Syllabus
The syllabus presented here was taught two years ago. However, the general outline of the course, topics, and literature in the summer semester of 2023/2024 will remain the same. The finalized syllabus will be publicized and discussed at our first meeting on Monday, February 19, 2024.
Week 1 (23. 2. 2022) Introduction
Week 2 (2. 3. 2022) From standard employment relation to precarious workMrozowicki, A., & Trappmann, V. Precarity as a Biographical Problem? Young Workers Living with Precarity in Germany and Poland. Work, employment and society, 0(0), 0950017020936898. https://doi.org/10.1177/0950017020936898Precarias a la deriva (2004). adrift through the circuits of feminized precarious work. Feminist Review(77), 157-161.
Week 3 (9. 3. 2022) Productivity and time-management in factory and professional workGregg, M. (2018). Counterproductive : time management in the knowledge economy. Duke University Press. Chapter 2: Executive athleticism (pp. 53 – 77).Andrijasevic, R. (2021). 'Just-in-time labour': Time-based management in the age of on-demand manufacturing. In R. Andrijasevic (Ed.), Media and management (pp. 30 – 63). Meson Press.
Week 4 (16. 3. 2022) Work’s intimacyGregg, M. (2011). Work's intimacy. Polity. Chapter 2: Working from home (pp. 39 – 55); Chapter 7: Home offices and remote parents (pp. 121 – 137).
Week 5 (23. 3. 2022) Work, family and private life articulationWarren, T. (2015). Work–life balance/imbalance: the dominance of the middle class and the neglect of the working class. The British Journal of Sociology, 66(4), 691-717. https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-4446.12160Smith, A., & McBride, J. (2021). ‘Working to Live, Not Living to Work’: Low-Paid Multiple Employment and Work–Life Articulation. Work, employment and society, 35(2), 256-276. https://doi.org/10.1177/0950017020942645
Week 6 (30. 3. 2022) Shorter working hoursWeeks, K. (2011). The problem with work : feminism, Marxism, antiwork politics, and postwork imaginaries. Duke University Press. Chapter 4: „Hours for what we will“ (pp. 151 – 174).Veltman, A. (2022). Leisure and respect for working people. In K. Breen & J.-P. Deranty (Eds.), Politics and ethics of contemporary work : whither work? (pp. 59 - 71). Routledge.
Week 7 (6. 4. 2022) Domestic laborFarris, S. R. (2012). Femonationalism and the "regular" army of labor called migrant women. History of the Present, 2(2), 184-199. https://doi.org/10.5406/historypresent.2.2.0184Huws, U. (2019). The Hassle of Housework: Digitalisation and the Commodification of Domestic Labour. Feminist Review, 123(1), 8-23. https://doi.org/10.1177/0141778919879725
Week 8 (13. 4. 2022) Reading week
Week 9 (20. 4. 2022) The crisis of careFraser, N. (2016). Contradictions of capital and care. New Left Review(100), 99-117.Hanrahan, N. W., & Amsler, S. (2022). “Who else is gonna do it if we don't?” Gender, education, and the crisis of care in the 2018 West Virginia teachers' strike. Gender, Work & Organization, 29(1), 151-166. https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1111/gwao.12739
Week 10 (27. 4. 2022) “Frontline” work during the covid-19 pandemicFarris, S., Yuval-Davis, N., & Rottenberg, C. (2021). The Frontline as Performative Frame: An Analysis of the UK COVID Crisis. State Crime Journal, 10(2), 284-303. https://doi.org/10.13169/statecrime.10.2.0284Hadjisolomou, A., & Simone, S. (2021). Profit over People? Evaluating Morality on the Front Line during the COVID-19 Crisis: A Front-Line Service Manager’s Confession and Regrets. Work, employment and society, 35(2), 396-405. https://doi.org/10.1177/0950017020971561
Week 11 (4. 5. 2022) Emotional and affective laborHochschild, A. R. (1983). The managed heart : commercialization of human feeling. University of California Press. Chapter 6: Feeling management (pp. 89 – 136).Woodcock, J. (2019). Understanding affective labour. In D. Frayne (Ed.), The work cure : critical essays on work and wellness (pp. 61 - 74). PCCS Books.
Week 12 (11. 5. 2022) Burnout and mental health careMurray, N. (2019). No crying in the breakroom. In D. Frayne (Ed.), The work cure : critical essays on work and wellness (pp. 45 - 60). PCCS Books.Chaudhry, S., Yarrow, E., Aldossari, M., & Waterson, E. (2021). An NHS Doctor’s Lived Experience of Burnout during the First Wave of Covid-19. Work, employment and society, 35(6), 1133-1143. https://doi.org/10.1177/09500170211035937
Week 13 (18. 5. 2022) The refusal of workWeeks, K. (2017). Down with Love: Feminist Critique and the New Ideologies of Work. WSQ: Women's Studies Quarterly, 45(3), 37-58. https://muse.jhu.edu/article/674327Weeks, K. (2020). Anti/Postwork Feminist Politics and A Case for Basic Income. tripleC: Communication, Capitalism & Critique. Open Access Journal for a Global Sustainable Information Society, 575-594. https://doi.org/10.31269/triplec.v18i2.1174
Recommended literatureWill be supplemented in a separate file.
Annotation
The course proceeds from the understanding of work in capitalist economy as wage labor and subsequent feminist criticism of this understanding from the perspective of social reproduction.
Following themes are thus covered: wage labor; production/reproduction; Fordist and post-Fordist gender contract; precarious labor; low-paid jobs in manufacturing and services; affective and emotional labor; articulation (reconciliation) of working and family life; union organizing; automation and post-work society; work ethics; disability and work. The readings include feminist, sociological, political and economic theory, case studies, ethnographies and historical writing. The course is taught seminar-style, i.e. it consists mainly of the discussion of assigned readings and films and documentaries. Formal lecturing will be kept to a minimum.