Nice Work If You Can Get It: Life and Labor in Precarious Times

Contents; Acknowledgements vii; Introduction 1; I Creative Workers and Rent-Seeking; 1 The Mercurial Career of Creative Industries 15; Policymaking in the United Kingdom, the European Union and the United States; 2 China's Next Cultural Revolution? 53; 3 The Olympic Goose That Lays the Golden Egg 77; II Sustainability and the Ground Staff; 4 Teamsters, Turtles, and Tainted Toys 105; 5 Learning from San Ysidro 131; III Instruments of Knowledge Capitalism; 6 The Copyfight over Intellectual Property 161; 7 The Rise of the Global University 189; Conclusion: Maps and Charters 207; Notes 215; References 219; Index 245; About the Author 264

"Economic liberalization, [Ross] demonstrates, has opened up a frenetic global traffic in jobs and migrants, uprooting people in a manner both useful and troubling to the managers of capital. In short, more people are available to exploit, but they are also harder to control... A thorough and thoughtful study of global professional insecurity." The Times Literary Supplement "With admirable timing, [Ross] examines a global workplace infrastructure that's as shaky as the economy would indicate... Though far from uplifting, this is a bold, pointed look at reality as it is, a far more valuable commodity." Publishers Weekly, Starred Review "According to Ross, job insecurity became commonplace long before the current financial debacle. As economies shifted from industry to information, the benefits and securities of the Keynesian era quietly gave way to a workforce of temps, freelancers, adjuncts, and migrants. Ross finds that city fathers are more interested in Olympic bids and stadium projects than in sustainable employment, while corporations spend more on 'social responsibility' public-relations campaigns than on addressing worker complaints, and activists are too focussed on narrow concerns to find common cause with natural allies." The New Yorker "Illuminating... Who knows what will be on the table when the damage of the global crisis is told? At the very least, one may hope for a return to security, sensible financial regulation, and a renewed interest in economic equity. Other worlds are possible, and with luck thinkers like Ross can point the way to imagining them more fully." BookForum "...whereas for Euro-Americans the path is from Keynesian consensus to its unravelling by the savagery of neoliberal capitalism. Ross is one of those keen to point out that now, with historical hindsight, the Keynesian moment where state security (in the form of public pensions, education and so on) offsets the wilder excesses of capital increasingly looks like a historical blip.