Inequality, Culture and Difference seminar 24^th February 2021, 2-3pm  

The Centre is very happy to welcome Professor Ursula Huws for a talk entitled, 'Reinventing the Welfare State' 

Abstract: 

In this talk, Ursula Huws will discuss some of the ideas in her recent book, Reinventing the Welfare State: Digital Platforms and Public Policies, which looks critically at the UK welfare state and discusses how it might be reinvented for the 21^st century. Drawing on her recent empirical research on platform labour, as well as the conceptual framework she presented in her 2019 book, Labour in Contemporary Capitalism: What Next? she will argue that the welfare systems and labour protection institutions put in place in the mid-20^th century are no longer fit for purpose. Rather than attempting to patch them up, what is now needed is to revisit the original principles that underpinned it and find ways to reapply them in the new context. Looking, in particular, at the principles of universality, redistribution, decommodification and equality, she will ask what kinds of rights workers need in the digital age, how tax and benefit systems can be made more redistributive and how the potential of new technologies can be repurposed to provide new kinds of public service that both support social reproduction and help combat global heating.   

 

Author bio: 

Ursula Huws is Professor of Labour and Globalisation at the University of Hertfordshire. She has been carrying out pioneering research on the economic, social and gender impacts of technological change, employment restructuring and the changing international division of labour since the 1970s, combining scholarship with activism and popular writing. 

for joining information, please write to martin.oshaughnessy@ntu.ac.uk mentioning the title of the talk. 

Blurred Lines: Technologies of Heterosexual Coercion in ‘Sugar Dating’

On the 10th Feb at 2pm our very own Rocío Palomeque Recio will be talking about her fascinating research on 'Sugar dating' in a talk titled Blurred Lines: Technologies of Heterosexual Coercion in ‘Sugar Dating’ - all welcome and please share widely!!

 

Abstract: ‘Sugar dating’ is how a commodified relationship between an older, affluent male –Sugar Daddy– and a younger, financially disempowered female –Sugar Baby– is known. Among the numerous sugar dating websites that have mushroomed in the last decades in Britain to foster this type of encounters, Seeking.com stands out for not only providing an online meet-up place for Sugar Daddies and Babies, but also for acting as the matrix where the ‘sugar’ discourse is constructed. The site functions as a discursive producer of the subject inasmuch as Sugar Babies and Daddies are subjected and subjugated -through a process of assujettissement- by its discursive power. Interviews conducted with four women who had recently acted as Sugar Babies showed how Seeking.com’s discourse permeates the subjects and acts as a ‘technology of coercion’ (Gavey, 1992) that perpetuates hegemonic notions of heterosexuality, undermines the participants’ agency to refuse to engage in sexual intercourse, and effectively ‘blurres the lines’ of sexual consent.