Contemporary Labor

Goal: to apply anthropological concepts to contemporary labor issues
Method:
1) Choose an article from a newspaper or other news source (such as The New York Times, The Washington Post) that you think has relevance to discussions/readings about labor (e.g., an example of “commodity fetishism” or standardized work practices or workplace struggle). The more thorough and in-depth the news coverage, the more material you will have to work with.
2) Analyze the labor issues that your news source reports using key concepts proposed by the authors we have read (Tsing, Marx, Stallybrass). Do our course materials help explain contemporary labor issues? Do they add to, complicate, or challenge the picture of the issue that the news source has presented? Or, conversely, is there something about contemporary labor conditions not captured in the scholarship we have read?
3) If possible, also analyze the newspaper article and expose the assumptions that underlie its argument. While it may not appear at first that a news article has an “argument” – every piece of writing has a point of view. How is the issue framed? What is not discussed?
4) Focus your insights to make a narrow, debatable argument. Your piece should persuade your reader (imagine a skeptical reader) of your point of view. State your argument clearly, and back it up with specific evidence from our readings.
Suggestions:
§ Think of your reader as another anthropology student who has not taken our class. This means that you should explain the terms you use.

Citations: Please cite any sources that you summarize, paraphrase, or quote using in-text citations and a Works Cited list at the end. Engage with our course texts by citing particular passages within them, even if you paraphrase. If you accessed the news story via the web, please include a full citation, not just the URL. (In addition to citing it, please upload a copy of the article alongside your paper, if possible).

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