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Guy Standing Will Launch His New Book DEPARTMENT OF LAW AND CRIMINOLOGY EDGE HILL UNIVERSITY GUEST LECTURE (LEGAL RESEARCH GROUP) GUY STANDING WILL LAUNCH HIS NEW BOOK A PRECARIAT CHARTER AND SPEAK ABOUT THE PRECARIAT: A NEW DANGEROUS CLASS Wednesday 2nd April 2014 Room: HUB 1 3:30-6:00 pm Neoliberalism, as the combination of economic liberalisation, commodification, the privatisation of social policy and production, and the dismantling of institutions of social solidarity, entailed the painful construction of a global market system. This has generated a global class structure superimposed on national structures. The dynamics of this global structure must be understood as the mass class-in-the-making, the precariat. Although controversial, the precariat has distinctive relations of production, relations of distribution and relations to the state. While not yet a class-for-itself, it is the new dangerous class, because it is a force for transformation, rejecting both conventional, labourist social democracy and neoliberalism. The precariat has a complex consciousness of loss and status frustration. It contains an atavistic aspect, prone to populism, together with a potentially progressive aspect. This internal division has so far blocked it from becoming a class-for-itself. However, it is emerging from its initial, primitive phase of rebellion, and, in the world’s city squares, is setting a new progressive agenda based on an emancipatory egalitarianism. This lecture, drawing on The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class, and a new book, A Precariat Charter: From Denizens to Citizens, will outline the nucleus of a progressive vision for a new Global Transformation from the perspective of the precariat. Guy Standing is Professor of Economics at SOAS, University of London, and was previously Professor of Economic Security at the University of Bath and Professor of Labour Economics at Monash University in Melbourne. Before that, he was Director of the ILO’s Socio-Economic Security Programme (1999-2005) and Director of the ILO’s Labour Market Policies Branch. An economist, with a Ph.D. from Cambridge University, and a Master’s Degree in industrial relations from the University of Illinois, he is a founder and co-President of the Basic Income Earth Network (BIEN), an NGO promoting basic income as a right, with members in over 50 countries. Besides an extensive research career, he has been adviser and consultant to many international agencies, including the UNDP, UNICEF, the World Bank, the European Commission and DFID, as well as many governments and trades unions. In 1995-96, he was director of research for President Mandela’s Labour Market Policy Commission, when he co- authored, with John Sender and John Weeks, Restructuring the Labour Market – The South African Challenge. Guy Standing is currently working on a large-scale pilot basic income scheme in India, and has been working for 15 years with SEWA, the union representing women ‘informal’ workers across India. Recent books are The Precariat: The New Dangerous Class (Bloomsbury, 2011), Social Income and Insecurity in Gujarat (Routledge, 2010), and Work after Globalization: Building Occupational Citizenship (Elgar, 2009). The Precariat has been translated into ten languages. His latest book, to be launched at Edge Hill, and due out in early 2014, is entitled A Precariat Charter: From Denizens to Citizens (Bloomsbury). Copies of the Precariat and advanced copies of A Precariat Charter will be available for sale at 40% discount at the Lecture. .
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