Plague jobs: US workers' schismogenetic approaches to social contracts

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dc.citation.firstpage58en_US
dc.citation.issueNumber3en_US
dc.citation.journalTitleAnthropological Notebooksen_US
dc.citation.lastpage82en_US
dc.citation.volumeNumber27en_US
dc.contributor.authorGershon, Ilanaen_US
dc.date.accessioned2023-11-07T16:55:28Zen_US
dc.date.available2023-11-07T16:55:28Zen_US
dc.date.issued2021en_US
dc.description.abstractIn this homage to David Graeber, I turn to Americans’ experiences working in person during the pandemic as an ethnographic lens for understanding how workers respond when implicit social contracts are violated and when ideas about the common good are being contested. Because the United States federal government and many state governments refused to mandate appropriate pandemic protocols, businesses became the source of pandemic regulation in the United States. During the pandemic, Americans have been made vividly aware of the tacit social contracts shaping their workplace commitments. Building upon Graeber’s insight that at the heart of work is a complex theory of contract and exchange, I explore how contractual sociality shapes Americans’ understandings of the political possibilities available to them at work. I focus in particular on the icon of the Trumpian Republican and how other Americans are responding by turning to historically grounded visions of the common good. In general, this article explores what the pandemic has revealed about Americans’ political imagination, about how to govern and be governed in the workplace, with a Graeberian focus on the role that contractual sociality plays in structuring this imagination.en_US
dc.identifier.citationGershon, I. (2021). Plague jobs: US workers’ schismogenetic approaches to social contracts. Anthropological Notebooks, 27(3), Article 3. https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6473784en_US
dc.identifier.doihttps://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.6473784en_US
dc.identifier.urihttps://hdl.handle.net/1911/115306en_US
dc.language.isoengen_US
dc.publisherSlovene Anthropological Societyen_US
dc.rightsExcept where otherwise noted, this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license.  Permission to reuse, publish, or reproduce the work beyond the terms of the license or beyond the bounds of fair use or other exemptions to copyright law must be obtained from the copyright holder.en_US
dc.rights.urihttps://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/legalcodeen_US
dc.subject.keywordpandemicen_US
dc.subject.keywordworkplacesen_US
dc.subject.keywordprivate governmenten_US
dc.subject.keywordcommon gooden_US
dc.subject.keywordsocial contractsen_US
dc.titlePlague jobs: US workers' schismogenetic approaches to social contractsen_US
dc.typeJournal articleen_US
dc.type.dcmiTexten_US
dc.type.publicationpublisher versionen_US
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