"Trying to Stay Positive": Cultural Narratives and Low-Wage Workers' Navigation of Precarity

• In Event: 20420 - Section on Sociology of Culture Roundtables
  In Refereed Roundtable (90 minute): Table 8: Narratives

Abstract

In an era of increasing economic inequality and labor precarity, cultural narratives serve as critical tools that individuals use to interpret and adapt to precarious circumstances. This paper draws on in-depth interviews with fast food and health care workers to examine how low-wage workers mobilize cultural narratives to make sense of precarious employment and broader economic insecurity in the wake of relatively substantial wage increases. The paper contributes to sociological debates on culture and structure by analyzing how economic policy interventions interact with existing cultural narratives of work, success, and economic mobility. While wage increases shift material conditions, they do not necessarily disrupt entrenched cultural frameworks. Findings illuminate disjunctures between beliefs and lived experience and how narratives are used to navigate these tensions. The paper provides insight into how cultural meaning-making can shape economic subjectivities and operate as a mechanism of normalizing and legitimating precarity and inequality.

Author

• Tara Kane Prendergast, University of Arizona