JPG1809H: Spaces of Work: Value, Identity, Agency, Justice

This course will introduce students to Marxist, feminist, anticolonial and intersectional perspectives on 'work' in the twenty-first century. A key intention of this course is to prompt students to examine what forms of work — and also whose work — has been taken into account in geographical scholarship and to explore a number of prominent debates concerning labour, work, and employment within geography over the last three decades. We will also examine a number of broad economic and cultural shifts in the nature of contemporary work and employment such as de-industrialization, the feminization of labour markets and service sector work, neoliberalization and the rise of the 'precariat.' At the same time, students will be prompted to consider critiques of some of these 'transformational' narratives to probe the colonial, patriarchal, and capitalist continuities shaping the contours of contemporary work. Overall this course aims to give students the chance to explore not only how work has been conceptualized and studied in geography, but how it could be.

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St. George