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Editorial

Publication at Faculty of Arts |
2019

Abstract

Marx considered the creation of relative surplus populations inevitable for capital-ist accumulation - "the general law of capitalist accumulation". Since the 1980s, more and more scholars based in various disciplines have been stressing the unprec-edented manner and scope in which post-industrial societies produce groups of peo-ple who have been framed surplus, disposable, expendable, redundant within the emerging international regimes of flexible accumulation (e.g.

Wolf 1982; Ong 1988; Harvey 1989; Roseberry 1997; Harvey 2005; McIntyre 2011; Carrier and Kalb 2015). The representation of the worker as disposable constitutes an efficient strategy of disclination through uncertainty as she chooses docility over being disposed of to "permanent surplus population" (Peck and Theodore 2001; Yates 2011).

Relative surplus populations live under the condition of insecurity and constraint while being dispossessed of previous forms of livelihoods and sense of autonomy and subjected to a specific symbolic economy representing them as essentially dangerous and socially inadapt-able (Kalb 2011; Standing 2011 and many others).