Turning Passion Into Profit: When Leisure Becomes Work In Modern Roller Derby

Modern roller derby operates as a “by the skater, for the skater” business model, where participants are not paid but must devote a certain amount of time, effort, and money to sustaining their sport and respective organizations. At the same time, while derby is grounded in anti-corporate values, a growing industry has sprouted to support the sport, the larger share of which consists of small business retailers selling gear, apparel, and other accessories. I use the context of modern roller derby to examine the changing natures of work and leisure, specifically how they operate as greedy institutions and emphasizing the lack of boundaries between them. Simply put, what happens when a leisure activity intended to be done “for fun” becomes more like work? I answer the following research questions: How do roller derby participants make sense of their everyday experiences performing paid and unpaid labor for the sport? As derby is currently dominated by women (a rarity within other alternative sports subcultures), how are these experiences gendered? I draw on interviews conducted between 2016-2018 with 51 total participants across two sub-groups: 23 leaders of derby leagues and governing bodies, 23 derby-related entrepreneurs, and 5 who serve in both roles. I find that first, both leaders and entrepreneurs perform their derby labors out of passion for the sport. However, for entrepreneurs, working for derby (and therefore for passion) is precarious work that requires certain societal privileges in order to have this career option in the first place. Second, passion for derby and the ideal worker norm can lead to the expectation that derby participants give all of themselves to the sport, making derby a greedy institution in itself. Leaders experience fatigue, guilt, and obligation as they attempt to carve out non-derby boundaries for themselves. Finally, derby’s foundational values such as autonomy, anti-corporatism, do-it-yourself (DIY), and serving the collective may actually hinder the sport’s sustainability and growth. I conclude that derby and sport in general is a vantage point from which to examine overwork, the speedup of work, the dangers of passion work as exploitative, and the creep of work-like productivity and labor into leisure

there\u27s So Many Fabulous Butts In Derby : The Skating Body In Women\u27s Flat Track Roller Derby

Women\u27s flat track roller derby is a growing niche sport that has gathered much attention from media and academics alike. Previous research has analyzed the sport from a gendered view with limited focus on bodies in the broader sense. I attempt to fill this gap in the literature by asking: How do derby skaters define the derby body? In what ways do skaters resist and/or accommodate conventional bodily norms and those within derby? Utilizing an ethnographic repertoire of observation, interviews, and autoethnography, I examine the experiences of women derby skaters for a local flat track league located in the Midwest. Drawing from literature on gender and sport, resistance, and embodiment, I argue that skaters engage with a series of tensions and contradictions between societal norms and derby values, specifically those related to body size, athleticism, public versus private spaces, and the role of non-(born) women in the sport

Pacemakers, Fitbits, and the Fourth Amendment: Privacy Implications for Medical Implants and Wearable Technology

Article published in the Michigan State Law Review

Report of Special Committee on Draft Constitution and By-laws for proposed Institute of Accountants in the United States of America

As members of the Committee appointed by the President to consider the construction and phraseology of the draft Constitution and By-Laws for the proposed Institute of Accountants in the United States which has been furnished to each member of the Society by the American Association of Public Accountants, we now wish to submit our report: We have devoted a great deal of time and careful study to all phases of the matter and, in order to give effect to such changes of phraseology as we think might more clearly express the principles to be incorporated in the Constitution and By-Laws and to call attention to such matters of fundamental importance in the draft Constitution and By-Laws as we think might be altered with advantage to the profession at large, we have prepared and attach hereto, in juxta-position with the original draft, an amended draft, Constitution and By-Laws, together with notations relating to the differences so as to permit your members easily to grasp the suggested changes

Confinement resonances in photoionization of endohedral atoms: a myth or reality?

We demonstrate that the structure of confinement resonances in the photoionization cross section of an endohedral atom is very sensitive to the mean displacement of the atom from the cage center. The resonances are strongly suppressed if 2 exceeds the photoelectron half-wavelength. We explain the results of recent experiments which contradict the earlier theoretical predictions on the existence of confinement resonances in particular endohedral systems.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figures, RevTe

Stay at school or start working? -Optimal timing of leaving school under uncertainty and irreversibility

Abstract At any moment a student may decide to leave school and enter the labor market, or stay in the education system. The time of departure from school determines their level of academic achievement and formal qualification. Therefore, the major purpose of this paper is to derive a timing rule for leaving school and thus answer the question: How long should I go to school? To solve this problem we apply the real option approach. Real option theory offers a different perspective of the human capital investment decision under uncertainty and irreversibility. As future income is uncertain, we model future earnings as a continuous stochastic process. We use dynamic programming techniques to derive an income threshold at which a student should leave school irreversibly, and we determine the expected optimal duration of education. Unlike other approaches using real option theory we are able to provide a full analytical discussion of various determinants affecting the timing of the decision to start work. Among other things, we find that a rising income risk increases the duration of education. With a faster growth of expected individual income during working life the duration of schooling will decrease leading to less education. An increase in the no-education wage level will reduce human capital investments. Rising marginal rewards for a year of schooling (in terms of a rising differential in income level) will encourage more investment in human capital. Increasing education costs may also increase human capital investment as long as the marginal reward for a year of schooling is sufficiently high. However, allowing for discontinuities due to various cost and income profiles of formal qualification levels, high costs of schooling may lead to an achievable maximum net wealth of human capital even for lower qualification. JEL classifications: J24, I2, D8 keywords: human capital theory, uncertainty, irreversibility, optimal stopping 1 first page without authors Stay at school or start working? -Optimal timing of leaving school under uncertainty and irreversibility Abstract: At any moment a student may decide to leave school and enter the labor market, or stay in the education system. The time of departure from school determines their level of academic achievement and formal qualification. Therefore, the major purpose of this paper is to derive a timing rule for leaving school and thus answer the question: How long should I go to school? To solve this problem we apply the real option approach. Real option theory offers a different perspective of the human capital investment decision under uncertainty and irreversibility. As future income is uncertain, we model future earnings as a continuous stochastic process. We use dynamic programming techniques to derive an income threshold at which a student should leave school irreversibly, and we determine the expected optimal duration of education. Unlike other approaches using real option theory we are able to provide a full analytical discussion of various determinants affecting the timing of the decision to start work. Among other things, we find that a rising income risk increases the duration of education. With a faster growth of expected individual income during working life the duration of schooling will decrease leading to less education. An increase in the no-education wage level will reduce human capital investments. Rising marginal rewards for a year of schooling (in terms of a rising differential in income level) will encourage more investment in human capital. Increasing education costs may also increase human capital investment as long as the marginal reward for a year of schooling is sufficiently high. However, allowing for discontinuities due to various cost and income profiles of formal qualification levels, high costs of schooling may lead to an achievable maximum net wealth of human capital even for lower qualification