Time and Labor: Comparing Cultures of Work in Russia and the World

REEI-R 300/500 (37438/37439)

Around the 1980s, huge transformations in the sphere of economy and labor beset Western countries, including Russia. The proliferation of short contracts and part-time labor, the growth of a “creative class,” and the appearance of new work ethics blurred the boundaries between work and non-work that demanded total dedication to a project or an enterprise. Many social scientists considered these changes part of a new temporal epoch. What is the impact of this new temporal epoch in the West, in Russia, and in the rest of the world? How do these changing work conditions influence our perception of time, our ability to plan, or to imagine the future? This course will approach those questions through a multidisciplinary set of sources and studies, and will look at time in a comparative perspective in relation to different historical epochs and events, different labor disciplines, and even different cultures.