Cultural Geographies of Precarity

This article introduces a Special Issue on ‘cultural geographies of Precarity’. In recent years, the term precarity has become increasingly prevalent in geographical literature. And yet, to date, there remains limited discussion regarding how precarity is being culturally, as well as socially and economically, entrenched. To that end, this Special Issue provides timely perspectives on the cultural geographies of precarity in two key ways. First, it highlights how precarity is mediated and reproduced through a set of collective affects and imaginaries that not only normalize but often actively celebrate precarious modes of living in contemporary society, by branding them, for example, as innovative, flexible and entrepreneurial. Second, it focuses attention on how precarity is lived and resisted through the materialities and micro-space-times of everyday routines and places. Together, the four papers that constitute this Special Issue highlight the importance of a cultural geographies perspective on precarity in examining and challenging precarity as a new normal, which, in an increasingly precarious world, is a key concern for future geographical scholarship.