INTRODUCING THE NEW ECONOMY

Thursday, January 23

WHAT WORK & PRECARITY MEAN

Tuesday, January 28

Reading assignment:

Katherine S. Newman, "No Shame in (This) Game." Pp. 86-121 in No Shame in My Game: The Working Poor in the Inner City (Vintage, 2000).

Sweet & Meiskins, chaps. 1-2.

The Pivot questionnaire.

Occupational prestige rankings, 2009.

Everyone is a worker (Richard Scarry).

Drive-thru information system.

Burger King drive-thru workers try to cheat the time system.

 

WHERE DO LOST JOBS GO?

Thursday, January 30

Reading assignment:

Sweet & Meiskins, chaps. 3-4.

"How Technology Wrecks the Middle Class," New York Times, August 24, 2013.

"Linking Factories to the Malls, Middleman Pushes Low Costs," New York Times, August 7, 2013.

CONCEPTUALIZING THE NEW ECONOMY: POST-FORDISM

Tuesday, February 4

Reading assignment:

Stanley Aronowitz & William DiFazio, "The End of Skill?" Pp. 81-103 in The Jobless Future, 2nd ed (Univ. of Minnesota Press, 2010).

"This Is the Way Blue-Collar America Ends," The Atlantic, June 5, 2013.

"A Wave of Sewing Jobs as Orders Pile Up at U.S. Factories," New York Times, September 30, 2013.

Fordism vs. post-Fordism.

Ford Motor Company: River Rouge B Building.

Vertical integration.

RACIALIZING WORK: DAY LABORERS

Thursday, February 6

Reading assignment:

Sweet & Meiskins, chap. 7

Marc Doussard, "Building Degradation: Dangerous Work and Falling Pay during a Construction Boom." Pp. 143-70 in Degraded Work: The Struggle at the Bottom of the Labor Market (University of Minnesota Press, 2013).

Tuesday, February 11

Take-home exam due.

JOB POLARIZATION

Thursday, February 13

Reading assignment:

Rachel E. Dwyer and Erik Olin Wright, "Job Growth and Job Polarization in the United States and Europe, 1995-2007." Pp. 52-74 in Transformation of the Employment Structures in the EU and USA, edited by Enrique Fernandez-Macias, Donald Storrie and John Hurley (Palgrave, 2011).

CONCEPTUALIZING THE NEW ECONOMY: THE CREATIVE CLASS

Tuesday, February 18

Reading assignment:

Florida, chaps. 1-6.

"World's Most Influential Thinkers Revealed," MIT Technology Review, August 9, 2013.

MANAGING CREATIVITY

Thursday, February 20

Reading assignment:

"Do Millenials Think Differently About Money and Career?" Forbes, September 17, 2013.

Richard Sennett, "Bureaucracy." Pp. 15-82 in The Culture of the New Capitalism (Yale University Press, 2006).

OVERWORK & UNDEREMPLOYMENT

Tuesday, February 25

Reading assignment:

Florida, chap. 7.

Sweet & Meiskins, chap. 5.

"About the Penny Arcade Job Posting" (November 27, 2013, Penny Arcade Forums).

"A Part-Time Life, As Hours Shrink and Shift," New York Times, October 27, 2012.

"The Freelance Economy: Millions of Entrepreneurs - and a Vital Social Venture," Forbes, December 13, 2012.

LIVING FOR THE LABOR MARKET

Thursday, February 27

Reading assignment:

Neff, Venture Labor: pp. 1-10, 16-19, chap. 2.

Tuesday, March 4

Reading assignment:

Neff, Venture Labor: chaps. 3, 4, 6.

“Google Grows, and Works to Retain Nimble Minds,” New York Times, November 29, 2010.

Nathan Heller, "Bay Watched: How San Francisco’s new entrepreneurial culture is changing the country," New Yorker, October 14, 2013.

Thursday, March 6

Take-home exam due.

In-class screening: Girls Sn 2/Ep. 3: "Bad Friends" (2013).

SPRING BREAK: March 8-23

INVESTING IN HUMAN CAPITAL: INTERNSHIPS

Tuesday, March 25

Reading assignment:

Perlin, Intern Nation.

Leonard Nevarez, "Restless Records, 1989: From an Independent Label Intern's View" (Musical Urbanism [blog], December 14, 2013).

GENDER & LABOR IN THE NEW ECONOMY

Thursday, March 27

Reading assignment:

Sweet & Meiskins, chap. 6.

IS THE GENDER REVOLUTION OVER?

Tuesday, April 1

Reading assignment:

“Stretched to Limit, Women Stall March to Work,” New York Times, March 2, 2006.

Sheryl Sandberg, "Why We Have Too Few Women Leaders" (TED Talk, December 2010).

Anne-Marie Slaughter, "Why Women Still Can't Have It All," The Atlantic, July 2012.

Claude Fischer, "Is the Gender Revolution Over?", Boston Review, March/April 2013.

Thursday, April 3

Interview assignment due.

HOW THE CREATIVE CLASS CONSUMES

Tuesday, April 8

Reading assignment:

Florida, chaps. 8-15.

NEW ECONOMY HOTSPOTS

Thursday, April 10

Reading assignment:

"Washington: A World Apart," Washington Post, November 8, 2013.

Neil Smith, "Gentrification Generalized: From Local Anomaly to Urban 'Regeneration' as Global Urban Strategy." Pp. 191-208 in Frontiers of Capital: Ethnographic Reflections on the New Economy, edited by Melissa S. Fisher & Greg Downey (Duke University Press, 2006).

Jamie Peck, "Creative Liberties." Pp. 192-230 in Constructions of Neoliberal Reason (Oxford University Press, 2010).

BRANDING AUTHENTICITY

Tuesday, April 15

Reading assignment:

James H. Gilmore and B. Joseph Pine II, "The Demand for Authenticity" and "Rendering Authenticity." Pp. 9-30, 45-80 in Authenticity: What Consumers Really Want (Harvard Business School Press, 2007).

Anne Elizabeth Moore, "Scene for Sale." Pp. 22-47 in Unmarketable: Brandalism, Copyfighting, Mocketing, and the Erosion of Integrity (New Press, 2007).

THE SHARING ECONOMY

Thursday, April 17

Reading assignment:

Rick Poyner, "Preparing for the Meme Wars." Pp. 177-84 in Obey the Giant: Life in the Image World (Birkhaüser, 2001).

Michael Serazio, "Crowd-Sourced Marketing and the Freedom to Labor." Pp. 122-53 in Your Ad Here: The Cool Sell of Guerilla Marketing (NYU Press, 2013).

Barney Hoskyns, "Stop Working For Free!", Rock's Backpages (blog), June 4, 2013.

James Surowiecki, "Uber Alles," New Yorker, September 16, 2013.

30 hilarious street posters you certainly haven’t seen around (JustSomething.co).

Tuesday, April 22

Reading assignment:

Team-specific readings TBA.

Thursday, April 24

In-class work on team presentation.

Tuesday, April 29

Present team presentations in class.

Thursday, May 1

Student rankings of team presentations due.

Readings: other teams' essays.

Tuesday, May 6

Last day of class.

Individual briefs on team presentations due.

Receive take-home exam.

Wednesday, May 14