‘I'm still a hustler’: entrepreneurial responses to precarity by participants in phase I clinical trials

Abstract

This paper questions the implications of entrepreneurial responses to conditions of employment precarity by ‘healthy volunteers’ in phase I clinical trials in the United States. Such individuals are typically serial participants who often identify as professional volunteers and seek out drug studies as their primary source of income. Drawing on extensive qualitative research, this paper illustrates how healthy volunteers selectively import the identity of ‘hustler’ from the street environment and reposition it as connoting a set of valuable creative skills that give them a competitive edge over other participants. An entrepreneurial ethos allows them to view personal sacrifice and exposure to potentially dangerous drugs as smart investments leading to financially stable futures. These discursive moves normalize extractive, and at times dehumanizing, labour relations that offload expenses and risks to workers.     

Neighbourhood Governance: Contested Rationales within a Multi-Level Setting – A Study of Manchester

‘Neighbourhood’ is a long standing concept in local governance which was re-energised as part of the post-1997 New Labour policy paradigm. This paper builds on the work of Lowndes and Sullivan which identified four distinct rationales for neighbourhood working – civic, social, political and economic. The utility of the framework is explored through primary research in Manchester, UK. The research shows that different rationales are held by actors at different locations within the complex system of multi-level governance within which neighbourhood policy is made and implemented. Neighbourhood approaches to urban regeneration exist within a congested governance environment. In Manchester, regeneration has been strongly driven by the self-styled ‘Team Manchester’ who have provided an urban entrepreneurial vision for change in the city. Significantly, however, interventions at the neighbourhood level have shown potential for creating opportunities for citizen and community dissent and empowerment not subsumed with the narrative of the entrepreneurial city. Lowndes and Sullivan's framework provides important analytical building blocks and illuminating tools for understanding neighbourhood approaches. This research points to the merit of a dynamic approach recognising competing perspectives and contested agendas.     

When Local Comes to Town: Governing Local Agriculture in the South Carolina Lowcountry

The South Carolina Lowcountry—the coastal region centered on Charleston—has developed a vibrant local food system over the past several decades. This article examines the role of governance institutions in cultivating local-market farmers and the broader agricultural landscape. It argues that the region’s institutions of agricultural governance produce a farmer characterized by “entrepreneurial nostalgia”—put simply, the articulation of entrepreneurial and nostalgic subjects. This farmer subjectivity in many ways fits within what is generally deemed a neoliberal mode of being, yet this article also emphasizes, contrary to much of the work on neoliberalism, the racial politics of such a subject position. Entrepreneurial nostalgia not only emphasizes individualism and the marketing of the self but it does so in a way that aligns with both colorblind and liberal-multicultural forms of racism. The article closes by reflecting on potential openings for reworking this farmer subjectivity.