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The conditions for after Work: Financialization and informalization in posttransition South Africa

Publication ,  Journal Article
Makhulu, AM
Published in: PMLA
October 1, 2012

IN A TIME OF FINANCIAL CRISIS, THE AMOUNT OF TALK ABOUT THE Nature and challenges of employment-what Kathi Weeks aptly describes as "the problem with work" in her eponymous book (2011)-should hardly be surprising. While work is in short supply in some parts of the world, in others employment has intensified and necessarily become increasingly exploitative; in still other places work, in the sense of formal wage employment, has rarely if ever been a given. Addressing these structural transformations in the global labor market, theorists have tried to develop a new vocabulary to describe the precariousness of work: the emergence of a class of workers made up of those destined to remain poor because of underemployment or depressed wages and those subject to intermittent and even permanent unemployment. This new "contingent class," though perhaps analogous to Karl Marx's lumpen proletariat (Eighteenth Brumaire), has arisen from different conditions.

Duke Scholars

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Published In

PMLA

DOI

ISSN

0030-8129

Publication Date

October 1, 2012

Volume

127

Issue

4

Start / End Page

782 / 799

Related Subject Headings

  • Literary Studies
  • 4705 Literary studies
  • 4703 Language studies
  • 2005 Literary Studies
  • 2004 Linguistics
  • 2003 Language Studies
 

Citation

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MLA
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Makhulu, A. M. (2012). The conditions for after Work: Financialization and informalization in posttransition South Africa. PMLA, 127(4), 782–799. https://doi.org/10.1632/pmla.2012.127.4.782
Makhulu, A. M. “The conditions for after Work: Financialization and informalization in posttransition South Africa.” PMLA 127, no. 4 (October 1, 2012): 782–99. https://doi.org/10.1632/pmla.2012.127.4.782.
Makhulu, A. M. “The conditions for after Work: Financialization and informalization in posttransition South Africa.” PMLA, vol. 127, no. 4, Oct. 2012, pp. 782–99. Scopus, doi:10.1632/pmla.2012.127.4.782.

Published In

PMLA

DOI

ISSN

0030-8129

Publication Date

October 1, 2012

Volume

127

Issue

4

Start / End Page

782 / 799

Related Subject Headings

  • Literary Studies
  • 4705 Literary studies
  • 4703 Language studies
  • 2005 Literary Studies
  • 2004 Linguistics
  • 2003 Language Studies