300658 Anthropology of Labour (MA: Soziologie der globalen Welt) (S) (SoSe 2025)

What is labour? How have race, class, and gender shaped the value of labour? How have the labour relations transformed with global political and economic processes? These are some of the questions that will be examined during the course. Through engaging with theoretical texts in sociology and anthropology and ethnographic works on the daily experiences of people in different parts of the world, the course not only explores how labour has been conceptualized but also how meanings, value, and forms of labour, and labour relations have been deeply shifted with industrialization, financialization or digitalization/platformization. It also discusses the relationship between labour and identities in forms of gender, race, or class, between productive and reproductive labour, and between the inclusion and exclusion of labour through different political measures. The discussions will also highlight the consequences of these labour transformations on the lives of ordinary people and how they contest different labour regimes.