40427 - Not Working: Life Without a Job

Description

Structural unemployment is a global and growing phenomenon. This panel will bring together sociologists who study prime working age adults who live on the margins of paid work. Invited panelists will discuss how the people they study survive without jobs that pay living wages. What alternative sources of income are available to them? How does the availability of these alternatives vary by race, gender, and class? By exploring current alternatives to working for a living with an eye to inequality, this panel will contribute valuable lessons for forging a future post-work society, contributing to what Kathi Weeks (2011) has called “post-work imaginaries”—the effort to identify and develop new approaches to distributing vital resources that do not involve waged labor.

Sub Unit

• Thematic Session

Presider

• Christine L. Williams, University of Texas-Austin

Panelists

• Jennifer Sherman, Washington State University

• Alexandrea J. Ravenelle, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill

• Sharla Berry, California State University-Long Beach

• Laura A. Orrico, Temple University

Session Organizer

• Christine L. Williams, University of Texas-Austin