A bullshit job or pseudowork is meaningless or unnecessary
wage labour
Wage labour (also wage labor in American English), usually referred to as paid work, paid employment, or paid labour, refers to the socioeconomic relationship between a worker and an employer in which the worker sells their labour power under ...
which the worker is obliged to pretend to have a purpose. Polling in the United Kingdom and the Netherlands indicates that around 40% of workers consider their job to fit this description.
The concept was coined by anthropologist
David Graeber
David Rolfe Graeber (; February 12, 1961September 2, 2020) was an American anthropologist and anarchist activist. His influential work in economic anthropology, particularly his books '' Debt: The First 5,000 Years'' (2011) and ''Bullshit Jobs ...
in a 2013 essay in
Strike Magazine, ''On the Phenomenon of Bullshit Jobs'', and elaborated upon in his 2018 book ''
Bullshit Jobs
''Bullshit Jobs: A Theory'' is a 2018 book by anthropologist David Graeber that postulates the existence of meaningless jobs and analyzes their societal harm. He contends that over half of societal work is pointless, and becomes psychologicall ...
''.
Graeber also formulated the concept of ''bullshitization'', where previously meaningful work turns into a bullshit job through
corporatization
Corporatization is the process of transforming and restructuring state assets, government agencies, public organizations, or municipal organizations into corporations. It involves the adoption and application of business management practices and ...
,
marketization
Marketisation or marketization is a restructuring process that enables state enterprises to operate as market-oriented firms by changing the legal environment in which they operate.
This is achieved through reduction of state subsidies, organizati ...
or
managerialism
Managerialism is the reliance on professional managers and organizational strategies to run a society. It may be justified in terms of efficiency, or characterized as an ideology. It is a belief system that requires little or no evidence to justif ...
. This has been applied to
academia
An academy (Attic Greek: Ἀκαδήμεια; Koine Greek Ἀκαδημία) is an institution of secondary education, secondary or tertiary education, tertiary higher education, higher learning (and generally also research or honorary membershi ...
, which Graeber and others contend has been bullshitized by the expansion of managerial roles and administrative work caused by
neoliberal
Neoliberalism (also neo-liberalism) is a term used to signify the late 20th century political reappearance of 19th-century ideas associated with free-market capitalism after it fell into decline following the Second World War. A prominent fa ...
educational reforms, contributing to the erosion of
academic freedom
Academic freedom is a moral and legal concept expressing the conviction that the freedom of inquiry by faculty members is essential to the mission of the academy as well as the principles of academia, and that scholars should have freedom to teac ...
.
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See also
*
Boondoggle
A boondoggle is a project that is considered a waste of both time and money, yet is often continued due to extraneous policy or political motivations.
Etymology
"Boondoggle" was the name of the newspaper of the Roosevelt Troop of the Boy Sco ...
*
Busywork
Busy work (also known as make-work and busywork) is an activity that is undertaken to pass time and stay busy but in and of itself has little or no actual value. Busy work occurs in business, military and other settings, in situations where peop ...
*
Critique of work
Critique of work or critique of labour is the critique of, and wish to abolish, work ''as such'', and to critique what the critics of works deem wage slavery.
Critique of work can be existential, and focus on how labour can be and/or feel meaning ...
*
Dilbert principle
The Dilbert principle is a satirical concept of management developed by Scott Adams, creator of the comic strip ''Dilbert'', which states that companies tend to promote incompetent employees to management to minimize their ability to harm product ...
*
Emotional labour
Emotional labor is the process of managing feelings and expressions to fulfill the emotional requirements of a job. More specifically, workers are expected to regulate their emotions during interactions with customers, co-workers, clients and man ...
*
Front organization
A front organization is any entity set up by and controlled by another organization, such as intelligence agencies, organized crime groups, terrorist organizations, secret societies, banned organizations, religious or political groups, advocacy gro ...
*
Interpassivity Interpassivity is a term from media studies that refers to the phenomenon whereby a piece of art or technology seems to act on the audience or user's behalf; it is the opposite of interactivity. The meaning of the term was interpreted mainly (in Ger ...
*
Make-work job
A make-work job is a job that has less immediate financial or little benefit at all to the economy than the job costs to support. It may also have no benefit. Make-work jobs are similar to workfare, but are publicly offered on the job market and h ...
* ''
On Bullshit
''On Bullshit'' is a 2005 book (originally a 1986 essay) by American philosopher Harry G. Frankfurt which presents a theory of bullshit that defines the concept and analyzes the applications of bullshit in the context of communication. Frankfur ...
''
*
Parkinson's law
*
Presenteeism
Presenteeism or working while sick is the act or culture of employees continuing to work as a performative measure, despite having reduced productivity levels or negative consequences. Reduced productivity during presenteeism is often due to illnes ...
*
Refusal of work
Refusal of work is behavior in which a person refuses regular employment."Refusal of work means quite simply: I don't want to go to work because I prefer to sleep. But this laziness is the source of intelligence, of technology, of progress. Auton ...
*
Sinecure
A sinecure ( or ; from the Latin , 'without', and , 'care') is an office, carrying a salary or otherwise generating income, that requires or involves little or no responsibility, labour, or active service. The term originated in the medieval chu ...
*
Underemployment
Underemployment is the underuse of a worker because a job does not use the worker's skills, is part-time, or leaves the worker idle. Examples include holding a part-time job despite desiring full-time work, and overqualification, in which the em ...
*
Vacuum activity
Vacuum activities (or vacuum behaviours) are innate, fixed action patterns (FAPs) of animal behaviour that are performed in the absence of a sign stimulus ( releaser) that normally elicit them. This type of abnormal behaviour shows that a key sti ...
*
Workhouse
In Britain, a workhouse () was an institution where those unable to support themselves financially were offered accommodation and employment. (In Scotland, they were usually known as poorhouses.) The earliest known use of the term ''workhouse'' ...
References
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)
Labor
{{Labor-stub