Schedule
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Wednesday, September 4 First day of class.
WHAT'S NEW ABOUT THE NEW ECONOMY? Monday, September 9 Sweet & Meiskins, Changing Contours of Work, chaps. 1-2. Silver, Hilary. 2023. "Working from Home: Before and After the Pandemic." Contexts 22(1): 66-70. Thompson, Derek. 2024. "White-Collar Work Is Just Meetings Now." The Atlantic, July 9. Harter, Jim. 2023. "Is Quiet Quitting Real?" Gallup (blog), May 17.
Wednesday, September 11 Carré, Françoise and Chris Tilly. 2017. "Comparing Retail Jobs in the United States and Europe." Pp. 111-156 in Where Bad Jobs Are Better: Retail Jobs Across Countries and Companies. New York: Russell Sage Foundation. Sweet & Meiskins, Changing Contours of Work, chap. 3.
PRECARITY Monday, September 16 "They Risked Their Lives During Covid. They Still Don’t Earn Minimum Wage," New York Times, July 15, 2021. Kalleberg, Arne L. and Michael Dunn. 2016. "Good Jobs, Bad Jobs in the Gig Economy."" Perspectives on Work 20: 10-13, 74. Standing, Guy. 2014. "The Precariat." Contexts 13(4): 10-12.
SOCIAL CONTRACTS OF EMPLOYMENT Wednesday, September 18 Ravenelle, Side Hustle Safety Net, chaps. 1-2.
Monday, September 23 Sweet & Meiskins, Changing Contours of Work, chap. 4. Lipman, Nicole. 2024. "Super Cute Please Like: On SHEIN." n+1 47 (Spring).
TECHNOLOGIES OF THE NEW ECONOMY Wednesday, September 25 First pair of essays due. Jessop, Bob. 2006. "Post Fordism." In Cambridge Dictionary of Sociology, edited by Bryan S. Turner. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press. Fisher, Mark. 2009. "October 6, 1979: 'Don't Let Yourself Get Attached to Anything.'" In Capitalist Realism: Is There No Alternative? London: Zero Books.
Monday, September 30 "How Big Tech Won the Pandemic," New York Times, April 30, 2021. Cottom, Tressie McMillan. 2020. "Where Platform Capitalism and Racial Capitalism Meet: The Sociology of Race and Racism in the Digital Society." Sociology of Race and Ethnicity 6(4): 441-449. Cassino, Dan. 2023. “Crypto, Meme Stocks, and Threatened Masculinity.” Contexts 22(2): 18-23.
Wednesday, October 2 Ravenelle, Side Hustle Safety Net, SELECT ONE: chaps. 4-6.
THE CREATIVE CLASS Monday, October 7 Florida, Richard. 2002. Chaps. 4, 6 and 12 in The Rise of the Creative Class. New York: Basic Books. Mould, Oli. 2020. "Introduction: What is Creativity?" and "Work: Relentless Creativity." Pp. 1-53 in Against Creativity. London: Verso.
Wednesday, October 9 Interview assignment due.
FALL BREAK: October 12-20
WORK/LIFE BALANCE Monday, October 21 "Women Did Everything Right. Then Work Got 'Greedy,'" New York Times, April 26, 2019. Sweet & Meiskins, Changing Contours of Work, chaps. 5-6. Kelly, Erin L. and Phyllis Moen. 2020. "Overload." Chapter 2 in Overload: How Good Jobs Went Bad and What We Can Do About It. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Wednesday, October 23 Calarco, Jessica McCrory et al. 2021. "By Default: How Mothers in Different-Sex Dual-Earner Couples Account for Inequalities in Pandemic Parenting." Socius 7: 1-15. https://doi.org/10.1177/23780231211038783. Melin, Julia L. 2024. "The Help-Seeking Paradox: Gender and the Consequences of Using Career Reentry Assistance." Social Psychological Quarterly 87(2): 152-174.
MAKING OLD JOBS "NEW" AGAIN Monday, October 28 Second pair of essays due. Ocejo, Masters of Craft: Introduction, SELECT TWO from Chaps. 1-4.
Wednesday, October 30 Ocejo, Masters of Craft: chap. 5, SELECT ONE from Chaps. 6-8., then all read epilogue Wilson, Eli R. 2022. "Privileging Passion: How the Cultural Logic of Work Perpetuates Social Inequality in the Craft Beer Industry." Socius 8: 1-12. https://doi.org/10.1177/23780231221121064.
Monday, November 4 "A German Initiative to Keep Workers Employed by Retraining Them," New York Times, May 10, 2024. Newman, Katherine S and Hella Winston. 2016. Chaps. 4, 8 in Reskilling America: Learning to Labor in the Twenty-First Century. New York: Metropolitan.
AI AND THE END OF JOBS Wednesday, November 6 "How Artificial Intelligence Will Transform Business," Business News Daily, April 19, 2024. "Can A.I. Answer the Needs of Smaller Businesses? Some Push to Find Out." New York Times, June 17, 2024. "How A.I. Is Revolutionizing Drug Development," New York Times, June 17, 2024. "260 McNuggets? McDonald's Ends A.I. Drive-Through Tests Amid Errors," New York Times, June 21, 2024. Lieberman, Lisa. 2024. "AI and the Death of Student Writing." The Chronicle of Higher Education, June 7.
Monday, November 11 Hill, Steven. 2015. "Robots and Techno Sapiens are Coming for Your Job." Pp. 139-161 in Raw Deal: How the 'Uber Economy' and Runaway Capitalism are Screwing American Workers.. New York: St. Martin's. Joyce, Kelly et al. 2021. "Toward a Sociology of Artificial Intelligence: A Call for Research on Inequalities and Structural Change." Socius 7. https://doi.org/10.1177/2378023121999581. Alegria, Sharla and Catherine Yeh. 2023. "Machine Learning and the Reproduction of Inequality." Contexts 22(4): 34-39.
THE INFLUENCER ECONOMY Wednesday, November 13 "The App With the Unprintable Name That Wants to Give Power to Creators," New York Times, August 2, 2021. "In the Creator Economy, There Is Money to Be Made," New York Times, December 6, 2023. "For Content Creators, It's the Wild Wild West," New York Times, December 6, 2023. "Inside an OnlyFans empire: Sex, influence and the new American Dream," Washington Post, November 9, 2023. "YouTube Stars Dude Perfect Score $100M-Plus Investment From Highmount Capital," Hollywood Reporter, April 9. "Burned Out on Your Personal Brand,"" New York Times, October 20, 2022. "Elden Ring Raised Masochists, and They're Back for More," New York Times, June 13, 2024. "A One-Man Telemundo on Tik Tok," New York Times, July 18, 2024.
Monday, November 18 Khamis, Susie, Lawrence Ang and Raymond Welling. 2017. "Self-Branding, 'Micro-Celebrity' and the Rise of Social Media Influencers." Celebrity Studies 8(2): 191-208. Matheson, Eleanor and Donna Sedgwick. 2021. "Influencers and 21st Century Consumption." Contexts 20(2): 18-23. Duffy, Brooke Erin, Anuli Ononye and Megan Sawey. 2024. "The Politics of Vulnerability in the Influencer Economy." European Journal of Cultural Studies 27(3): 352-370.
ENTREPRENEURIALISM Wednesday, November 20 Cottom, Tressie McMillan. 2020. "The Hustle Economy". Dissent 67(4): 19-25. In-class work on team presentation.
Monday, November 25 Give team presentations in class.
Wednesday, November 27 Individual briefs on team presentations due.
THANKSGIVING BREAK: November 28-29
RESETTING WORK Monday, December 2 "A Record Number of Workers Are Quitting Their Jobs, Empowered by New Leverage,"" Washington Post, October 12, 2021. Litchfield, Robert C. and Rachael Woldoff. 2023. "Digital Nomads: Curiosity or Trend?" Pp. 186-196 in Handbook of Virtual Work, edited by Lucy L. Gilson et al. Northampton, MA: Edward Elgar. Silver, Michelle Pannor. 2023. "The Retirement Paradox." Contexts 22(2): 44-49.
Wednesday, December 4 Ravanelle, Side Hustle Safety Net, chaps. 4, 7.
Monday, December 9 Last day of class.
Sunday, December 15 (last day of study period) Third pair of essays due. |