Full Tuition: $340 — Sliding-scale options are available in the drop-down menu. To pay in installments, choose to pay with PayPal or Klarna at check out.
Instructor: Leigh Campoamor | 5-weeks | Wednesdays | April 8-May 6 | 7:00-9:00 PM ET | ONLINE
In the last few decades, it has become commonplace to understand work as something precarious. These days, it’s rare to expect an eight-hour work day with a stable salary and benefits. In this class, we’ll look at how work became gigified and how workers experience and resist this. Ultimately we’ll ask what this says about the larger structures of capitalism.
We’ll begin by asking whether the eight-hour work day with stability and benefits was ever really the norm. Did the post-World War 2 “golden era of capitalism” really benefit everyone? In what ways has labor under capitalism always relied on the exploitation of a precarious workforce? We’ll investigate how the last 20 years, companies have promoted the “gig economy” as something desirable through language such as “flexibility” and “autonomy.” By romanticizing gig work, these corporations hide the ways that they maximize their own profit by transferring risks and responsibilities onto workers.
What can we learn when studying labor from a global perspective? We’ll look at how colonial histories and neoliberal restructuring have influenced the contours of work in the global south, taking care to ask how and to what end what we now call the gig economy co-opts the “informal” economic practices of those who have long depended, for instance, on street vending and other self-made hustles for income.
How do these new trends clarify and obscure the purpose of work? How does it transform our relationships to consumption, or our experiences of time and space? And what are the possibilities for cross-class movement-building in an era in which delivery drivers, tour guides, university professors, and freelance photographers the world over, share a precarious relationship to work?
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SLIDING SCALE TUITION
Full tuition is the cost per-student of running the class. If you choose a tier below full tuition, you are receiving a discount. If you choose to make a donation in addition to full tuition, you are helping to cover the cost for students who are not able to pay the full amount.
The mid-level tier is a discounted rate for people whose household income is at or above living wage but who have limited discretionary income.
The low-level tier and the full-scholarship tier are for people whose household income is below living wage or who need extra assistance to meet their needs.
SCHOLARSHIPS
Through our fundraising efforts, we are able to offer three full scholarships per class. The full-scholarship tier is a nonrefundable offering. Each student may only take one full-scholarship class at a time. Because our scholarship funding is limited, if a student selects multiple overlapping classes at the full-scholarship level, they will be disenrolled from all classes.
All sliding-scale and scholarship needs are self-assessed, and we will never request or require proof of need.
RECORDINGS
No recordings will be available for this class.
Please see our FAQ for more information, including installment plans, refund policy, and sick and inclement weather policy.
Full Tuition: $340 — Sliding-scale options are available in the drop-down menu. To pay in installments, choose to pay with PayPal or Klarna at check out.
Instructor: Leigh Campoamor | 5-weeks | Wednesdays | April 8-May 6 | 7:00-9:00 PM ET | ONLINE
In the last few decades, it has become commonplace to understand work as something precarious. These days, it’s rare to expect an eight-hour work day with a stable salary and benefits. In this class, we’ll look at how work became gigified and how workers experience and resist this. Ultimately we’ll ask what this says about the larger structures of capitalism.
We’ll begin by asking whether the eight-hour work day with stability and benefits was ever really the norm. Did the post-World War 2 “golden era of capitalism” really benefit everyone? In what ways has labor under capitalism always relied on the exploitation of a precarious workforce? We’ll investigate how the last 20 years, companies have promoted the “gig economy” as something desirable through language such as “flexibility” and “autonomy.” By romanticizing gig work, these corporations hide the ways that they maximize their own profit by transferring risks and responsibilities onto workers.
What can we learn when studying labor from a global perspective? We’ll look at how colonial histories and neoliberal restructuring have influenced the contours of work in the global south, taking care to ask how and to what end what we now call the gig economy co-opts the “informal” economic practices of those who have long depended, for instance, on street vending and other self-made hustles for income.
How do these new trends clarify and obscure the purpose of work? How does it transform our relationships to consumption, or our experiences of time and space? And what are the possibilities for cross-class movement-building in an era in which delivery drivers, tour guides, university professors, and freelance photographers the world over, share a precarious relationship to work?
—
SLIDING SCALE TUITION
Full tuition is the cost per-student of running the class. If you choose a tier below full tuition, you are receiving a discount. If you choose to make a donation in addition to full tuition, you are helping to cover the cost for students who are not able to pay the full amount.
The mid-level tier is a discounted rate for people whose household income is at or above living wage but who have limited discretionary income.
The low-level tier and the full-scholarship tier are for people whose household income is below living wage or who need extra assistance to meet their needs.
SCHOLARSHIPS
Through our fundraising efforts, we are able to offer three full scholarships per class. The full-scholarship tier is a nonrefundable offering. Each student may only take one full-scholarship class at a time. Because our scholarship funding is limited, if a student selects multiple overlapping classes at the full-scholarship level, they will be disenrolled from all classes.
All sliding-scale and scholarship needs are self-assessed, and we will never request or require proof of need.
RECORDINGS
No recordings will be available for this class.
Please see our FAQ for more information, including installment plans, refund policy, and sick and inclement weather policy.
