Социологический журнал (Mar 2023)
[Rev.] From precarious employment to precarization of life. Ed. by Zh.T. Toshchenko. Moscow: Ves’ Mir publ., 2022
Abstract
This article is a review of the recently published collective monograph edited by corresponding member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Doctor of Philosophy, Professor Zh. Toshchenko, titled “From precarious employment to precarization of life” (2022). The publication of the reviewed book was made possible thanks to financial assistance from “ARB-Forum M”. It is based on an extensive database of representative all-Russian sociological research conducted between 2014 and 2021. The two main goals of the book were: (a) to substantiate that “precarization of labor” has a pronounced tendency to project instability onto other areas of life; (b) to identify a creative and applied concept of “precarization of life” in relation to the emerging proto-class — the precariat. According to the reviewers, the author’s team managed, as usual, to give the reader a good understanding of the origins of how the precariat came about and its further development in society. At the same time, the authors of the work note that precarization is a complex phenomenon that should not be viewed through the prism of a single scientific discipline or sphere, as it was clearly illustrated to us in the book that precarization has already found its way into such spheres as healthcare, culture, education, politics, economics, household needs, i.e. into the public and private life of Russian people. But perhaps the most significant question is whether precarization can cease? The authors do not give the reader their own unambiguous answer to this question, but recognize that it is on the rise all around the world. In the reviewers’ opinion, this collective monograph makes a worthy contribution to the study of the precarization of life (and the precariat in general). At the end of the article, its authors summarize the main propositions of the book, briefly mentioning them, and also point out the weak and rather contradictory (controversial) sides of the reviewed monograph that require much more thorough study in the future.
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