Bullshit Jobs: A TheoryFrom 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). |
Contents
Chapter 1 | 1 |
Why a Mafia Hit Man Is Not a Good Example of a Bullshit Job On | 10 |
the Common Misconception That Bullshit Jobs Are Confined Largely to | 16 |
Public Sector Why Hairdressers Are a Poor Example of a Bullshit Job | 23 |
The Five Major Varieties of Bullshit Jobs 1 What Flunkies Do 2 What | 63 |
Found Himself Unable to Handle the Situation Concerning the Experience | 73 |
Youth Why Many of Our Fundamental Assumptions on Human Motivation | 80 |
Chapter 4 | 101 |
Not How Managerial Feudalism Manifests Itself in the Creative Industries | 181 |
On the Impossibility of Developing an Absolute Measure of Value | 196 |
to Pin Down What It Is Concerning the Inverse Relationship Between | 207 |
It On the Theological Roots of Our Attitudes Toward Labor On the Origins | 222 |
by Embracing the Labor Theory of Value Concerning the Key Flaw in | 232 |
How the Owners of Capital Exploited That Flaw How over the Course of | 239 |
Chapter 7 | 245 |
Maintained by a Balance of Resentments How the Current Crisis over | 265 |
Why Having a Bullshit Job Is Not Always Necessarily That Bad On the Misery | 133 |
A Brief Excursus on Causality and the Nature of Sociological Explanation | 151 |
Why the Financial Industry Might Be Considered a Paradigm for Bullshit | 164 |
Acknowledgments | 287 |
| 327 | |
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