29644

Anthropology of Labour

Žiga Podgornik-Jakil

Kommentar

Throughout history, people have always worked, not only to survive, but also to create material and social conditions that allow them to recover and reproduce. However, Karl Marx (2004 [1867]) has shown that the way people work is shaped by the unequal relations of production between those who must labour to survive and those who can enjoy the labour of others. But how is work different from labour and other activities, as another German philosopher, Hannah Arendt (2013 [1958]), once noted? And what role does work play, for example, for different societies where the distinction between work and non-work is not so clear (Spittler, 2015)? This is the task of this seminar, which aims to introduce classical (Durkheim, 1984 [1893]; Godelier and Ignatieff 1980) and contemporary anthropological and non-anthropological studies of labour that incorporate a variety of issues such as gender (Narotzky, 2014), "race” (Stuesse, 2016), postcoloniality (Appel, 2019), and intimacy (Schields, 2023). The seminar aims not only to deconstruct "Western" notions of work and labour, but also to explore how these notions cannot be reduced to a physical activity, usually performed in an industrial or agricultural setting. Care work and domestic work (Amrith, 2017; Parreñas, 2011) are equally important forms of labour that have often been neglected in social theory. Moreover, with the development of new digital technologies and infrastructures, this seminar will also address new forms of digital (Gregg, 2011), post-Fordist (Hardt and Negri, 2000), affective (Muehlebach, 2011), and platform (Jones, 2021) forms of labour. It will offer methodological tools to examine the meaning of labour in people's everyday lives and its various entanglements with their environment, as well as to understand the emerging labour struggles that address past and contemporary exploitation and discrimination (Kasmir and Carbonella, 2008). Schließen

13 Termine

Regelmäßige Termine der Lehrveranstaltung

Mo, 16:00 - 18:00 13 Termine

Mo, 15.04.2024 16:00 - 18:00

Dozenten:
Dr. Žiga Podgornik-Jakil