Rethinking Cultures of Work

Why are we constantly being told that we need to be “entrepreneurial” when thinking about our life goals? Why are we now expected to be on call 24 hours a day, work on the weekends, and sacrifice leisure time for our jobs? Why do we now live in a world where a long-term stable job is considered both undesirable and impossible for most people to achieve? This class asks these questions and encourages you to spend some time on the darker side of corporate culture. In this course, we will discuss key texts in critical management and communication studies and economic sociology potentially including Marx and Engels, Max Weber, Thorstein Veblen, Harry Braverman, Studs Terkel, and Barbara Ehrenreich. Students will get the opportunity to interrogate core issues linked to work culture today including the eroding boundaries between work life and private life, new value systems associated with the seemingly constant need to innovate, and the increasing gigification of the global economy. Students will leave this class with a critical understanding of the often-overlooked attitudes and practices that shape our everyday work experiences, pushing them to rethink their relationship to working and to the workplaces they inhabit.