Precarious Economies, Ronald Walter Greene

Ronald Walter Greene, green179@umn.edu 

This working group focuses on the conceptual potential of precarity for understanding the interface between labor and capital in the UNR Campus Master Plan’s Gateway Precinct, designed to connect university/commercial/and public places. This working group will investigate the cultural and constructive labor associated with transforming the Gateway Precinct. Participants will read theory by Judith Butler, Hannah Lewis, and others before breaking into subgroups to analyze materials associated with the construction of the project—including the physical setting and resources on the construction industry, labor unions, and migrant labor. The central question of this group might be summarized as follows: How does the gateway encourage different models of precarity for those working, living, and studying in the passageway between the campus and the community and how might those models of precarity allow for and/or govern new models of cooperation and cohabitation?