Work after precarity: anthropologies of labor and wageless life [Review] Stephen Campbell (2018) Border capitalism, disrupted: precarity and struggle in a Southeast Asian industrial zone; Penny McCall Howard (2017) Environment, labour and capitalism at sea: “working the ground” in Scotland; Kathleen Millar (2018) Reclaiming the discarded: life and labor on Rio’s garbage dump; Mallika Shakya (2018) Death of an industry: the cultural politics of garment manufacturing during the Maoist Revolution in Nepal

Over the past ten years, the study of labor subjectivities, working conditions, and everyday economic life has been framed by the language of ‘precarity.’ Anthropologists of work and labor have found precarity to be a profoundly useful concept to ‘think with,’ even as their engagement with the term rapidly reveals its limitations and biases. Precarity’s analytical utility lies in linking questions of subjectivity and experience with the study of political economy, providing an analysis of labor that is not artificially separated from how life is lived. This essay explains how anthropologists of work have successfully mobilized a concept of precarity to understand forms of wageless life; how environments are made productive; and the relationship between precarity, class, and dispossession. The anthropology of work is a vibrant, expansive field that situates the imperative to earn a living within wider questions of justice and social reproduction that ultimately come down to how people live and distribute resources amongst themselves on our planet.