Creative placemaking and the cultural projectariat: artistic work in the wake of Hull City of Culture 2017

Cultural work attracts much sociological interest and is often seen as typifying “precarity”. However, this scholarship rarely examines how “placemaking” policy interventions affect the concrete conditions of cultural work. We study a major recent public/private policy intervention in the United Kingdom: Hull City of Culture 2017. This intervention embodied a multifaceted set of policy logics; combining the desire to boost arts participation, with a market-facing imperative to bolster the city’s “brand”. We examine what happened to the city’s “cultural projectariat” (meaning those workers whose career depends on assembling sequences of discrete, time-limited funded cultural projects) during this event. The influx of funds created opportunities for good quality work, but specific sources of insecurity persisted and in certain respects intensified: including the need for significant unpaid work, and permanent competition for resources. City of Culture’s nature as a market-oriented “placemaking” intervention limits its capacity to ameliorate the conditions of cultural work, which has to be conceived as a policy end in itself if conditions of the cultural projectariat are to be improved

The values of liberté, égalité, fraternité fifty years on: why the 'free speech' debate makes it even less likely that Mai '68 could happen in Britain now than it was then

In May 1968 there was a strong sense of left-wing camaraderie that drew many French university students into collaboration with the workers’ unions to rise up against de Gaulle’s government. It is highly unlikely that British campuses could be gripped by these values of solidarity and shared agency in a common cause: what can that tell us about Britain? In Britain there are assumptions on the part of many young adults that we are free, equal and fraternal. The parallel digital world that they inhabit so comfortably appears to encourage and facilitate consumer behaviour and freedom of expression: it seems possible to buy and write online almost exactly what you like without consequences. Yet against a backdrop of crass populist discourse there are urgent issues regarding ethical behaviour: online and offline use of language is sharply racialised and gendered. People of colour and women of all ages are frequently attacked. Hate speech is poorly controlled and legal restraints are lagging behind the global digital empires. In addition, on campus the British government is intervening much more than ever before, which makes some students less free, less equal and less fraternal than others. Free speech is being constrained. Populism is on the rise, framed by political alienation. Finally, precarity affects the young in their responses to university: is it worth incurring the debt of high fees? The philosophy of Ricoeur and Lorey show how to interrogate dominant discourses and attempt a better world

In, Against and Beyond Precarity: Work in Insecure Times

In this Foreword to the special issue ‘In, Against and Beyond Precarity’ the guest editors take stock of the existing literature on precarity, highlighting the strengths and limitations of using this concept as an analytical tool for examining the world of work. Concluding that the overstretched nature of concept has diluted its political effectiveness, the editors suggest instead a focus on precarization as a process, drawing from perspectives that focus on the objective conditions, as well as subjective and heterogeneous experiences and perceptions of insecure employment. Framed in this way, they present a summary of the contributions to the special issue spanning a range of countries and organizational contexts, identifying key drivers, patterns and forms of precarization. These are conceptualized as implicit, explicit, productive and citizenship precarization. These forms and patterns indicate the need to address precariousness in the realm of social reproduction and post-wage politics, while holding these in tension with conflicts at the point of production. Finally, the guest editors argue for a dramatic re-think of current forms of state and non-state social protections as responses to the precarization of work and employment across countries in both the Global ‘North’ and ‘South’

Extreme photometric and polarimetric variability of blazar S4 0954+65 at its maximum optical and γ-ray brightness levels

In 2022 the BL Lac object S4 0954+65 underwent a major variability phase, reaching its historical maximum brightness in the optical and γ -ray bands. We present optical photometric and polarimetric data acquired by the Whole Earth Blazar Telescope (WEBT) Collaboration from 2022 April 6 to July 6. Many episodes of unprecedented fast variability were detected, implying an upper limit to the size of the emitting region as low as 10−4 parsec. The WEBT data show rapid variability in both the degree and angle of polarization. We analyse different models to explain the polarization behaviour in the framework of a twisting jet model, which assumes that the long-term trend of the flux is produced by variations in the emitting region viewing angle. All the models can reproduce the average trend of the polarization degree, and can account for its general anticorrelation with the flux, but the dispersion of the data requires the presence of intrinsic mechanisms, such as turbulence, shocks, or magnetic reconnection. The WEBT optical data are compared to γ -ray data from the Fermi satellite. These are analysed with both fixed and adaptive binning procedures. We show that the strong correlation between optical and γ -ray data without measurable delay assumes different slopes in faint and high brightness states, and this is compatible with a scenario where in faint states we mainly see the imprint of the geometrical effects, while in bright states the synchrotron self-Compton process dominates

Negotiating colonial violence: spaces of precarisation in Palestine

This paper examines the ways in which colonial violence is transformed and spatialised into negotiated precarities at the occupied Palestine. The notion of “negotiated precarity” is developed herein, to refer to two aspects in particular. First, to spatial compartmentalisation, which shows how the settler colonial power operates by creating precarious administrative zones, where the life of the colonised becomes prone to several flexible, negotiated uses of power. Second, negotiated precarity is used to refer to the conduct of the colonised that counters, transforms, redirects, cancels or hampers the colonial spatialisations of power. By focusing on the “negotiated precarities” in a singular West Bank village, I exemplify how the colonial governing is entwined with spatial compartments that enable several informal, indirect and ad hoc techniques of colonial violence, but also how the colonial governing is constantly mobilised, negotiated, countered and redirected in/through the everyday Palestinian spaces.publishedVersionPeer reviewe

Contextualizing students' alcohol use perceptions and practices within French culture: an analysis of gender and drinking among sport-science college students

Although research has examined alcohol consumption and sport in a variety of contexts, there is a paucity of research on gender and gender dynamics among French college students. The present study addresses this gap in the literature by examining alcohol use practices by men and women among a non-probability sample of French sport science students from five different universities in Northern France. We utilized both survey data (N = 534) and in-depth qualitative interviews (n = 16) to provide empirical and theoretical insight into a relatively ubiquitous health concern: the culture of intoxication. Qualitative data were based on students’ perceptions of their own alcohol use; analysis were framed by theoretical conceptions of gender. Survey results indicate gender differences in alcohol consumption wherein men reported a substantially higher frequency and quantity of alcohol use compared to their female peers. Qualitative findings confirm that male privilege and women’s concern for safety, masculine embodiment via alcohol use, gendering of alcohol type, and gender conformity pressures shape gender disparities in alcohol use behavior. Our findings also suggest that health education policy and educational programs focused on alcohol-related health risks need to be designed to take into account gender category and gender orientation