Exploring professional passenger driving and the gig economy through feminist theories of labor

Are taxi drivers in today’s era of the ride-hail app performing care work akin to domestic and household labor? So argue the authors of Spent behind the Wheel. Bringing together sociological and legal perspectives with feminist theoretical insights, Julietta Hua and Kasturi Ray examine the case study of contemporary professional passenger driving in the United States. On the one hand, they show, the rise of the gig economy has brought new attention to the industry of professional passenger driving. On the other hand, the vulnerabilities that professional drivers experience remain hidden. 

Drawing on interviews with drivers, labor organizers, and members of licensing commissions, as well as case law and other published resources, Hua and Ray argue that working for ride-hail companies like Uber and Lyft shares similarities with driving for taxi companies in the impact on driver lives. Lyft and Uber sell the idea of industry disruption, but in fact they entrench long-standing modes of extracting the reproductive labor of their drivers for the benefit of consumer lives. Reproductive labor—conventionally understood as feminized labor—is extracted, but masked, behind the masculinized, racialized bodies of drivers. Professional driving is thus best understood alongside domestic and other gendered service work as reproductive labors devalued and often demonetized to benefit the national economy. 

Spent behind the Wheel is a must for readers interested in critical studies of technological change and the gig economy, showing how drivers’ capacities are drained for the benefit of riders, corporations, and the maintenance of the racial state. 

Christ's Crucifixion is one of the most recognized images in Western culture, and it has come to stand as a universal symbol of both suffering and salvation. But often overlooked is the fact that ultimately the Crucifixion is a scene of capital punishment. Mitchell Merback reconstructs the religious, legal, and historical context of the Crucifixion and of other images of public torture. The result is a fascinating account of a time when criminal justice and religion were entirely interrelated and punishment was a visual spectacle devoured by a popular audience.

Merback compares the images of Christ's Crucifixion with those of the two thieves who met their fate beside Jesus. In paintings by well-known Northern European masters and provincial painters alike, Merback finds the two thieves subjected to incredible cruelty, cruelty that artists could not depict in their scenes of Christ's Crucifixion because of theological requirements. Through these representations Merback explores the ways audiences in early modern Europe understood images of physical suffering and execution. The frequently shocking works also provide a perspective from which Merback examines the live spectacle of public torture and execution and how audiences were encouraged by the Church and the State to react to the experience. Throughout, Merback traces the intricate and extraordinary connections among religious art, devotional practice, bodily pain, punishment, and judicial spectatorship.

Keenly aware of the difficulties involved in discussing images of atrocious violence but determined to make them historically comprehensible, Merback has written an informed and provocative study that reveals the rituals of medieval criminal justice and the visual experiences they engendered.

Christ's Crucifixion is one of the most recognized images in Western culture, and it has come to stand as a universal symbol of both suffering and salvation. But often overlooked is the fact that ultimately the Crucifixion is a scene of capital punishment. Mitchell Merback reconstructs the religious, legal, and historical context of the Crucifixion and of other images of public torture. The result is a fascinating account of a time when criminal justice and religion were entirely interrelated and punishment was a visual spectacle devoured by a popular audience.

Merback compares the images of Christ's Crucifixion with those of the two thieves who met their fate beside Jesus. In paintings by well-known Northern European masters and provincial painters alike, Merback finds the two thieves subjected to incredible cruelty, cruelty that artists could not depict in their scenes of Christ's Crucifixion because of theological requirements. Through these representations Merback explores the ways audiences in early modern Europe understood images of physical suffering and execution. The frequently shocking works also provide a perspective from which Merback examines the live spectacle of public torture and execution and how audiences were encouraged by the Church and the State to react to the experience. Throughout, Merback traces the intricate and extraordinary connections among religious art, devotional practice, bodily pain, punishment, and judicial spectatorship.

Keenly aware of the difficulties involved in discussing images of atrocious violence but determined to make them historically comprehensible, Merback has written an informed and provocative study that reveals the rituals of medieval criminal justice and the visual experiences they engendered.