Bullshit Jobs - David Graeber

Come join Triangle Common Good in reading David Graeber's Bullshit Jobs: A Theory. We will connect this theory of unmeaningful work to our ongoing discussion on what it feels like to live in our current society.

David Graeber was an anthropologist who gained the reputation as the "anarchist professor". His career began with studying how societies decide what to value. His book Debt: The First 5000 Years, which argued that the invention of debt - rather than trade - birthed the modern capitalist economy, marked his turn to a focus on historical anthropology. He would go on to publish The Utopia of Rules, and before his death, The Dawn of Everything. All of which would sell well and receive positive critical appraisal. His advocacy work included participating with Occupy Wall Street, coining the phrase "We are the 99%".

Bullshit Jobs is a book-length expansion of a viral article he wrote for a niche radical magazine called Strike!. The article would end up netting over a million views for the small site, resulting in a book deal. In the book, Graeber expands on the five types of bullshit jobs he sees in the world, tying their existence to society transitioning to work that was based on paying someone for owning their time, rather than the tangible results of their work. This kind of alienation from the meaning of work also includes a switch to jobs where your role is to enforce managerial rules or process, encouraging in individuals a kind of passive, submissive mindset and identification with the values of the managerial class.

Original Article That Caused the Book Deal
https://strikemag.org/bullshit-jobs/

Types of Bullshit Jobs
https://davidgraeber.org/articles/i-had-to-guard-an-empty-room/

Alternative Take on Alienating Jobs
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/09500170211015067