves of new deals for
unemployed, young people, lone parents, ex-prisoners and now the
restructuring of Incapacity Benefits to the Employment and Support
Allowance are marking a deepening of workfare approaches.
Against this backdrop, an increased level of union activity and
militancy is becoming noticeable, especially in the public sector where
working and training conditions are under attack through privatisation
initiatives and moves to introduce greater market discipline. There has
also been a growing movement for decent wages and conditions for lower
paid workers more generally, evidenced by the living wage campaign in
the UK, an idea itself transplanted from the US.
Critical questions that arise here are the extent to which work,
employment and its absence might give rise to forms of resistance,
agency and progressive struggles in broader processes of restructuring.
These range from individual interventions to collective organisation
with or without traditional unions. More specifically, we are interested
in the following questions: what is there to fight for in the politics
of work? What is meant by a ‘good’ job? To what extent do
market-forms deliver progressive employment opportunities? Where do
concerns for a good life fit within broader employment trends? Here, the
British debates around work-life balance seem like an attempt to
integrate any ‘free’ time into the neoliberal project, and thus need
to be interrogated about the extent to which they offer any potential
for critical engagement. Perhaps it is time to revisit some of the early
critiques of work as reducible to (male) wage labour and to cast the net
wider to understand the interdependency between production/reproduction,
or precisely: work beyond the workplace.
We are inviting papers on themes that relate to the above and the
series of current issues such as: <!--[if !supportLists]-->
- The Scottish Government’s Economic strategy
<!--[endif]--><!--[if !supportLists]-->
- Migration, temporary and permanent immigration
<!--[endif]--><!--[if !supportLists]-->
- Glasgow’s Commonwealth Games, alongside existing large
scale infrastructure projects and the construction sector
<!--[endif]--><!--[if !supportLists]-->
- Politics of work beyond the workplace <!--[endif]--><!--[if
!supportLists]-->
- Alternative constructions of work <!--[endif]--><!--[if
!supportLists]-->
- Ongoing struggles over work, employment, no work in Scotland
and beyond <!--[endif]--><!--[if !supportLists]-->
- Campaigning around a Living Wage and Basic Income
<!--[endif]--><!--[if !supportLists]-->
- Young people, education and training <!--[endif]--><!--[if
!supportLists]-->
- Skills sets, employability: how to challenge the
individualisation of employment opportunities?
- Welfare to workfare: employment, training and incapacity
<!--[endif]-->
The format of the conference will consist of a series of presentations
and panel discussions to provide a forum for critical debate on the
politics of work between academics, practitioners and activists.
The cost for the event will be £35 per delegate; £20 for
students/voluntary sector/low-waged participants. While we have very
limited fund to support travel, we may be able to make some contribution
towards travel costs should presenters not have any other funding.
Please send an abstract to one of the organisers by 20 December 2008:
Andy Cumbers ([log in to unmask]); Gesa Helms
([log in to unmask]); or Geoff Whittam
([log in to unmask])
--
st1\:*{behavior:url(#ieooui) }__________________________________Dr Gesa
Helms
Department of Urban Studies University of Glasgow
25 Bute Gardens Glasgow G12 8RS Scotland
phone +44(0)141 330 4615 (direct)/330 5048 (office)
fax +44(0)141 3304983
email [log in to unmask]
--
st1\:*{behavior:url(#ieooui) }__________________________________Dr Gesa
Helms
Department of Urban Studies University of Glasgow
25 Bute Gardens Glasgow G12 8RS Scotland
phone +44(0)141 330 4615 (direct)/330 5048 (office)
fax +44(0)141 3304983
email [log in to unmask]
|