In praise of strategic complacency

What follows is the basic text from my talk to “Early Career Researchers” at UQ earlier this month. As you’ll see, they are rough notes, intended for a small and currently employed audience. This is only one experience of “ECR”. I welcome comments for how to expand and edit as I might try to publish [...]

At Sydney Uni this week

Starting with an assembly in Eastern Avenue – one of the many campus locations to have been “enhanced” in recent years at major expense – Wednesday’s No Job Cuts rally moved to the iconic sandstone quadrangle, to the office of the absent Vice Chancellor, Michael Spence. A section of the protest group then stormed the [...]

Hired Hands: Casualised Technology and Labour in the Teaching of Cultural Studies

Cross-post from Sydney MACS Preparing for a talk later this week, I have just been reading this article by Kieryn McKay and Kylie Brass published in the September 2011 issue of Cultural Studies Review. The authors, both graduates from PhD programs in Sydney, draw ‘a parallel between the appropriation of podcasting technology into the university [...]

Notes on Jason Read’s ‘Starting from Year Zero: Occupy Wall Street and the Transformations of the Socio-Political’

NB: These are highlights created by instapaper on my kindle. Read the full essay here. I am experimenting with this and other ways of taking notes “in the cloud”… Follow @melgregg on Twitter if this is your kind of thing. As students take on more and more loans to fund their education, their education changes [...]

The 8 hour day in the iPhone age

This is my text for tonight’s ALP fringe event hosted by the Australian Services Union. The opening story is a small edited section from “On Call”, Chapter 9 of Work’s Intimacy. The first time we interviewed Jodi* she was enjoying working from home once every few weeks. These were days when Jodi was encouraged to [...]

Between stops

I have been been back in Sydney for a couple of weeks following the ICA conference and some side trips afterwards. A few extra days in Townsville this week because of the ash cloud was a nice enforced break in the weather! Between marking and closing off the semester’s grades I’ve been working full time [...]

Promotions training

Yesterday I went to an induction session for staff serving on promotion committees this year. The speaker from the HR Equal Opportunity Unit showed another interesting set of figures. Based on staff numbers in 2010: Women comprise 46% of all academic staff at the university. Women make up 52% of staff at Levels A, B [...]

Workers as machines

As a follow up to Clif’s important comments, take a look at this amazing video produced by Jack Qiu. Deconstructing Foxconn from Jack Qiu on Vimeo. Jack presented some of this material in a heartwrenching paper during the Production Cultures spotlight session at Crossroads back in June. The images and stories from factories, dorms and [...]

On the value of work

One of the reasons I mentioned home economics classes in the previous post was because I’m starting to think that Matthew Crawford’s book, Shop Class as Soulcraft, has some hidden lessons for feminism. Make no mistake – it is a blokey book. Plenty of shop scenes and not much discussion of women’s participation in trades. [...]

Technologies of gender and labour

One of my big projects for the year comes to fruition next week. The Technologies of Gender and Labour roundtable I’ve been organising with Ann Deslandes is funded by the Academy of the Humanities International Science Linkages scheme. It’s an amazing opportunity to bring together some big names from here and overseas to talk about [...]

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