Course
Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, Spring 2020.
Course website

This class helped students understand the structure of working life and imagine possibilities for the future. We looked at the development of the key social technologies of wage labor, bureaucracy and management, and the global division of labor. Each of these technologies was created as the result of power struggles and the pursuit of wealth, each was shaped by race and gender, and each has been an important site of resistance and critique. We also learned about alternative social technologies such as cooperative enterprise, the commons, and solidarity economies.

About this project

This class focused on using history as a jumping off point to understand the present and imagine the future. We studied how each key element was developed and resisted, and what alternatives have existed. Students also looked for the application of these ideas in their own world by analyzing the employee handbooks and HR sites of existing companies, searching out alternative economic activities in their own towns, and creating a speculative future for work.

I received a Certificate of Teaching Excellence from the Harvard Office of Undergraduate Education for this course.