Fisher Jill A, Wood Megan M, Monahan Torin
Department of Social Medicine & Center for Bioethics, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC, USA.
Department of Communication, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Chapel Hill, NC, USA.
J Cult Econ. 2021;14(4):464-484. doi: 10.1080/17530350.2020.1850504. Epub 2020 Dec 21.
Speculation has become a normalized occupational strategy and quotidian economic rationality that extends throughout society. Although there are many contemporary articulations of speculation, this article focuses on contract labor as a domain of financialization. Seen through this lens, contract labor can be understood as a speculative investment strategy wherein individuals leverage whatever assets they have at their disposal-savings, time, bodily health-to capture economic advantages. In particular, we explore the speculative practices of healthy individuals who enroll in pharmaceutical drug trials as their primary or critical source of income. Mobilizing speculative logics to maximize the money they can earn from their clinical trial participation, these contract workers employ what we term a . This speculative calculus valorizes fictional projections of significant long-term future income over present financial opportunities. For the economically precarious individuals in our study, we argue that rather than effectively increasing their income, speculation on contract work serves a compensatory function, providing an important-but ultimately inadequate-sense of control over market conditions that thrive upon workers' economic insecurity.
投机已成为一种常态化的职业策略和日常经济理性，且在整个社会中蔓延。尽管当下对投机有诸多阐释，但本文聚焦于作为金融化领域的合同工。从这个角度看，合同工可被理解为一种投机性投资策略，即个人利用他们所拥有的任何可支配资产——储蓄、时间、身体健康——来获取经济优势。特别是，我们探讨了那些将参与药物试验作为主要或关键收入来源的健康个体的投机行为。这些合同工运用投机逻辑来最大化他们从参与临床试验中所能赚取的金钱，采用了我们所称的[此处原文缺失具体内容]。这种投机计算将对未来长期可观收入的虚构预测置于当前金融机会之上。对于我们研究中经济不稳定的个体，我们认为，对合同工作的投机并非有效增加他们的收入，而是起到一种补偿作用，提供一种对基于工人经济不安全而繁荣的市场状况的重要但最终并不充分的控制感。
