Knowledge Workers in the age of precarity

The world of knowledge work is transformed in the aftermath of economic crisis with impacts on work organization & work contents. This empirical research casts a critical eye over experience & subjectivity within the field of knowledge work in Turin, a city in transition to a new cycle of productions tied to knowledge & events economy. The aim is to outline a qualitative analysis on subjectivity in knowledge workers placing it within the broader debate on the subject. The analysis takes as its main methodological references Bourdieu’s “Practical Reason” & the Italian tradition of social enquiry & co-research. With the development of the knowledge society, the crisis of fordist regulation & the deinstitutionalisation of careers, the inevitable accompaniment to the growth of risk is the emergence of quite new forms & perceptions of precariousness. It is subjectivity more than conformity to procedures which draws career paths. The network & informality typify these professional worlds where the paths of experience can no longer be drawn up ex ante. The informal nature of the relations means networking & liquid norms that demand commitment to work, accountability to clients, and reciprocity among colleagues and, therefore, expose to informal sanctions.