The Politics and Philosophy of Work: Recent Episodes
Jason Read
Selections from Jonathan Crary, 24/7 (Chapter 1 and 2)*
Selection from Jamie K. McCallum, Worked Over: How Round the Clock Work is Killing the
American Dream*
Selections from Aaron Benanav, Automation and the Future of Work*
Selections from Jason E. Smith, Smart Machines and Service Work: Automation in an Age of
Stagnation*
Week Eleven 4/5 Automation I
James Boggs, The American Revolution: Pages from A Negro Worker’s Notebook
(pg. 83-146)*
Read Jamie Woodcock, Working the Phones: Control and Resistance in Call
Centres (entire)
Week Seven
3/8 Selections from Arlie Hochschild The Managed Heart:Commercialization of Human Feeling (pg. 3-56, pg. 89-136)*
Selma James and Mariosa Dalla Costa, The Power of Women and the Subversion of Community*
Hannah Arendt “Labor, Work, Action”*
Paolo Virno, Selections from A Grammar of the Multitude: For an Analysis of
Contemporary Forms of Life*
Karl Marx, Capital Chapter One*
Karl Marx, Selections from Capital (pg. 270-306)*
Karl Marx, “Capitalism, Machinery, and Automation”*
Selections from Matthew B. Crawford, Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry into theValue of Work *
Alana Semuels and Malcolm Burnley, “Low Wages, Sexual Harassment, and Unreliable Tips: This is Life in America’s Booming Service Industry” (https://time.com/5658442/tippedrestaurant-workers-american-economy/)
Recommended: “Take Off Your Mask So I Know How Much to Tip You.”*
G.W.F. Hegel, “Independence and Dependence of Self-Consciousness: Lordship
and Bondage” (The Phenomenology of Spirit pg. 151-173)* or Alexandre Kojeve,“In Place
of an Introduction” Introduction to the Reading of Hegel pg. 3-31*
Karl Marx, “Estranged Labor” and “Wage Labour and Capital”
(http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/labour.htm) and
(https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/wage-labour/index.htm)
Nicholas H. Smith, “Three Normative Models of Work.”*
Discussion of Chapter 5 of Locke's Second Treatise of Government and selections from the Wealth of Nations.
Week Two 2/1
Plato, selections from The Republic* or Jacques Ranciére The Philosopher and his
Poor*
Selections from Aristotle’s Politics (Book One pg. 1-22)*