Living with Precariousness - by Christina Lee & Susan Leong (Paperback)

Book Synopsis

Precariousness has become a defining experience in contemporary society, as an inescapable condition and state of being. Living with Precariousness presents a spectrum of timely case studies that explore precarious existences - at individual, collective and structural levels, and as manifested through space and the body. These range from the plight of asylum seekers, to the tiny house movement as a response to affordable housing crises; from the global impacts of climate change, to the daily challenges of living with a chronic illness. This multidisciplinary book illustrates the pervasiveness of precarity, but furthermore shows how those entanglements with other agents, human or otherwise, that put us at risk are also the connections that make living with (and through) precariousness endurable.

Review Quotes

Represents a significant contribution to the study of precarity ... the dedication of the book's authors to depicting the visceral nature of precariousness in this volume is invaluable.
Exertions

The human condition has always been precarious. New technological developments and global communications bombard us with daily warnings about the perils we live with: nuclear weapons, debilitating systems and irrational hatreds. This timely book is a measured assessment of where we are at, and could be heading. A warning: It is not all bad news.

Why is a sense of precariousness so widespread today across diverse situations and ways of life? The collective achievement of this inspiring and beautiful book is to show how a common experience connects people facing different states of vulnerability - from mortal danger in conflict journalism or asylum seeking, to chronic risk in aged care homes and grinding worry about employment and housing - and how they still create strategies for living.

About the Author

Christina Lee is a Senior Lecturer in English and Cultural Studies at Curtin University, Australia. She is the author of Screening Generation X: The Politics and Popular Memory of Youth in Contemporary Cinema (2010), and editor of books including Spectral Spaces and Hauntings: The Affects of Absence (2017) and Violating Time: History, Memory, and Nostalgia in Cinema (2012).

Susan Leong is Honorary Senior Fellow at Edith Cowan University, Australia. She is the author of Global Internet Governance: Influences from Malaysia and Singapore (2020), China's Digital Presence in the Asia-Pacific: Culture, Technology and Platforms (2020), and New Media and the Nation in Malaysia: Malaysianet (2014).