Bridget Kenny
Biographic Data
| ID | 3613653 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Bridget Kenny |
| GIVEN NAMES | Bridget |
| FAMILY NAME | Kenny |
| SIGNATURE | KENNY B |
| AFFILIATIONS | The University of Melbourne |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-2283-356X |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 18 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 58 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 17 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 1 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1998 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 5 |
Exploiting the labour of logistics
Prishani, With you, Together
The same words repeatGentleKindQuietFierceStrongStubbornPrivateGivingCourageousWiseBrilliantBeautifulPrishani and I spent much time together. We went to exhibitions and music. We dined. We drank. W
Young People’s Behavior, Confidence, and Safety when Communicating Online about Self-Harm and Suicide
Young people may search for, or be exposed to, self-harm- and suicide-related content on social media, and they sometimes use these platforms to communicate about their own experiences of self-harm and suicide. Preliminary evidence demonstrates exposure to self-harm and suicide-related content online has both protective and harmful effects. However, research in this area has been hindered by the lack of validated measures of young people’s behavi…
How do Australian social media users experience self-harm and suicide-related content? A National cross-sectional survey comparing young people and adults
Rates of self-harm and suicide appear to be increasing in young people and many attribute this to social media use. However, high quality studies examining young people’s experiences of self-harm and suicide-related content on social media, and the impact on wellbeing, are lacking. An online national cross-sectional survey was conducted between January and March 2024. Quota sampling was used. Participants from across Australia were recruited from…
Participatory Design in Suicide Prevention
BACKGROUND: Current suicide prevention approaches are not adapted to international student needs, and participatory design is a method that may facilitate the development or adaptation of appropriate programmes for this group. METHODS: This qualitative study investigated the experiences of international university students studying in Australia who participated in a co-consultation process to adapt the LivingWorks safeTALK suicide prevention prog…
The ordinary lives of crisis
2020 emerged as a ‘crisis in the world of work’. Reflections upon how the pandemic would accelerate pervasive joblessness and changes in the workplace abounded, while academics and technocrats alike have translated its predicaments as a catalyst for a rapidly coming postwork future. Using illustrative vignettes from our own work on labour in South Africa and Romania, we discuss how the current labour/technology crisis has moved along structural a…
The return of the labour process
From its beginnings, the sociology of work in South Africa has been preoccupied with three enduring themes: skill/deskilling, racism in the workplace, and Fordism/racial Fordism. With the advent of democracy in the 1990s there was a shift away from studying the labour process. We argue in this article that there has been a return to taking seriously the ways new forms of work in this postcolonial context pose new questions to the global study of …
Consumption, Media and Culture in South Africa
Race, rights and South African retail workers
Examining South African retail workers, the article explores some of the complexities and limitations of rights-based demands for national inclusion. The article describes black workers’ historical exclusion from workplace participation and employment rights under the apartheid regime, and the particular ways they sought to be incorporated into workplace decision-making processes and labour law. South African retail workers’ struggles for ‘inclus…
Critical consumption studies in South Africa
Additional informationNotes on contributorsMehita IqaniMehita Iqani is Senior Lecturer in Media Studies at the University of the Witwatersrand. [email protected] KennyBridget Kenny is Associate Professor in the Sociology Department at Wits. [email protected]
Retail, the service worker and the polity
This article argues for viewing debates about consumption – here specifically focused on retail spaces – as attachments to fantasies about participation. It uses the figure of the service worker as index, tracking how she appears and disappears at different historical moments in South African public discussions on consumption. Discussing four moments of debate where the service worker is represented in relation to commitments to consumption, the …
The New Sars
Mothers, Extraordinary Labor, and Amacasual
This article examines changing social meaning embodying legal categories of nonstandard employment within South African retailing between the 1950s and the postapartheid period. Using archival and interview material, the article shows how trade unions constructed part‐time and casual employment through gendered, class, and racial meanings to produce two very different legal categories. Black workers’ rights claims in the 1980s developed within th…
Servicing Modernity
In the late 1960s and early 1970s the National Party raised the problem of black workers entering shop and clerical work. It argued for the introduction of job reservation in the sector because of
Claiming Workplace Citizenship
Selling selves
This article examines the changing labour market and labour process in South African food retailing. It shows that black workers replaced white women in front-line jobs in the 1970s, changed the workplace order, and unified workers around a common collective race and class identity. The article argues, however, that militant and unified East Rand black shop workers became fragmented and marginalised by the late 1990s. The growth of casualisation …
From Insurrectionary Worker to Contingent Citizen
Cities in South Africa, engineered as they were through apartheid, have fundamentally defined experiences of work, residence, leisure, and collective organization of urban and rural dwellers alike. Within the distinctive spaces of urban centers, citizens encounter the more recent difficulties of global economic restructuring as well as the potential to create their own opposition to increased marginalization. Using workplace interviews and life h…
Eroding the Core
Drawing on two case studies of the growth of casualisation and subcontracting in South Africa, this paper shows how 'flexiwork' is being introduced at the same time as South Africa's first democratically elected government is trying to extend basic core rights and standards to large sectors of the workforce that have in the past been excluded from the core labour regulation regime. This shift by employers towards 'flexiwork', in combination with …
Eroding the Core
Drawing on two case studies of the growth of casualisation and subcontracting in South Africa, this paper shows how 'flexiwork' is being introduced at the same time as South Africa's first democratically elected government is trying to extend basic core rights and standards to large sectors of the workforce that have in the past been excluded from the core labour regulation regime. This shift by employers towards 'flexiwork', in combination with …
Servicing Modernity
In the late 1960s and early 1970s the National Party raised the problem of black workers entering shop and clerical work. It argued for the introduction of job reservation in the sector because of
Claiming Workplace Citizenship
Critical consumption studies in South Africa
Additional informationNotes on contributorsMehita IqaniMehita Iqani is Senior Lecturer in Media Studies at the University of the Witwatersrand. [email protected] KennyBridget Kenny is Associate Professor in the Sociology Department at Wits. [email protected]
Selling selves
This article examines the changing labour market and labour process in South African food retailing. It shows that black workers replaced white women in front-line jobs in the 1970s, changed the workplace order, and unified workers around a common collective race and class identity. The article argues, however, that militant and unified East Rand black shop workers became fragmented and marginalised by the late 1990s. The growth of casualisation …
Mothers, Extraordinary Labor, and Amacasual
This article examines changing social meaning embodying legal categories of nonstandard employment within South African retailing between the 1950s and the postapartheid period. Using archival and interview material, the article shows how trade unions constructed part‐time and casual employment through gendered, class, and racial meanings to produce two very different legal categories. Black workers’ rights claims in the 1980s developed within th…
From Insurrectionary Worker to Contingent Citizen
Cities in South Africa, engineered as they were through apartheid, have fundamentally defined experiences of work, residence, leisure, and collective organization of urban and rural dwellers alike. Within the distinctive spaces of urban centers, citizens encounter the more recent difficulties of global economic restructuring as well as the potential to create their own opposition to increased marginalization. Using workplace interviews and life h…
Eroding the Core
Drawing on two case studies of the growth of casualisation and subcontracting in South Africa, this paper shows how 'flexiwork' is being introduced at the same time as South Africa's first democratically elected government is trying to extend basic core rights and standards to large sectors of the workforce that have in the past been excluded from the core labour regulation regime. This shift by employers towards 'flexiwork', in combination with …
From Insurrectionary Worker to Contingent Citizen
Cities in South Africa, engineered as they were through apartheid, have fundamentally defined experiences of work, residence, leisure, and collective organization of urban and rural dwellers alike. Within the distinctive spaces of urban centers, citizens encounter the more recent difficulties of global economic restructuring as well as the potential to create their own opposition to increased marginalization. Using workplace interviews and life h…
Selling selves
This article examines the changing labour market and labour process in South African food retailing. It shows that black workers replaced white women in front-line jobs in the 1970s, changed the workplace order, and unified workers around a common collective race and class identity. The article argues, however, that militant and unified East Rand black shop workers became fragmented and marginalised by the late 1990s. The growth of casualisation …
Claiming Workplace Citizenship
Servicing Modernity
In the late 1960s and early 1970s the National Party raised the problem of black workers entering shop and clerical work. It argued for the introduction of job reservation in the sector because of
Mothers, Extraordinary Labor, and Amacasual
This article examines changing social meaning embodying legal categories of nonstandard employment within South African retailing between the 1950s and the postapartheid period. Using archival and interview material, the article shows how trade unions constructed part‐time and casual employment through gendered, class, and racial meanings to produce two very different legal categories. Black workers’ rights claims in the 1980s developed within th…
The New Sars
Critical consumption studies in South Africa
Additional informationNotes on contributorsMehita IqaniMehita Iqani is Senior Lecturer in Media Studies at the University of the Witwatersrand. [email protected] KennyBridget Kenny is Associate Professor in the Sociology Department at Wits. [email protected]
Retail, the service worker and the polity
This article argues for viewing debates about consumption – here specifically focused on retail spaces – as attachments to fantasies about participation. It uses the figure of the service worker as index, tracking how she appears and disappears at different historical moments in South African public discussions on consumption. Discussing four moments of debate where the service worker is represented in relation to commitments to consumption, the …
Race, rights and South African retail workers
Examining South African retail workers, the article explores some of the complexities and limitations of rights-based demands for national inclusion. The article describes black workers’ historical exclusion from workplace participation and employment rights under the apartheid regime, and the particular ways they sought to be incorporated into workplace decision-making processes and labour law. South African retail workers’ struggles for ‘inclus…
Consumption, Media and Culture in South Africa
The return of the labour process
From its beginnings, the sociology of work in South Africa has been preoccupied with three enduring themes: skill/deskilling, racism in the workplace, and Fordism/racial Fordism. With the advent of democracy in the 1990s there was a shift away from studying the labour process. We argue in this article that there has been a return to taking seriously the ways new forms of work in this postcolonial context pose new questions to the global study of …
The ordinary lives of crisis
2020 emerged as a ‘crisis in the world of work’. Reflections upon how the pandemic would accelerate pervasive joblessness and changes in the workplace abounded, while academics and technocrats alike have translated its predicaments as a catalyst for a rapidly coming postwork future. Using illustrative vignettes from our own work on labour in South Africa and Romania, we discuss how the current labour/technology crisis has moved along structural a…
Participatory Design in Suicide Prevention
BACKGROUND: Current suicide prevention approaches are not adapted to international student needs, and participatory design is a method that may facilitate the development or adaptation of appropriate programmes for this group. METHODS: This qualitative study investigated the experiences of international university students studying in Australia who participated in a co-consultation process to adapt the LivingWorks safeTALK suicide prevention prog…
Prishani, With you, Together
The same words repeatGentleKindQuietFierceStrongStubbornPrivateGivingCourageousWiseBrilliantBeautifulPrishani and I spent much time together. We went to exhibitions and music. We dined. We drank. W
Young People’s Behavior, Confidence, and Safety when Communicating Online about Self-Harm and Suicide
Young people may search for, or be exposed to, self-harm- and suicide-related content on social media, and they sometimes use these platforms to communicate about their own experiences of self-harm and suicide. Preliminary evidence demonstrates exposure to self-harm and suicide-related content online has both protective and harmful effects. However, research in this area has been hindered by the lack of validated measures of young people’s behavi…
How do Australian social media users experience self-harm and suicide-related content? A National cross-sectional survey comparing young people and adults
Rates of self-harm and suicide appear to be increasing in young people and many attribute this to social media use. However, high quality studies examining young people’s experiences of self-harm and suicide-related content on social media, and the impact on wellbeing, are lacking. An online national cross-sectional survey was conducted between January and March 2024. Quota sampling was used. Participants from across Australia were recruited from…
Exploiting the labour of logistics
Sociology (11 works) · Political science (10 works) · Law (8 works) · Labor Movements and Unions (7 works) · Gender Studies (6 works) · Politics (6 works) · Economics (5 works) · Law (5 works) · Political economy (5 works) · Employment and Welfare Studies (4 works)