Anthropology of Work

Catalog description

This course reviews major themes in the anthropological study of work and political economy. What does it mean to work? What is work, and what are its politics? How do everyday acts of labor sit within broader political economic processes? These are questions that are attuned to both classic issues in political economy and the most recent debates that surround work and its future. Moving across different geographical and historical contexts, we will seek to unpack work and its classed, gendered, and racialized dimensions. Through a discussion of classic and recent ethnographic and theoretical texts, we will examine what it might mean to work well with others, and what labor might look like in a future defined by intensified forms of loss and uncertainty.