Monographs & Edited Collections (4,728 posts)

Temp covers a century of economic history in which a dismal dynamic emerges. First, corporations grow immense and finance becomes central to their operation. Unions fight to harness them, and succeed. This creates stable, “good” jobs for the first time in history. Corporations then abandon immensity, self-immolate, and shrink. They slip labor’s collar. Free of unions, businesses embrace risk-taking, and hire temporary workers that don’t require benefits. Businesses fare the transition fine. Workers do not. Wages stagnate in the 1970s and continue to do so to this day.

These are the faces of poverty in North Carolina: scores of homeless men, women, and children take refuge in makeshift camps, barely hidden in the woods near some of our most affluent neighborhoods. Hundreds wait in lines hours long to receive basic health care at underfunded free clinics. In large cities and small towns, children–especially children of color–rely on meals at their schools to keep hunger at bay, while parents struggle in jobs that fail to pay living wages.

American research universities are the envy of those around the world. So why is the value of these institutions so frequently questioned by politicians, pundits and others?

The contributors use psychoanalysis to expose the unconscious desires, excesses, and antagonisms that accompany the world of economic flows, cultural circulation, and sociopolitical change.