Sociology and Criminology

Capitalism, Work & Precarity (Spr)

Module code: L2901B
Level 5
15 credits in spring semester
Teaching method: Workshop
Assessment modes: Essay

This module offers you training in sociological approaches to and analyses of the phenomenon of work under capitalism. It addresses precarity as a social, political, and economic process. The module aims to give you an advanced critical understanding of precarity and the casualisation of working arrangements not as a neoliberal novelty and exception but, rather, as a structural trait of capitalism.

In this module, there’s a:

• first part focusing on the theory and history of the ‘making’ of exploitable working subjects
• second part addressing contemporary sociological studies that investigate temporal reconfigurations in emerging working arrangements (gig economy, remote working, AI/automation and its training, etc).

Module learning outcomes

• Demonstrate the knowledge and critical understanding of key concepts in social theory regarding the phenomenon of work and its subjects.
• Apply their understanding of the relation between capitalism and work to specific cases and debates.
• Analyse socio-economic processes and forms of precarious working arrangements with conceptual tools drawn from critical social theory, social history, and political sociology.
• Develop ways of writing and analysing contemporary phenomena of precarity from a sociological perspective.