Assignment 5 Precarity and Affective Labor

Assignment 5
Precarity and Affective Labor

The portion of the labor force that could be described as either ‘precarious‘ or ‘affective’ laborers has become a concern in recent years. The goal of this week’s assignment is to better understand these concepts.

Your job is to:

SECTION A:

1. Choose one of the following concepts: ‘precarity‘ or ‘affective labor.’

2. Reflect on the concept, discuss its meaning in-depth. (Cite relevant sources).

3. Name which sectors of the economy can precarity or affective labor be found in most, and explain why?

SECTION B:

1. Find a job ad that fits your chosen concept. You can search indeed.com, roberthalf.com, or local newspapers.

2. Discuss why you believe this job to be an example of either percarity or affective labor.

When searching for job ads, be sure to find one that provides a good enough description so that you can get a sense of what the job requires. If it does not provide a good enough description, then you may have to do some digging to understand exactly what your prospective job entails.

Your write-up should have the following (and will be used as the rubric):

SECTION A: 300 words (min.)

Define and describe – in your own words— your concept. This should include at least 3 references to course content. Try to paraphrase the information from your sources, but if you used the exact words from your sources, make sure to use “quotation marks,” followed immediately by in-text citation. You need to also include a discussion of where the much of precarious or affective labor resides in the labor market, and a discussion of why this is the case.

SECTION B: 300 words (min.)

Describe the job post you found. In this section, you ought to discuss what the job is, what it requires of the employee, the weekly hours involved, salary/pay, benefits, and required experience and qualifications. Next, provide justification of why this is a good example of either your chosen concept, precarity or affective labor. Be thorough in your justification. What about the job makes this a precarious job? Or, what about the job makes it fall in the category of affective labor?

Have a References section at the end.

Include your job ad in a pdf or screen shot.