Paper short abstract:

Compers are the serial entrants of promotional competitions. Based on ethnography amongst compers in Australia, I explore how the practice of entering, winning and fantasizing about winning can create and sustain an optimistic world-view despite challenging personal and financial circumstances.

Paper long abstract:

Ethnographic considerations of optimism in capitalist settings have swung widely between agentive and deterministic theoretical approaches. In the former, epistemologies of opportunity and hope have been described in relation to economic theories (e.g. Miyazaki 2013). In the latter, anthropologists have emphasized the role of powerful corporations in manufacturing hope, thus evoking ideas of false consciousness (e.g. Dolan & Johnstone-Louis 2011). With the ambition of paving a middle ground between the two, I will present findings from ethnography amongst compers in Australia.

Comper is an emic term used to identify those who regularly enter promotional competitions run by corporations. Predominantly female, and often bound to the home because of caring duties and/or underemployment, compers can spend dozens of hours per week entering competitions online. For many, comping is a way of "switching off" from worries in their life, therein creating an experience of escape through "flow" (Csikszentmihalyi 1998). In addition, whether it be for cars, holidays or cash, winning and fantasizing about winning works to create and sustain a world-view characterised by optimism. As compers often say, "you never know what's coming 'round the corner". In orientating their fantasies towards the future, therefore, compers can find relief from the personal and financial stresses of the present. Through engagement with theoretical literature regarding hope, time, precarity and gambling, I will demonstrate how the anticipatory logics of comping call into question dominant approaches to understanding the practices and imaginaries of everyday life under capitalism.

Paper short abstract:

Protected by an Act of Parliament, Harris Tweed can only be handwoven at home in the Outer Hebrides. Considering fluctuations in the industry, this paper explores how workers' biographies and everyday work experiences can illuminate diverse visions of a 'good life' in contexts of labour uncertainty.

Paper long abstract:

Harris Tweed is the only cloth in the world protected by an Act of Parliament (1993). This legislation establishes that, in order to be certified and stamped with the 'Orb' trademark, a cloth needs to be 'handwoven by the islanders at their homes in the Outer Hebrides, finished in the Outer Hebrides, and made from pure virgin wool dyed and spun in the Outer Hebrides'. Harris Tweed is exported to over 50 countries, trademark protected in over 30.

In a region threatened by depopulation and with a long history of employment uncertainty, the Harris Tweed industry has provided valuable work opportunities for several generations. However, shifts in global demand for the cloth have also made this industry periodically vulnerable, its history marked by fluctuations between peaks and slumps that have shaped, in turn, the creation and loss (and subsequent creation) of local jobs at different moments in the past.

Today, acceptance of these possibilities remains an intrinsic part of employment in this industry, importantly shaping workers' everyday experiences and long-term expectations. In this context, it is worth considering the multiplicity of biographies, experiences, and aspirations described by workers, and the ways in which concepts like 'flexibility' and 'self-fulfillment' are variously defined and deployed. In this paper I examine the relationship between workers' personal narratives, work routines, and ideas of what 'a life worth leading' looks like, exploring how these tensions between 'modes of temporality' may provide more nuanced understandings of working lives in contexts of moderate uncertainty and labour 'flexibility'.

Paper short abstract:

In Jordan, women's increased engagement in public life is considered a hallmark of progress. This paper explores how this equation of women working with progress has created, and problematised, a temporality of the home that is considered separate from that of the world outside the home.

Paper long abstract:

How do conceptions of past and present attach to the spaces and practices that are the stuff of ordinary everyday life? In Jordan, the idea of development—economic, social, and otherwise—is closely associated with women's engagement in the public sphere through work, education, or politics. Accordingly, "development" and "progress" are associated with women working outside of the home (Adely 2009, 2012) and "tradition" and even "backwardness" associated with women's work inside the home. This paper explores how this particular valuing of work as a future-oriented practice has reconfigured the space and time of the home and encouraged women to cultivate a specific kind of fantasy about their life outside the home. Since development has not alleviated women of their responsibility for housework, most women remain tied to their home responsibilities in important ways, but the configuration of domestic labour as something that contributes nothing to Jordan's progress and the time of the home as separate from this forward march of time makes this commitment problematic. In this context, the idea of egalitarian marriages where both spouses contribute to cooking, cleaning, and childcare prevails as a fantasy against which reality is harshly judged. This paper explores how the valuing of one practice with reference to its temporality—women working outside the home being equated with progress in this case—has knockon effects for the temporality and valuation of other practices, like housekeeping, and the fantasies that accompany such a temporal structure.

Paper short abstract:

This study examines the transnational activities and aspirations of female Afghan football players: some living in Afghanistan, some being migrants in other countries. The study discusses transnational imaginaries of the future, career possibilities, and love for the nation.

Paper long abstract:

This paper explores the case of the transnational activities and aspirations of female Afghan football players - some living in Afghanistan, some across the globe. Studies show that migrants, who have migrated from one nation to different host countries, may create a 'transnational space' and span borders and/or socio-cultural barriers through transnational activities. In this case, the nation and migrants' nation-oriented acts or projects may receive new forms and natures. A nation as such is no longer only a concrete 'imagined political' territory there - the country of origin; but it is a desired and symbolic transnational community. This transnational space intertwines with migrants' national envisioning and subjective becoming.

Drawing on a set of data consisting of several posts on a Facebook public page, internet articles, and a semi-qualitative interview with the coordinator of Afghanistan's national women football team, the study demonstrates the process of becoming a national team outside the war-torn country of origin. The study is carried out in Denmark - where the team coordinator resides. The team's activities and trial camps in other countries are also organized in Denmark. The study discusses these themes: transnational team goals; rethinking the Afghan nation; and migrants' imaginaries of the future. I will explore these themes with regard to the diversity of football players who live in different countries, identify themselves with Afghanistan, play as volunteers, and strive for gender equality and Afghan women's empowerment. Finally, I examine whether the football field is a 'space of refuge' or a ground for 'hope labor.'

Paper short abstract:

This paper draws on ethnographic research carried out in New York City and London to explore how young people make sense of 'work' as an organising concept for understanding the future.

Paper long abstract:

This paper draws on ethnographic research carried out in New York City and London to explore how young people make sense of 'work' as an organising concept for understanding the future. I argue that young people maintain multiple and often conflicting narratives of the future, in which imaginings of employment and vocation are negotiated in relation to broader ideas of success, failure, and positions in-between. I draw on the concept of futures literacy (Miller 2013) to explore how young people work and re-work the future in order to fit the conditions of their emerging present at the end of secondary education.

Paper short abstract:

This paper looks at the complex interplay between educational systems, neoliberal politics and the students strategies in imagining a future through their schooling experience in neoliberal urban Portugal.

Paper long abstract:

Education has been approached as a locus for the production and reproduction of social, political and economic subjects. Social mobility, development and the maintenance of cohesive political communities are seen as dependent on the shaping and re-shaping of educational systems. Our research focus on representations about the future from students at the end of compulsory education that have experienced the schooling process amidst what we regard as a neoliberal reconfiguration of the educative system. We consider the educational communities of public schools in Almada, a large post-industrial town in Lisbon Metropolitan Area, and the Portuguese national education system. Therefore, the research comprises an ethnography in the transitional moments between compulsory education and the productive integration of students in society: from the aspirations, strategies and projects of the individuals to those of the state (Baumann et al, 2004, Stahl, 2016). This paper analyses the production of a neoliberal ontology through education and school practices and its relation with future aspirations and the design of life projects or state policies. As we investigate how the agents produce representations of a future, we ask how do these dialogue with concepts of work and money and the domain of fantasy. Hence, we enquire about the emergence of new forms of subjectivity both as a consequence of the schooling process and of negotiations between agents and institutions in a neoliberal context.

Paper short abstract:

Drawing on an ethnography of graduates from an elite university in New York City - many of whom move to Los Angeles - this paper traces the dialectical transformation of aspirations and transitions. Faced with unexpected outcomes, graduates revise their fantasies and question the velocity of life.

Paper long abstract:

This paper presents findings from an ethnographic study on the aspirations and transitions of graduates from an elite university in New York. The cultural context of higher education which these graduates are transitioning out of entails an ethos among the student body of presenting one's self as en route to career success. Such an intense and academically earnest atmosphere was surprising for an ethnographer more accustomed to a student culture of performative nonchalance in British higher education (cf. Fox, 2006). Laden with high pressures and expectations, the New York graduates propel themselves out of their degree towards superlative financial and vocational goals. For many, such dreams are furnished through a move to Los Angeles. However, most find the foundations of their lives begin to dissipate, while the futures they had imagined prove largely elusive. As graduates acknowledge their unexpected outcomes and adapt to unfamiliar circumstances of work, money, and sociality, they revise their lives in motion. This talk focuses on this dialectical transformation between aspirations and transitions. Longitudinal examples highlight the dynamism, situatedness, and perpetual vulnerability of life plans.

Paper short abstract:

The Indian postgraduates in my study navigate constructions of the academic life course as well as Indian ideas of the perfect timing of events in life. I argue that "temporal agency" (Flaherty 2011) is an important means in that process of navigation.

Paper long abstract:

Germany has become an attractive destination for Indian postgraduates. Based on data from my ethnographic fieldwork in Göttingen I show how Indian postgraduates navigate what Jacobs and Winslow (2004) term the "academic life course". Academic careers are imagined as a linear progression of steps from receiving a PhD to becoming a full professor. While in reality, the academic trajectory is often less linear and ruptured by detours and insecurities. How do young Indian postgraduates imagine their academic life course? How does the academic life course interact with Indian middle class ideas about the perfect timing of events in life (especially marriage)?

My interlocutors are aware that they are expected to marry at the "right age". At the same time they actively try to shape their future in academia by completing a Ph.D. "abroad", a step that in line with dominant discourses ought to increase their career chances. The young Indian postgraduates choose Germany because universities offer the possibility to complete a PhD in three years. By choosing a place based on temporal considerations the Indian postgraduates exercised "temporal agency" (Flaherty 2011). They want to be "faster", to accelerate their careers and to influence the timing of marriage. In their attempts to navigate different constructions of the life course they create their own notions of the right timing and sequence of events in life. Thus after completing a PhD and getting married the next step would be "to do a few more postdocs", preferably in the US.

Paper short abstract:

This microcosmic study of place, belonging, and temporariness examines working holidaymakers doing seasonal agricultural labour in rural Australia, and the economic vulnerability that is encoded into their everyday lives via this precarious work. Working holidaymakers’ enact various strategies for survival, which reveal overlapping and discordant realities, with consequences ranging from the mundane to sinister.

Paper long abstract:

Each year, thousands of working holidaymakers travel across regional Australia, in search of seasonal agricultural labour. They are in the country for one year as part of the Working Holiday (417) visa, but many dream of staying for a second; to fulfil visa application requirements, working holidaymakers are required to undertake 88 days’ work in rural industries. In agriculturally-rich areas, it is easy to find employment at local farms, although the work itself is precarious, labour-intensive, offers little pay, and is often tangentially risk-averse.

For those living and working in one small Australian town, affectual encounters with the landscape can highlight, and even intensify the economic vulnerability that already permeates their everyday lives. Monetary constraints mean that travel outside of work hours is mostly undertaken on foot. There are three possible routes WHMs can take between a caravan park (where many live) and a grocery store, where most purchase food and alcohol. An authorised path is safe, but time-consuming; two others are shorter and more convenient, but present genuine physical danger. To inhabit regional space and be employed in seasonal agricultural labour means participating in a combative landscape, against realities that are encoded with exclusion.

Through the reappropriation of place and temporariness, working holidaymakers’ everyday lives are remade, and the landscape is transformed into something more conducive to everyday survival – although at a possible personal cost. These strategies intended to counter subtle, inadvertent structural violence in fact reveal discordant temporal landscapes, with consequences ranging from mundane, to sinister.

Paper short abstract:

This paper aims to gain a perspective on the breakdown of the Fordist social contract by examining the temporalities of work, its absence — unemployment — and its renewed presence as a more politicized, yet also more precarious, human activity among members of an Italian "recovered enterprise".

Paper long abstract:

A recovered enterprise is a business that went bankrupt and was reopened by its workers without (and often against) the involvement of its previous owners and the authorities. The phenomenon is best known as one aspect of the economic crisis that hit Argentina in 2001. While the Argentine case is widely known and studied, after the global recession of 2008 similar cases have been reported in many European countries, from Spain and France to Greece and Italy. By examining the case of an automotive factory near Milan that has been repurposed for new uses, this paper argues that time is an important element of a worker's moral economy. Fordism and the Keynesian social contract produced a certain kind of time structure, which spanned from the short-term experience of days divided into units determined by the factory clock, to the long-term experience of social reproduction and the sense that life for one's family was improving. Unemployment and precarity, which characterize life for many under austerity, cause instead an extreme rupture in this time structure, which begins with losing your job and "staying at home" and ends with losing hope for the future. Changes in the perception of time are thus an important aspect of the crisis in social reproduction brought about by the shift from an industrial to a post-industrial way of life. The paper documents how workers might try to resist this crisis through grassroots forms of activism and politics based on mutualistic values, specifically by creating a recovered enterprise.

Paper short abstract:

In this paper, I explore Pemon peoples' involvement in informal gold mining in light of the current economic crisis in Venezuela. I argue that the rhythms and temporalities of mining are compatible with other Pemon productive activities, and are consistent with local ways of dealing with abundance.

Paper long abstract:

In this paper, I look into the practice of informal (illegal) gold mining among Pemon peoples of La Gran Sabana, in Southeastern Venezuela, as a strategy to procure their livelihoods in light of the current economic crises in the country. Despite environmentalist discourses - reproduced by local NGOs and governmental officials - that present informal gold mining as a disruptive activity and position it against sound community living, the rhythms of mining are consistent with 'traditional' Pemón practices, such as swidden agriculture. Moreover, I shall argue that the temporality of the mine, specifically the instability of golden windfalls, are compatible with Pemon's strategies for dealing with sudden abundance.

The economic and political crises in Venezuela have significantly curtailed the power of attraction of the state, historically associated to its role as a redistributor of the nation's resources through the renta petrolera (oil rent). In this context of crisis, the gold mine has progressively displaced the Venezuelan state as the centre of people's expectations for material goods. The current economic crisis, thus, has not only transformed the relationships between local indigenous actors and the Venezuelan state but has re-shaped local notions of what constitutes a 'good life'.

In this paper, I will highlight the complementarities and continuities between mining and other Pemón productive activities, such as swidden agriculture. Moreover, I shall argue that the way in which people deal with mining bullas (commotions/windfalls) is consistent with Pemón strategies to counteract the disruptive effects of sudden abundance.