Re-Configuring Worker Subjectivity: The Shifting Meaning of Work in an Age of Precarity

• In Event: 553 - Regular Session. Care, Emotions, and the Self at Work

Abstract

In recent years, scholars have engaged in sharp debate over the relation between worker subjectivity and the exercise of managerial control at work. Especially influential has been the theory of “enterprise culture,” which holds that organizations increasingly promote a discourse that requires workers' selves to conform to the logic of market exchange and to the demands of the “sovereign consumer.” While compelling in theoretical terms, this theory has thus far yielded highly uncertain results. Drawing on an analysis of 137 career-advice texts published between 1980 and 2010 and on 34 interviews with job seekers, career counselors, and life coaches, this paper examines discursive shifts in the popular business press and responses to them. Our evidence indicates that much of the career guidance literature is now infused with a discourse of “personal branding,” which encourages prospective employees to emulate the marketing practices of large corporations. We conduct a discourse analysis of these texts, and then explore their meaning in the eyes of young job seekers and those centrally located in the personal branding movement. Given the apparent ubiquity and power of this discourse, we contend sociologists of work must begin to pay much closer attention to popular representations of work, which arguably shape common sense thinking about the employment relationship.

Authors

• Steven Vallas, Northeastern University

• Emily Regina Cummins, Northeastern University