Bullshit job

This article is about the phenomenon. For the book, see Bullshit Jobs.

A bullshit job or pseudowork ^[1] is meaningless or unnecessary wage labour which the worker is obliged to pretend to have a purpose. ^[2] The concept was coined by anthropologist David Graeber in a 2013 essay in Strike Magazine , On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs, and elaborated upon in his 2018 book Bullshit Jobs . ^[3]

Graeber also formulated the concept of bullshitization, where previously meaningful work turns into a bullshit job through corporatization, marketization or managerialism. ^[4] This has been applied to academia, which Graeber and others contend has been bullshitized by the expansion of managerial roles and administrative work caused by neoliberal educational reforms, ^{[5] [6] [7]} contributing to the erosion of academic freedom. ^[8]

Examples

Graeber gives these examples of jobs he considers "completely pointless, unnecessary, or pernicious":

• A doorman or receptionist who has little to do in practice, but who was hired as a status symbol ^[3]
• Public relations promoting organizations that are already well-known and well-liked ^[3]
• Customer service people, if the main job is to apologize for problems that should not happen, and the manager uses the customer service staff as a way to avoid solving the underlying problem ^[3]
• People involved in unnecessary paperwork, such as creating a report that no one reads or relies on ^[3]
• Managers whose employees need no managerial assistance, or who invent and assign busy work ^[3]

Perceived value

Polling in the United Kingdom and the Netherlands, in 2015, indicated that around 40% of workers did not believe that their job made a meaningful contribution to the world. ^[3]

See also

• Americans with No Abilities Act – Satire about low-skill workers that was once misunderstood as a real news report
• Boondoggle  – Project that continues despite its wastefulness
• Busywork  – Work that creates only an illusion of valuePages displaying short descriptions of redirect targets
• Critique of work  – Criticism of work as such
• Dilbert principle – idea that less-competent workers are promoted to management
• Emotional labour  – Work managing feelings and expressionsPages displaying short descriptions of redirect targets
• Enshittification  – Systematic decline in online platform quality
• Interpassivity – Opposite of something that is interactive
• Make-work job  – Non-market jobs used to reduce unemployment
• McJob  – Pejorative work-related slang
• Parkinson's law  – Adage that work expands to fill its available time
• Presenteeism  – Pressure to work while sick
• Quaternary sector of the economy  – Sector of an economy based on knowledge and skill
• Refusal of work  – Behavior in which a person refuses regular employment
• Sinecure  – Office or job with a salary but which requires little to no actual responsibility
• Underemployment  – Underutilization of workers' talents or skills in employment
• Vacuum activity – Instinctive behavior performed when there is nothing else to do
• Workhouse  – Institution for those unable to support themselves

References

1. Fogh Jensen, Anders; Nørmark, Dennis (2021). Pseudowork: How we ended up being busy doing nothing. Copenhagen: Gyldendal.
2. Graeber, David (2018). Bullshit Jobs. Simon & Schuster. p. 10. ISBN   978-1-5011-4331-1.
3. Heller, Nathan (2018-07-06). "The Bullshit-Job Boom". The New Yorker .
4. Graeber, David (2018-05-06). "Are You in a BS Job? In Academe, You're Hardly Alone". The Chronicle of Higher Education .
5. Kezar, Adrianna; DePaola, Tom; Scott, Daniel T. (2019). The Gig Academy: Mapping Labor in the Neoliberal University. Johns Hopkins University Press. pp. 69–70. ISBN   978-1-4214-3271-7 – via Google Books.
6. Maiese, Michelle; Hanna, Robert (2019). The Mind-Body Politic. Springer. p. 146. ISBN   978-3-030-19546-5 – via Google Books.
7. Delucchi, Michael; Dadzie, Richard B.; Dean, Erik; Pham, Xuan (2021-06-17). "What's that smell? Bullshit jobs in higher education". Review of Social Economy. 82: 1–22. doi: 10.1080/00346764.2021.1940255 . ISSN   0034-6764. S2CID   237792077.
8. Reichman, Henry (2019). The Future of Academic Freedom. Johns Hopkins University Press. p. 5. ISBN   978-1-4214-2859-8 – via Google Books.

Further reading

• Your Call Is Important to Us: The Truth About Bullshit by Laura Penny

External links

• On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs, Strike Magazine (August 2013)
• Graeber, David (2018). Bullshit Jobs , via The Anarchist Library.