Jobseekers in Dubai in the time of COVID-19 (II)
Part Two: New Opportunities, New Stress In the Gulf region, Dubai has been a forerunner in the transformation towards a neoliberal market of skills and hands. Gulf countries…
Tag: Labor
Indian Food Delivery Networks During the COVID-19 Pandemic
Over the past decade, the concept of the gig economy has gained momentum in academic discourse. Often linked to temporary employment created by multinational technological corporations through digital…
The Toil of Waste: Wasting and Redemption in the Global E-Waste Economy
Editorial Note: This post is part of our series highlighting the work of the Anthropology and Environment Society’s 2020 Roy A. Rappaport Prize Finalists. We asked them to outline…
Sanderien Verstappen: Hidden behind toilet rolls: visual landscapes of COVID-19
During the lockdowns of spring 2020, short videos became a popular means of reflecting on new experiences of quarantine and social distancing. Passed around on social media platforms,…
Killing the Workers Who Feed Us
Keeping processing lines running at workers’ expense is not only a sign of our pandemic times. The meat and poultry processing industry has long treated workers as disposable.…
COVID-19 measures and industrial workplaces
The obsession that media has had with small businesses has hidden the most aggressive public health measures are missing the biggest driver of the pandemic: large industrial workplaces.
Nigeria’s COVID-19 waste management policy should include the informal sector
Though Nigeria approved a national solid waste management policy earlier this year, it does not provide a plan to include the large informal sector. An inclusive policy is…
“Pandemic as a portal”: a reflection on COVID-19 and the food-delivery industry
Ana Carolina NunesOregon State University I live on the second floor of an apartment complex. The two big windows in my living room and kitchen give me a…
The Two Singapores: From the Worker’s View by Wahid Al Mamun
“The Two Singapores” is an ongoing interview miniseries run by Somatosphere to interrogate Singapore’s COVID-19 response, in particular in its handling of the explosion of cases among migrant…
The Two Singapores: On The Ground (from Home) by Wahid Al Mamun
“The Two Singapores” is an ongoing interview miniseries run by Somatosphere to interrogate Singapore’s COVID-19 response, in particular in its handling of the explosion of cases among migrant…
Enlisted Laborers of Public Health: overlaps in the work of soldiers in historical perspective by Pamela Maddock
In April, a friend relayed her experience of getting a test for COVID-19 at a drive-through site at a university in Rhode Island, describing “dozens of camouflaged National…
Open Letter to U.S. Senators Ron Wyden & Jeff Merkley by Jena Thoma
Author’s Note: Now, more than ever, we need to reach out to our political representatives in order to enact changes to our healthcare system, employment protections, and federally…
Cues for Ethnography in Pandamning Times: Thinking with Digital Sociality in the Covid-19 Pandemic by Alder Keleman Saxena
Covid-19 has made the world strange. For many, efforts to stall the pandemic have initiated an unprecedented enclosure of our lives within the familiar walls of our homes,…
Platypus Celebrates AAPI Heritage Month
In celebration and recognition of Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month, take a look back at some of our favorite past posts from and about the region.…
“It can be seen” – COVID-19’s Disasters for Workers by Hannah Borenstein
Ethiopia, where I am currently doing dissertation fieldwork, reported its first case of COVID-19 on March 13, 2020. But for runners who work in transnational sport, COVID-19 had…
Who feeds (on) whom? Labour and the porosity of environments and bodies by Victoria Stead
Hannah Landecker writes about the new metabolism as “a model in which food enters the body and in a sense never leaves it, because food transforms the organism’s…
Discard Studies Solidarity Strike
The field of discard studies is united by a critical framework that questions premises of what seems normal or given, what is valued and not valued, and the…
Art, Algorithms, and the Physicality of the Virtual
Star Wars’ legion of fans were rewarded in rewarded in December 2019 with the long-awaited release of Star Wars, The Rise of Skywalker, filled with state-of-the-art computer graphics.…
Myths of the Circular Economy
Discard studies spoke with three leading waste researchers about the biggest myths of the circular economy.
Placing discard studies in Australia
Australian discard studies scholars Catherine Phillips, David Boarder Giles, and Gay Hawkins discuss intellectual traditions, settler colonialism, and the future of the field.
On reproductive work and family, again by Cinzia Greco
Full Surrogacy Now: Feminism Against Family Sophie Lewis Verso, 2019. 224 pages. In the first segment of the 1963 Oscar-winning anthology film Ieri, Oggi e Domani, Sophia Loren…
No insides on the outsides
“The main goal and mission of a content moderator is to clean up the dirt.” — unnamed content moderator in The Cleaners (00:06:20). All systems must rid themselves…
“India’s Gig-work Economy” Roundtable
This roundtable discussion marks the end of our series on India’s Gig-work Economy. In this discussion, we reflect on methods, challenges, inter-subjectivities and possible future directions for…
Choreographies of magic and mess: AusSTS in Melbourne and Darwin
As the presenter encouraged the academics in the room to consider what it means for nanotechnology to sell itself as ‘magic’, boots appeared outside the window behind him.…