A ‘Post-Work’ World:Geographical Engagements with the Future of Work

This article reviews geographical research on labour market changes that pose a challenge to ‘work’ as a compelling category of analysis. Drawing inspiration from feminist scholarship that has sought to develop a frame for thinking about the concept of work so that other activities outside employment are recognised, it considers what everyday practices of work, including domestic and reproductive labour, can teach us about the realities and futures of contemporary capitalism. While ‘work’ has long served as a presumed norm or telos of ‘development’, this article considers the prospect of the ‘end of work’ and of a specific type of accompanying capitalist society. It outlines the challenges for policy making in bringing forth a ‘post-work’ world without cementing social and economic inequality

Gender equality: adrift in the Brexit backwash

What is at stake for gender equality as we approach Brexit? Over the years, European legislation has provided a number of important standards based on the principle of gender equality. In this blog, Julie MacLeavy (University of Bristol) writes that leaving the EU constitutes a risk to gender equality as the UK has no comparable influential institutions to those furthering equality at the European level

New state spatialities: perspectives on state, space and scalar geographies

New state spatialities: perspectives on state, space and scalar geographie

Leave-voting men, Brexit and the 'crisis of masculinity'

Brexit may have been driven by those 'left behind' by globalisation, automation, the evolution of manufacturing, and the increased inequality of both income and wealth. Some have suggested that this feeling of being 'left behind' is exacerbated for working-class white men, in declining industrial and disadvantaged areas in particular. Julie MacLeavy (University of Bristol) draws on research with Leave voters in Sunderland to argue that in this constituency many men do see their opportunities for economic advancement and achievement fading away, and identified that as a key motivation for voting Leave. But rather than constituting a self-evident ‘crisis of masculinity’, the roles played by gender conceptions in the Brexit vote point to a much broader and more complex series of questions

Men at work? Debating shifting gender divisions of care

In response to four commentaries on our paper ‘Regendering care in the aftermath of recession?’, we extend our discussion of the ongoing knowledge gap that prevails around shifting patterns of male work/care. Recognizing the spatial limits of extant theories of male primary caregiving, we discuss first the need to attend to the variegated landscapes of male caregiving across the globe. Likewise, the theoretical stakes of expanding the focus of ‘mainstream’ analysis to take account of the situated experiences and knowledges of men and women in countries of the global South. We then consider the subjects of our research inquiry (the ‘who’ of contemporary fathering) and how different definitions of male primary caregivers may reveal or conceal patterns and shifts in male caregiving practices. Lastly we consider questions of scale and research methodology. Although our paper employs a national-level analysis, we fully endorse the use of alternative scalar lenses and underline the need to analyse male care within the context of multiscalar and interacting sites of normative change: from nation state, to community, to home, to the body. </jats:p