"We need to be careful with how we use the term work - since its definition affects how we imagine future worlds." (Shaw and Waterstone 2020, in Monteith, William et al. 2021, p. 1)
Work secures livelihoods, prevents poverty, ensures integration and social participation, and strengthens character - these are the premises of modern capitalist labor societies. However, the downsides of work are no less extensive: work increasingly makes people ill, more and more often fails to protect against poverty and exclusion, and increasingly leads to overwork. There is thus a lot wrong with work, and from a sociological perspective this already starts with the reduction of work to regular wage labor. Against this background, the seminar is dedicated to recent as well as international contributions on the topic of work, which deal with theoretical conceptualizations of work, the suffering from work as well as possible ways out of the working society. We will look at new sociological contributions on work, what is demanded from a feminist perspective in relation to work, how work varies globally and what life beyond wage labor might look like.
The seminar will be held in English and will include only English-language literature. Participation requirements include reading the seminar literature and giving a keynote presentation. The seminar is also intended as a place where we can exchange ideas tolerantly, without fear, and openly in a language that is foreign to the most of us.
References:
Monteith, William et al. (Ed.) (2021): Beyond the Wage. Ordinary Work in Diverse Economies. Bristol University Press.
Weeks, Kathi (2011): The Problem with Work. Feminism, Marxism, Antiwork Politics, and Postwork Imaginaries. Duke University Press.
Damaske, Sarah (2021): The Tolls of Uncertainty. How Privilege and the Guilt Gap Shape Unemployment in America. Princeton University Press.
Pettinger, Lynne et al. (Ed.) (2005): A New Sociology of Work? Blackwell Publishing.
Denning, Michael (2010): Wageless Life. In: New Left Review 66, pp. 79-97.
Graeber, David (2018): The Rise of Pointless Work, and What We Can Do About It. Simon&Schuster.
|
