Living with Precariousness

(Hardback)

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Precariousness has become a defining experience in contemporary society, as an inescapable condition and state of being. Living with Precariousness presents a spectrum of timely case studies that explore precarious existences at individual, collective and structural levels, and as manifested through space and the body. These range from the plight of asylum seekers, to the tiny house movement as a response to affordable housing crises; from the global impacts of climate change, to the daily challenges of living with a chronic illness. This multidisciplinary book illustrates the pervasiveness of precarity, but furthermore shows how those entanglements with other agents, human or otherwise, that put us at risk are also the connections that make living with (and through) precariousness endurable.

Reviews

Why is a sense of precariousness so widespread today across diverse situations and ways of life The collective achievement of this inspiring and beautiful book is to show how a common experience connects people facing different states of vulnerability from mortal danger in conflict journalism or asylum seeking, to chronic risk in aged care homes and grinding worry about employment and housing and how they still create strategies for living. -- Professor Meaghan Morris, The University of Sydney
The human condition has always been precarious. New technological developments have made us more aware of our fate and shared vulnerabilities. Global communications bombard us with daily warnings about the perils we live with: nuclear weapons, debilitating systems and irrational hatreds. This timely book is a measured assessment of where we are at, and could be heading. A warning: It is not all bad news. -- The Hon. Michael Kirby AC CMG, Past President of the International Commission of Jurists and Co-Chair of the IBA Human Rights Council
As the effects of neoliberal bio-exploitation unfold, precariousness spreads all over planetary life. Todays generation of humans are walking as aliens in a world that grows every day more unknown. This book outlines a multi-dimensional picture of the precarization of global life. A much needed phenomenological attempt to map the ongoing disintegration of modern social civilization. -- Dr Franco Bifo Berardi, author of After the Future
Our times are marked by extraordinary socio-cultural, environmental, technological and political upheaval and uncertainty. As a consequence, more than ever we need to critically understand our shared sense of vulnerability, to respond to these disturbing times with clarity, acuity and insight. Readers of this book will be enthralled and heartened to learn that we are not alone in this endeavour. We are all inter-connected by our shared experience of living with precariousness; and this is a solidarity of human agency and spirit that can only make us stronger and wiser. -- Emeritus Professor Baden Offord AO, Curtin University

Author Bio

Christina Lee is a Senior Lecturer in English and Cultural Studies at Curtin University, Australia. She is the author of Screening Generation X: The Politics and Popular Memory of Youth in Contemporary Cinema (2010), and editor of books including Spectral Spaces and Hauntings: The Affects of Absence (2017) and Violating Time: History, Memory, and Nostalgia in Cinema (2012). Susan Leong is Honorary Senior Fellow at Edith Cowan University, Australia. She is the author of Global Internet Governance: Influences from Malaysia and Singapore (2020), Chinas Digital Presence in the Asia-Pacific: Culture, Technology and Platforms (2020), and New Media and the Nation in Malaysia: Malaysianet (2014).