A Precariat Charter: From Denizens to Citizens
Guy Standing - A&C Black, 2014
Guy
Standing's immensely influential 2011 book introduced the Precariat as
an emerging mass class, characterized by inequality and insecurity.
Standing outlined the increasingly global nature of the Precariat as a
social phenomenon, especially in the light of the social unrest
characterized by the Occupy movements. He outlined the political risks
they might pose, and at what might be done to diminish inequality and
allow such workers to find a more stable labour identity. His concept
and his conclusions have been widely taken up by thinkers from Noam
Chomsky to Zygmunt Bauman, by political activists and by policy-makers.
This
new book takes the debate a stage further, looking in more detail at
the kind of progressive politics that might form the vision of a Good
Society in which such inequality, and the instability it produces, is
reduced.
A Precariat Charter discusses how rights -
political, civil, social and economic - have been denied to the
Precariat, and argues for the importance of redefining our social
contract around notions of associational freedom, agency and the
commons.
