Thursday, 12 March 2020

Reconceptualising Solidarity in the Social Factory: Cultural Work between Economic Needs and Political Desires

an article by Anke Strauß (Zeppelin University, Germany) and Alexander Fleischmann (WU Vienna University of Economics and Business, Austria) published in Work, Employment and Society VBolume 34 Issue 1 (February 2020)

Abstract

This article reconceptualises work-based solidarity as political action that is distinct from, yet interlinked with, a socio-economic mode of activity.

To extend existing relational approaches to work, this article reads a case study of a cultural initiative through Hannah Arendt’s notions of labour, work and (political) action. With the latter being a form of engagement marked by plurality – the co-presence of equality and difference – the analysis shows how work-based solidarity as political activity is a temporary and precarious phenomenon.

It necessitates constant engagement of various material and discursive elements to create its conditions.

This article also shows how work-based solidarity is enabled through particular arrangements of activities stretching over both the socio-economic and the political sphere in a way that maintains the political mode of work distinct from socio-economic reasoning without ignoring its economic necessities.

Full text (PDF 17pp)

Labels:
aesthetics, cultural_work, equality, Hannah_Arendt, plurality, politics, solidarity, TSOL, work,


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