• Restructuring Work: the movement for a four day week

  Juliet Schor

  While the pandemic is widely recognized for transforming the spatial structure of work, it has also shaken its temporal foundations. After eighty-five years with little pressure to reduce the standard workweek, a movement to four, rather than five days is taking root in the U.S., as well as globally. Surprisingly, employers are at the forefront of this change. In this talk I will discuss how cultural changes in the workplace and labor market are driving this trend, how it is affecting workers, and why it’s likely to continue.

   

  How to Divide People with Things: Division Entrepreneurs, Wedges, and the Delta Smelt Controversy

  Caleb Scoville

  Drawing on a multi-method analysis of the public sphere controversy surrounding the Delta Smelt, an endangered fish emblematic of California’s so-called “water wars,” I develop the concepts of division entrepreneurs as strategic actors who articulate partisan selves in relation to partisan others, and wedges as divisive cultural objects. Despite the appearance of a conflict about the distribution of water, I show that the dynamics of the Delta Smelt controversy cannot be explained hydrologically. Instead, I trace how conservative division entrepreneurs imbued the species with partisan significance, thus mobilizing it as a wedge. I further show how the Delta Smelt’s particular qualities, including its status as an uncharismatic microfauna, afforded divisive action. Forging new connections among literatures on the construction of social problems, political polarization, and pragmatist cultural sociology, I propose a framework for understanding how strategic actors use objects to shape political senses of “us” and “them.” I suggest that this framework may be particularly useful for understanding the politics of environmental destabilization and decline.

Register here to attend virtually