On Wednesday the 4th of October The Department of Sociology began its Research Seminar Series with Lynne Pettinger (University of Warwick)

Title: ‘Work in a time of ecological crisis’

Speaker: Lynne Pettinger, University of Warwick

Chair: Rachel Cohen, Head of Department, Sociology

We live ‘In Catastrophic Times’ (Stengers, 2015). Ecological crisis is central to that catastrophe, made through a capitalism that takes for granted the extraction of value from ‘nature’. This matters in lots of ways. I will focus in this paper on the relationships between ecological crisis and work – paid and unpaid. Environmental change has, is and will shape work, and so will shape human and non-human ways of living. It is also shaped by work – by how work is organised and by the norms and values of those who are able to shape the organisation of work (and there may be more of these shapers than you might assume). I’ll consider how environmental catastrophe is changing work – from the political response that places its faith in ‘green growth’, to the alterations to daily provisioning and care that result from climate change. I’ll explore the ethics and politics of green work, considering especially feminist ideas of care as a way to combine and ecological ethics with recognition of the ethics and politics of work in order to carefully imagine better futures.

Dr Lynne Pettinger is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Warwick. Her research explores the intersections of work and markets, using the insights of economic sociology to make sense of forms of work. It explores how market cultures are generated, and how ethics, aesthetics and emotions are worked on in global consumer capitalism. She has developed these themes in projects on sales work, sex work and music work, and these ideas form the basis of Work, Consumption and Capitalism (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015).

Please note, the next seminar will take place on the 18^th of October at 2:30-4pm in DLG20. Pat Caplan (Goldsmiths, University of London) will be delivering the following talk, ‘Learning to think about food: an anthropological view’

For more information on The Department of Sociology Research Seminar Series, organised by Dr Jo Littler, please click on the link below:

https://www.city.ac.uk/arts-social-sciences/sociology#unit=research