Book Launch & Why and How Culture Metters

Seminar summary

While a burgeoning body of existing literature offers compelling structural-institutional explanations for the causes and nature of precarious work, the role of culture tends to be overlooked or understudied. Drawing on empirical studies in Japan and China, we set out to explore how traditional values and assumptions impact on iniquitous patterns of precarious work under neoliberal globalisation. By foregrounding the discursive power of culture and its entrenched (yet malleable) manifestations, we argue for a more qualitative, historical and dialectical approach to understanding precarious work and social inequality.

How to attend this seminar

This seminar will take place on Wednesday 22 November at 12pm.

We welcome you to join us online.

The seminar is free to attend with no need to register in advance.

Speaker bios

Dr Huiyan Fu

Huiyan Fu (PhD, Social Anthropology, University of Oxford) is Senior Lecturer at University of Essex, UK.  Her main research interests lie in precarious work and social inequalities. She is the author of An Emerging Non-Regular Labour Force in Japan: The Dignity of Dispatched Workers (Routledge 2011, 2015) and the editor of Temporary Agency Work and Globalisation (Routledge 2015) and Temporary and Gig Economy Workers in China and Japan: The Culture of Unequal Work (Oxford University Press, 2023)

Professor Arne L. Kalleberg

Arne L. Kalleberg (PhD, Sociology, University of Wisconsin—Madison) is a Kenan Distinguished Professor of Sociology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. He has written extensively on topics related to the sociology of work, labor markets, and social stratification (https://arnekalleberg.web.unc.edu). His most recent book is Precarious Asia: Global Capitalism and Work in Japan, South Korea and Indonesia (with Kevin Hewison and Kwang-Yeong Shin; Stanford University Press, 2022). He served as President of the American Sociological Association in 2007-8 and is currently the editor of Social Forces: An International Journal of Social Research. ‬