On January 29, join us for a talk on Down and Out in Utopia with cultural anthropologist & ASF Fellow Kelly McKowen! With The Atlantic writer Ellen Cushing, McKowen will discuss his research into the experiences of unemployment in social democratic welfare systems, the topic of his forthcoming Down and Out in Utopia: Unemployment as Moral Education in Norway from University of Toronto Press.

Based on more than a year of fieldwork among a diverse cast of unemployed in Oslo, Down and Out in Utopia offers unparalleled insight into life without work in one of the world’s wealthiest and most egalitarian countries. Though both Norway and the United States measure unemployment rates, McKowen argues, the everyday experience of unemployment is very different in a society with a social democratic welfare system, and so too are the lessons that being unemployed teaches people about government, work, welfare, taxes, freedom, and belonging.

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