This study examines how evolving labour market regulations and economic drivers shape the proliferation of precarious employment in knowledge and communication sectors. Drawing on a critical cultural political economy framework, we map the deregulatory shifts eroding collectively negotiated rights and imposing “compulsory flexibility” that amplifies worker vulnerability. We extend Sum and Jessop’s analysis by integrating institutional economics and power-relations theory to capture the market imperatives underpinning precariatisation. Our refined conceptualisation highlights how economic structures, regulatory frameworks, and information-system dynamics converge to generate insecure work. Through a synthesis of Foucauldian analytics, phenomenological insights, and economic analysis, we illuminate the lived experiences of knowledge workers and the systemic forces driving precarity. We illustrate these dynamics with examples from academic and communicative sectors, demonstrating the universal relevance of precariatisation across knowledge economies. This tighter economic lens reveals actionable pathways for equitable labour regulation, offering policy recommendations to stabilise working conditions and rebalance power in knowledge-driven market

The regulation of labour market attachment and working conditions now appears to be a thoroughly cultural and political issue, which is just as much a subjection to compulsory flexibility in association with the deregulation of collectively attained rights. Precarious working life is an age-old form of exploitation, expanding in our days to the academic fields of communication work and knowledge work. Sum and Jessop offer an approach to the theoretical understanding of this current epoch. However, their leaning on Foucault together with information science and systems science set a decisive limit to any phenomenological perspective of cultural and political experience – and thus hamper their project of outlining a cultural political economy. Still, Sum and Jessop’s important contribution to the notion of a cultural political economy must be recognized, not least when it comes to grasping the precariatisation of academic knowledge work and communication work.

Corporeality and historicity in our very experience are focal points of the phenomenological movement as it becomes attentive to human existence. In existential and hermeneutic phenomenology, historicity is understood as experienced meaning: temporality. This actualizes the Aristotelian conception of historical development as the realization of power potentials, where culture and reason are associated with human nature. Of interest is also the post-Hegelian thinking of history as both de-centered and centered existence. In the face of contemporary difficulties (ever since Hegel) in grasping historicity as connected nature and reason, phenomenology points to the bodily intentionality, with which meaning as well as experience are structured on different levels of being in human existence: aesthetic presence, body-in-the-world, speech, praxis, action, and thinking.

De eksistentielle problemer, man befinder sig i som en personligeksistens, har siden 1800-tallet været tematiseret i bl.a.Søren Kierkegaards arbejder. Med formationen af den eksistentiellefænomenologi hos Martin Heidegger og franske fænomenologersom Maurice Merleau-Ponty tilbydes et særligt erfaringsbaseretgrundlag for at analysere eksistensen. I denneartikel skitserer vi eksistensopfattelser, der har gjort sig gældendei den eksistentielle fænomenologi. De drejer sig omautenticitet versus fremmedgørelse i den moderne tilværelse,og de samler sig i sidste instans i afdækningen af en universelkropslig fornuftsform, den såkaldte ”intentionalitet”. Indgåendeanalyser af de psykosociale og sociokulturelle vilkår i denmoderne livsverden kan ikke finde sted uden at tematisere,hvordan det kropslige grundlag for menneskets eksistens erinvolveret i disse vilkår. Vi fremhæver sider af eksistensen, sommeget ofte overses i dag, nemlig de kollektive aspekter og deanonyme aspekter af eksistensen. Disse aspekter kalder på teoretiskog empirisk opmærksomhed, ligesom den personlige eksistensgør det. Vejvisere kan være Hannah Arendts redegørelsefor de naturlige grundbetingelser for den menneskelige eksistens,Jan Patockas fokus på eksistensen som virkeliggørelse afbetydningsfulde potentialer i menneskelivet og Paul Ricoeursdiskussion af de identitetsskabende relationer mellem oplevethistorie og narrativ historie. Artiklen sammenfatter den eksistentiellefænomenologis forståelse af tilværelsen i en antropologiskeksistensopfattelse. Afslutningsvist skitseres denne forståelsesrelevans for anvendt psykologi, især socialpsykologiskeog klinisk-psykologiske områder.

Based upon a brief outline of existential-phenomenological ontology we present a theoretical and practical understanding of human being, which is suited for a methodologically reflected approach to qualitative research. We present the phenomenological distinction between three dimensions of corporeal intentionality (structural, generative and dialectic intentionality) that form elementary events and structures of meaning. Various aspects of human being are better scrutinized with these concepts of intentionality, such as the association of individual being or collective being (e.g. groups) with the less differentiated anonymity of human being. The aim of our framework is to support the qualitative researcher in grasping the experience of the human life in closer accord with how this being actually unfolds and is lived. Application of the presented framework is illuminated with empirical examples from educational, health and psychological contexts. Finally, we discuss the methodological implications that our approach has for qualitative investigations of human being.

Problem and background: There is a lack of literature about what constitutes good midwifery care for women who have epidural analgesia during labour. It is known that an increasing number of women receive epidural analgesia for labour pain. We also know that while women rate the painkilling effect of the epidural analgesia as high, in general, their satisfaction with labour is unchanged or even lower when epidural analgesia is used.Question: How do women experience being in labour with epidural analgesia, and what kind of midwifery care do they, consequently, need?Methods: A field study and semi-structured interviews were conducted on a phenomenological basis. Nine nulliparous women were observed from initiation of epidural analgesia until birth of their baby. They were interviewed the day after the birth and again 2 months later. The involved midwives were interviewed 2-3 h after the birth.Findings: Initiation of epidural analgesia can have considerable implications for women's experience of labour. Two different types of emotional reactions towards epidural analgesia are distinguished, one of which is particularly marked by a subtle sense of worry and ambivalence.Another important finding refers to the labouring woman's relationship with the midwife, which represents an essential influencing factor on the woman' experience of labour. Within this relationship, some rather unnoticed matters of communication and recognition appear to be of decisive significance.Conclusion: After initiation of epidural analgesia the requirements of midwifery care seem to go beyond how women verbalise and define their own needs. The midwife should be attentive to the labouring woman's type of emotional reaction to epidural analgesia and her possible intricate worries. (C) 2014 Australian College of Midwives. Published by Elsevier Australia (a division of Reed International Books Australia Pty Ltd). All rights reserved.