From bestselling writer David Graeber—“a master of opening up thought and stimulating debate” (Slate)—a powerful argument against the rise of meaningless, unfulfilling jobs…and their consequences. Does your job make a meaningful contribution to the world? In the spring of 2013, David Graeber asked this question in a playful, provocative essay titled “On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs.” It went viral. After one million online views in seventeen different languages, people all over the world are still debating the answer. There are hordes of people—HR consultants, communication coordinators, telemarketing researchers, corporate lawyers—whose jobs are useless, and, tragically, they know it. These people are caught in bullshit jobs. Graeber explores one of society’s most vexing and deeply felt concerns, indicting among other villains a particular strain of finance capitalism that betrays ideals shared by thinkers ranging from Keynes to Lincoln. “Clever and charismatic” (The New Yorker), Bullshit Jobs gives individuals, corporations, and societies permission to undergo a shift in values, placing creative and caring work at the center of our culture. This book is for everyone who wants to turn their vocation back into an avocation and “a thought-provoking examination of our working lives” (Financial Times).
Liars at least acknowledge that it matters what is true. By virtue of this, Frankfurt writes, bullshit is a greater enemy of the truth than lies are.
At once funny, useful, and tolerably philosophical, this groundbreaking work takes a close look at 100 bullshit jobs -- the money they bring with them, the actual tasks and activities involved (if any), and famous and successful examples of ...
An essential book for our times, The Utopia of Rules is sure to start a million conversations about the institutions that rule over us—and the better, freer world we should, perhaps, begin to imagine for ourselves.
Levi-Strauss, who became a kind of intellectual god in anthropology, made the extraordinary argument that human life could be imagined as consisting of three spheres: language (which consisted of the exchange of words), kinship (which ...
10 Steven Poole, Who Touched Base in My Thought Shower? (London: Sceptre, 2014). 11 Mats Alvesson, The Triumph of Emptiness: Consumption, Higher Education, and Work Organization (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013).
Pinned up at the house beside Mrs Ōmae's, whose nameplate read 'Imakawa', was a poster with the drinking woman's blue silhouette and a Lonely No More! poster that featured a man in place of the young woman. As I went walking around the ...
"This book is a tour de force." --Adam Grant, New York Times bestselling author of Give and Take A revolutionary new history of humankind through the prism of work by leading anthropologist James Suzman Work defines who we are.
South African Medical Journal 103:1009–13. Marks, J. 2013. “The Nature/Culture of Genetic Facts.” Annual Review of Anthropology 42:247–67. 36. Nelkin, D., and M. Susan Lindee. 1995. The DNA Mystique: The Gene as Cultural Icon.
He shows how this work has become emblematic of the shift towards a post-industrial service economy, and all the issues that this produces, such as the destruction of a unionized work force, isolation and alienation, loss of agency and, ...
The first critical study of 'empty labor', the time during which employees engage in non-work activities during the working day.