Anthropologies of Unemployment

Anthropologies of Unemployment offers accessible, theoretically innovative, and ethnographically rich examinations of unemployment in rural and urban regions across North and South America, Europe, Africa, and Asia. The diversity of case studies demonstrates that unemployment is a pressing global phenomenon that sheds light on the uneven consequences of free-market ideologies and policies. Economic, social, and cultural marginalization is common in the lives of the unemployed, but their experience and interpretation are shaped by local and national cultural particularities. In exploring those differences, the contributors to this volume employ recent theoretical innovations and engage with some of the more salient topics in contemporary anthropology, such as globalization, migration, youth cultures, bureaucracy, class, gender, and race.Taken together, the chapters reveal that there is something new about unemployment today. It is not a temporary occurrence, but a chronic condition. In adjusting to persistent, longstanding unemployment, people and groups create new understandings of unemployment as well as of work and employment; they improvise new forms of sociality, morality, and personhood. Ethnographic studies such as those found in Anthropologies of Unemployment are crucial if we are to understand the broader forms, meanings, and significance of pervasive economic insecurity and discover the emergence of new social and cultural possibilities.Contributors

Josh Fisher, High Point University

David Karjanen, University of Minnesota

Ann E. Kingsolver, University of Kentucky

Jong Bum Kwon, Webster University

Carrie M. Lane, California State University, Fullerton

Caitrin Lynch, Olin College

Daniel Mains, University of Oklahoma

John P. Murphy, Gettysburg College

Mariano D. Perelman, University of Buenos Aires

Frances Abrahamer Rothstein, Montclair State University

Claudia Strauss, Pitzer College