Work without employment: production and reproduction in the post-work era (1)
Matxalen Legarreta and Marta Malo de Molina
21.03.2018
Seminar 1 - Working Dead
Marta Echaves / Antonio Gómez Villar / María Ruido
Matxalen Legarreta and Marta Malo de Molina
Working Dead. Post-work scenarios is a research project that uses written and audiovisual material to explore the boundaries of work after the digital and robotic revolution, but above all after the paradigm shift brought about by cognitive-cultural capitalism and its diverse and increasingly informal and hyper-flexible types of work contract.
This research has been carried out without losing sight of class consciousness within the national context, the racialised structure of the transnational workforce and the current gender divisions which, despite new variables, remain solidly in place within the global workplace. It therefore advocates recognition of a series of practices and critical theories which, for decades now, have been redefining the concepts of work and employment and the relationship between production and reproduction.
In this scenario, the reworked definitions of Marxism, but above all decolonial and feminist criticism, have constantly proven to be rich sources of fertile questions with huge political significance, thus forming an essential aspect of the research. As such, our first public seminar focuses on the relationships between production and reproduction, new definitions of work and the economy itself from the perspective of feminist thinking, new types of associations and unions, and the relationships between income, class, time and gender.
If the concept of work has been redefined several times over the course of history, and if, as the Working Dead project postulates, we are currently undergoing a full-blown change to the productive economy, how will the post-work scenario affect the sustainability of life and reproductive work? What new debates does the post-industrial perspective open up in relation to gender and sex? Where and how do we construct our processes of subjectification and embodiment in a global workplace defined by immaterial work? What place is reserved for the material sustenance of life, the body that cares and caregiving? And, in this apparently deliquescent world, what other ways of organised cooperation and struggle can we envisage if traditional unions have become institutions of kowtowing agreement?
Matxalen Legarreta. Degree in Sociology from the UPV/EHU and International Doctorate in Sociology from the same university. She has undertaken postgraduate studies both at the UPV/EHU (University Specialisation in Applied Social Research) and at the Universidad Complutense de Madrid (Specialising in the Sociology of Consumption: Market Research Theory and Practice). She has been a lecturer at the Sociology 2 Department at the UPV/EHU since 2008. Her main areas of research are: domestic work and caregiving, gender inequalities, time-budget surveys and the sociology of time. She works from a feminist perspective focused on the sustainability of life. She is a member of the AFIT Feminist Anthropology Research Group.
Marta Malo de Molina. Translator and "militant researcher", she has spent more than a decade participating in and promoting research focused on and guided by emancipation practices. She has been a member of numerous collectives and driven platforms for action such as Eskalera Karakola, El Laboratorio II, Precarias a la deriva, Observatorio Metropolitano (where she carried out research on neoliberal government and borders together with Débora Ávila), El Ferrocarril Clandestino, Yo sí Sanidad Universal and Radio Onda Precaria, among many others. Co-author of the book Ensayos y experiencias entre investigación y militancia [Essays and experiences in research and activism] (Traficantes de sueños, 2004), she has taught for the Campus Relatoras feminist training platform and the Nociones Comunes political training project, and has written a number of articles for newspapers and magazines such as El Diario, Diagonal, Nodo50, etc.