Cruel Optimism and Precarious Employment: The Crisis Ordinariness of Academic Work

Bone, Kate

doi:10.1007/s10551-020-04605-2

Cited by 24 publications

(28 citation statements)

References 61 publications

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“…However, the corporatization of academia, its misalignment to social issues, and the question of its relevance have been persisting questions in my mind. I still am hopeful, and I remain invested in our role as academics in changing organizational structures that require us to live in a state of crisis ordinariness (Berlant, 2011; Bone, 2021).…”

Section: ‘Tread Lightly’: the 10 Km Runmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The pandemic exposed the fragility of academic life and the instability of employment practices in academia (Mavin & Yusupova, 2020). With precarious employment on the rise in academia, early-career academics are required to negotiate between ideals of having a secure good life (future) while noticing universities adopt a "corporate ethos" (Fleming, 2020(Fleming, , p. 1306, focusing on profitability, competitiveness, and efficiency (present) (Bone, 2021). Negotiating in-between these different sets of ideals highlights the "cruelty of the precarious impasse" (Bone, 2021).…”

Section: Km: Who Am I Anymore? Identity At a Crossroadsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…With precarious employment on the rise in academia, early-career academics are required to negotiate between ideals of having a secure good life (future) while noticing universities adopt a "corporate ethos" (Fleming, 2020(Fleming, , p. 1306, focusing on profitability, competitiveness, and efficiency (present) (Bone, 2021). Negotiating in-between these different sets of ideals highlights the "cruelty of the precarious impasse" (Bone, 2021). In fact, Bone (2021) describes precarious employment as an ontological state of "ongoing crisis" or "crisis ordinariness.…”

Section: Km: Who Am I Anymore? Identity At a Crossroadsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Negotiating in-between these different sets of ideals highlights the "cruelty of the precarious impasse" (Bone, 2021). In fact, Bone (2021) describes precarious employment as an ontological state of "ongoing crisis" or "crisis ordinariness. "…”

Section: Km: Who Am I Anymore? Identity At a Crossroadsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Tread lightly: Liminality and Covid‐19 reflections

Jamjoom

2021

Gender Work & Organization

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The COVID‐19 pandemic has reshaped people's lives in a multitude of different ways, and women especially have found themselves managing in‐between identities, spaces, and realities due to increased domestic, homeschooling, and work demands. In this paper, I share fragmented observations on COVID‐19 inequalities on a societal level, but I anchor those observations with my personal reflections. I use liminality as a theoretical anchor and an artistic methodological tool to explore being in‐between experiences, thoughts, and modes of writing. I stage my reflections as a 10 KM run, with points of discussion set at each kilometer. The run is symbolic of the liminal space the pandemic represents, where bodies and minds, whether knowingly or unknowingly, are in an in‐between journey – from places of origin to unfamiliar destinations. This paper adds to feminist efforts of writing differently which shows that knowledge can be produced and conveyed beyond the rigid script of academic convention. It also expands the use of liminality beyond a theoretical lens and into a methodological approach that considers writing as a melding between different genres, states, and modes of knowing.

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Section: ‘Tread Lightly’: the 10 Km Runmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Km: Who Am I Anymore? Identity At a Crossroadsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Km: Who Am I Anymore? Identity At a Crossroadsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Km: Who Am I Anymore? Identity At a Crossroadsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Tread lightly: Liminality and Covid‐19 reflections

Jamjoom

2021

Gender Work & Organization

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“…However, a growing number of studies are exploring the psychosocial costs of university work such as stress (Kinman, 2001 ; Oketunji, 2014 ; Pignata et al, 2018 ; Watts & Robertson, 2011 ), alongside declining academic work conditions under neoliberal capitalism (Connell, 2014 ; Giroux, 2014 ; Ratle et al, 2020 ). This line of inquiry has observed that university staff around the world are reporting growing work-related stress due to the increased casualisation and precarity of the workforce (Bone, 2020 ), external funding pressures, and competition (Pignata et al, 2018 ). In particular, widely reported suicides in universities in the past decade led to inquiries of the seeming ‘epidemic of poor mental health’ across universities in the United Kingdom (Morrish, 2019 ), with similar trends observed in United States, New Zealand, and Australia.…”

Section: Health and Safety In The Neoliberal Universitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Workplace Injury and the Failing Academic Body: A Testimony of Pain

Liu

2021

J Bus Ethics

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This article explores how meanings around risk, health/safety, and workers' bodies are constructed in an academic context. I do so through the study of a single academic in Australia who sustained a back injury at work. Through an analysis of in-depth interviews and documents, I attempt to show the embodied experience of an injured worker's struggle for care, recovery, and survival in the neoliberal academy. Writing from the nexus of workplace health and safety and critical management literatures, the raw testimony of this injured academic lays bare the violences that are enabled within a wider culture of selfdiscipline, individualism, and performativity in the university. The story presented in this article exposes how physiological and psychological injuries can be exacerbated through the very health and safety procedures that are designed to prevent and alleviate harm. Please note that this article contains references to suicide and suicidal ideation.

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“You need to step back when you're contract faculty”: Information Practices and Care in Casual Academic Work

Willson,

Stewart‐Robertson,

Julien

et al. 2024

Proceedings of the Association for Information Science and Tech

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This study uses the concepts of information practices and care as theoretical lenses to explore the information practices of casual academic staff, who experience complex information contexts. Semi‐structured online interviews followed by thematic qualitative data analysis revealed that, while these academics care deeply about their contributions to student learning, they experience a lack of institutional support and care. This experience leads to individualized information practices, and dependence on an uncertain and unreliable information landscape, characterized by information marginalization, information precarity, and information vulnerability. Exposing the informational challenges experienced by this large subpopulation of academic laborers can support efforts to improve their information environments and support their work. The study also contributes to contemporary theoretical understandings of information vulnerability within academic contexts.

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Cruel Optimism and Precarious Employment: The Crisis Ordinariness of Academic Work

Cited by 24 publications

References 61 publications

Tread lightly: Liminality and Covid‐19 reflections

Tread lightly: Liminality and Covid‐19 reflections

Workplace Injury and the Failing Academic Body: A Testimony of Pain

“You need to step back when you're contract faculty”: Information Practices and Care in Casual Academic Work

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