CFP for CASCA 2013: "Stories about Work in Canada: Futures, Pasts and Presents"

CFP for CASCA 2013: "Stories about Work in Canada: Futures, Pasts and
Presents"



The story told about work in Canada, in public policy, media and
scholarship, is that it is changing, that previously stable forms of labour
and employment are giving way to flexible, contingent and unstable
configurations. These narratives about individual and collective working
lives include both anxieties about the future and nostalgia for the past, as
well as the anticipation of future possibilities (see Sennett 1998, Berlant
2007, Muelebach and Shoshan 2012). But what can looking at these stories of
changing work as socially constructed narratives rather than simple
descriptions reveal about the force of them as narratives? What do these
stories do? What other histories of work do they erase and whose interests
do they serve? How do our own academic stories about work in Canada interact
with the creation of this narrative?



We are seeking papers which engage with particular instantiations of stories
about work in Canada as forms of social action. How do government agencies,
professional associations, unions, activists, and various kinds of workers
mobilize these stories? What form do these stories take? How do stories of
work in Canada engage with different forms of temporalities (hope, futurity,
nostalgia, etc.)? How do they circulate? Can we see places where these
stories encounter friction rather than flow? What kinds of periodization
(e.g. Fordism, Post-Fordism) do these stories require and what does this
leave out?



Possible topics for papers could include:

-public policy and work

-media discussions about the future of work and immigration

-how different workers and worker groups use narratives about 'work in
Canada'

-union organizing and story-telling

-stories about the future of academic labour

-optimism about 'creative labour' in Canada

-any other related topic



Please submit abstracts of no more than 250 words (include a title), along
with your contact information (name, institutional affiliation, department,
and email address) to Jessica Taylor (University of Toronto) at
jessica.taylor@utoronto.ca by February 23, 2013.