ANT 324 Anthropology of Work

3 hours 

In this course, students will explore the lived experience of labor from an anthropological perspective and problems entailed in understanding the dynamics of work and labor. Topics include: the increasing variety of labor processes; the impact of organizational change in the workplace on work experience; the changing nature of labor markets, cross-culturally; and the difficulties faced by organized labor in the light of the foregoing circumstances. The course explores classical theories of work and labor and case studies drawn from global and local, historical and contemporary, and advanced capitalist and newly industrialized/industrializing contexts. It begins and ends with the human factor: What are people's lived experience of labor in different geographic and cultural settings? In what ways are people the agents of change who have actively transformed the work environments within which they are embedded?