Introduction

Were you to ask a sociologist to describe the important features of the present right now, they might refer to the compression of time and space because of new communication technologies, a new interrogation of the value of human and non-human bodies because of biotech interference, and persistent, if shape-shifting and contested, social inequalities. The economic sociologist or political economist might add that global production and supply chains are more complex and denser than ever, and that a growing number of formerly non-market activities are increasingly marketised. Commentators on work are happy to make similar high-level claims about work as flexibilised, intensified and precarious. When unpaid work appears in these stories, it does so in relation to how it adds value to capitalism, as when private lives are captured by social media and generate economic value. Too few would think to say environmental crisis, and have a sense of how that affects these other phenomena. How could these phenomena be explained? So often, the answer is ‘neoliberalism’.

Any story about the crises of present times has to confront the confused, overextended idea of neoliberalism. Like a poltergeist haunting policy, practice and the academic imaginary, neoliberalism seems always to be on hand, creating all kinds of strange and bad effects: outsourcing, work intensity, flexibilisation (to name but a few). In this chapter, I show that the historical realities to which the term is typically taken to refer are complex and uneven, relating to policy changes at the levels of supranational institutions, states, local institutions and corporations, and to economic and social ideas. It affects welfare provision, ownership, trade, tax and competition, and it affects how work is organised. It is as if it has captured all of social life, changing how people think and feel. But simple and sweeping statements about neoliberalism’s power, its uniformity and its universalism underplay its wobbliness, and its critics might be guilty of contributing to its zombie powers. Understanding what’s wrong with work now relies on recognising the interconnections between work and broad economic policy and practice, of course, and neoliberalism is an important but not comprehensive explanation for contemporary work practices, especially those that relate to flexibility and precariousness. The three questions about what’s wrong with work come together in this chapter’s focus on flexibility in work and precariousness in life.