196: Gigging, Making, Doing: An Anthropology of Work and Labor

Instructor: Cori Hayden

Term: Fall 2019 

Time: T 10:00am – 11:59am

Room: 221 Kroeber

What does work look and feel like today, in the Bay Area, and far beyond?  How do we think about the rise of the gig economy (Uber, Caviar, Task Rabbit), along with the re-entrenchment of nationalist, anti-immigration politics in the U.S. and elsewhere?  Where is the line between work and leisure in a digital economy? Are scrolling and clicking forms of labor?  Is there room today to imagine work as a source of pleasure and power?  Are there alternatives to work as the organizing locus for life and livelihood?  Why would we even ask that question?  In this senior seminar, readings in anthropology, informed by political economy, feminist theory, geography, and postcolonial theory, will give us a chance to reflect together on how work and labor have been imagined and lived in different contexts, how they are changing, and what the consequences of these changes may be, at both intimately-felt and global scales.

Service category