Text

E-book Representing Poverty and Precarity in a Postcolonial World

---

Penilaian

---

“Precarity is everywhere today”, French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu announced in a lecture in 1997 (qtd. in Springveld 26). “[P] recarity is not a passing or episodic condition, but a new form of regulation that distinguishes this historical time”, American philosopher Judith Butler writes in her foreword to German political theorist Isabell Lorey’s study State of Insecurity: Government of the Precarious(2015). In a similar vein, American anthropologist Anna Lowenhaupt Tsing, in The Mushroom at the End of the World (2015), asks: “What if [...] precarity is the condition of our time – or, to put it another way, what if our time is ripe for sensing precarity?” (20). Finally, according to British economist Anthony B. Atkinson, “poverty is one of the two great challenges facing the world as a whole today, along with climate change” (1). This list of prominent voices from different academic disciplines clearly testifies to the centrality of poverty and precarity for our time.Poverty and precarity are among the most pressing social issues of our day and their potential impact on political (in)stability and social cohesion has become the subject of intense political debate in many societies. The last two decades have seen an ever- widening gap between the rich and the poor across the globe as well as an exponential growth in the number of forcibly displaced persons. In 2019, almost a fourth of the world’s population lived in poverty (undp, “Global”), with global income and wealth inequality steadily increasing since 1980,1 and 79.5 million people worldwide had been forced to leave their homes by the end of 2019 (unhcr). It has been argued that “it is the poorest who are, and will be, hit earliest and hardest” by the global climate crisis and the damage from climate change (Stern 232). Of course, poverty and precarity can take many shapes and have many different causes. At the time of writing this introduction the covid-19 pandemic has the world in its grip and occasions new and unprecedented dimensions of precarity (cf. Wilson et al.) which the contributors to this volume could not have imagined at the time they submitted their essays.The last two decades have also seen a steady growth of fictional and non-fictional representations of disenfranchised groups and individuals as well as an intensification of research into the visual and narrative forms of these representations. The contributions to this volume address conceptualisations of poverty and precarity from the perspective of literary and cultural studies as well as linguistics and investigate the ethics and aesthetics of represent-ing poverty and precarity across the postcolonial world. While there is no doubt that poverty reduction and the amelioration of precarious lives require political measures, scholars agree that representations impact on “the public imagination or ‘social imaginary’, that is, the knowledge, values, attitudes and emotions with which societies and individuals perceive poverty and take mea-sures against it” (Korte and Zipp 2). Of course, as Gareth Griffiths reminds us, this social or cultural imaginary has always been the foundation upon which “both oppressor and oppressed” have constructed their identity and social environment (9).

---

Ketersediaan

Informasi Detail

Judul Seri

-

No. Panggil

801.9 CLI r

Penerbit

Berlin : BRILL., 2021

Deskripsi Fisik

302 hlm

Bahasa

English

ISBN/ISSN

9789004466395

Klasifikasi

801.9

Tipe Isi

text

Tipe Media

computer

Tipe Pembawa

online resource

Edisi

-

Subjek

Psychology of Literatures

Info Detail Spesifik

-

Pernyataan Tanggungjawab

-

Versi lain/terkait

Lampiran Berkas

Komentar

---

Anda harus masuk sebelum memberikan komentar