What Gives?: Formal Change after Catastrophe (NeMLA 2022)
In the wake of COVID, some workers have been deemed essential, forced to put their lives at risk to keep the market moving or care for those with the means to stay off the frontlines. While these jobs may be crucial, those who perform them are frequently treated as exchangeable.Yet as workers have become interchangeable, a fantastical contrast has emerged in the form of the non-fungible token (NFT): at the same time that stable employment and livable wages have been cut in the interest of profit, digital creations become irreplaceable tokens of payment. The catastrophic impact of the pandemic shows which systems of exchange are malleable or fluid and which remain brittle or stagnant.