Moodle

Work matters. It is important for individual well-being and identity. This course takes a global perspective to explore the nature of work, defined in its broadest sense to encompass all labour, whether conducted formally or informally, as paid employment, domestic labour, or voluntary work. It draws on a radical re-thinking of traditional understandings of work, disrupting the conventional dichotomies of work/leisure, public/private, "home"/"work", and production/reproduction. It focuses on the ways work and home are organised differently across the globe. It aims to explore the gendered processes operating in work; examine the varieties of gender division, with regard to work, in different societies, their creation and effects; and investigate the intersection of gender at work with class, ethnicity and other social divisions. It considers how work contributes to the construction of femininities and masculinities.

The course begins with theorising the temporal and spatial (re-)organisation of work in late modernity, examining the relationship between global and local divisions of labour, and the division of labour between family members. It goes on to consider key themes around global differences in the relationship between home and work: domestic work; home work; community and voluntary work; sex work and prostitution; the manifestation of global class inequalities through regimes of production and consumption; the relationship between political change and gender inequalities outcomes. In exploring these areas, we will draw on case studies from south Asia, Latin America and post-communist societies, though there is scope for students' own interests to be reflected in the programme of work.