Bullshit job
A bullshit job or pseudowork[1] is meaningless or unnecessary wage labour which the worker is obliged to pretend to have a purpose.[2] Polling in the United Kingdom and the Netherlands indicates that around 40% of workers consider their job to fit this description.[3]
The concept was coined by anthropologist David Graeber in a 2013 essay in Strike Magazine, On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs, and elaborated upon in his 2018 book Bullshit Jobs.[3]
Graeber also formulated the concept of bullshitization, where previously meaningful work turns into a bullshit job through corporatization, marketization or managerialism.[4] This has been applied to academia, which Graeber and others contend has been bullshitized by the expansion of managerial roles and administrative work caused by neoliberal educational reforms,[5][6][7] contributing to the erosion of academic freedom.[8]
See also
- Americans with No Abilities Act
- Boondoggle
- Busywork
- Critique of work
- Dilbert principle
- Emotional labour
- Front organization
- Interpassivity
- Make-work job
- McJob
- On Bullshit
- Parkinson's law
- Presenteeism
- Quaternary sector of the economy
- Refusal of work
- Sinecure
- Underemployment
- Vacuum activity
- Workhouse
References
- ^ Fogh Jensen, Anders; Nørmark, Dennis (2021). Pseudowork: How we ended up being busy doing nothing. Copenhagen: Gyldendal.
- ^ Graeber, David (2018). Bullshit Jobs. Simon & Schuster. p. 10. ISBN 978-1-5011-4331-1.
- ^ a b Heller, Nathan (2018-07-06). "The Bullshit-Job Boom". The New Yorker.
- ^ Graeber, David (2018-05-06). "Are You in a BS Job? In Academe, You're Hardly Alone". The Chronicle of Higher Education.
- ^ Kezar, Adrianna; DePaola, Tom; Scott, Daniel T. (2019). The Gig Academy: Mapping Labor in the Neoliberal University. Johns Hopkins University Press. pp. 69–70. ISBN 978-1-4214-3271-7 – via Google Books.
- ^ Maiese, Michelle; Hanna, Robert (2019). The Mind-Body Politic. Springer. p. 146. ISBN 978-3-030-19546-5 – via Google Books.
- ^ Delucchi, Michael; Dadzie, Richard B.; Dean, Erik; Pham, Xuan (2021-06-17). "What's that smell? Bullshit jobs in higher education". Review of Social Economy: 1–22. doi:10.1080/00346764.2021.1940255. ISSN 0034-6764. S2CID 237792077.
- ^ Reichman, Henry (2019). The Future of Academic Freedom. Johns Hopkins University Press. p. 5. ISBN 978-1-4214-2859-8 – via Google Books.
Further reading
- Your Call Is Important to Us: The Truth About Bullshit by Laura Penny
External links
- On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs, Strike Magazine (August 2013)
- v
- t
- e
- Abbie Hoffman
- Edward Bellamy
- Alfredo M. Bonanno
- André Gorz
- Bob Black
- Günther Anders
- Guy Debord
- Heinrich Böll
- Ivan Illich
- Mikhail Bakunin
- Paul Lafargue
- Walter Benjamin
- Antonio Negri
- Bertrand Russell
- Friedrich Nietzsche
- Henry David Thoreau
- Herbert Marcuse
- Jerry Rubin
- Josef Pieper
- Karl Marx
- Max Stirner
- Max Weber
- Pierre-Joseph Proudhon
- Raoul Vaneigem
- Renzo Novatore
- Zo d'Axa
- 996 working hour system
- Abusive supervision
- Aktion Arbeitsscheu Reich
- All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy
- Autonomism
- Bullshit job
- Corporatocracy
- Cycle of poverty
- Dolce far niente
- Effects of overtime
- Extermination through labour
- Flextime
- Forced labour
- Four-day workweek
- Uberisation / Gig worker
- Happiness economics
- Karoshi
- Neijuan
- Occupational burnout
- Occupational safety and health
- Occupational stress
- Orange S.A. suicides
- Overwork
- Post-work society
- Precariat
- Protestant work ethic
- Refusal of work
- Right to rest and leisure
- Sampo generation
- Six-hour day
- Tang ping
- Technological unemployment
- Toxic workplace
- Wage slavery
- Work ethic
- Workaholic
- Working poor
- Work–life interface
- Anekdote zur Senkung der Arbeitsmoral
- Bartleby, the Scrivener
- Bonjour paresse
- Bullshit Jobs
- The Conquest of Bread
- Critique of Economic Reason
- Fight Club
- Future Primitive and Other Essays
- In Praise of Idleness and Other Essays
- Inventing the Future
- Manifesto Against Work
- New Escapologist
- On the Poverty of Student Life
- The Society of the Spectacle
- Steal This Book
- The Abolition of Work
- The End of Work
- The Human Use of Human Beings
- The Idler
- The Revolution of Everyday Life
- The Right to Be Lazy
- The Soul at Work: From Alienation to Autonomy
This economic theory related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |
- v
- t
- e
This job-, occupation-, or vocation-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |
- v
- t
- e
This labor-related article is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it. |
- v
- t
- e