Author: Mikołaj Jarmakowski
The chapter of the book “Bullshit Job” analysed below is an introduction to the general issue taken up by the author, which is the crisis of the value of work in the postmodern period.
The author at the beginning defined the concept of “bullshit job”, by the description of these phenomenon, based on the examples which he collected during his ethnographic research. The first example is an excerpt from the life of a man named Karl who was a sub-subcontractor working for the German military. The scale of bureaucratization and complexity of the procedures under which Karl works makes them an absurd and impractical phenomenon. Modern employment systems (and socialist economies) have created – as the author points out – the so-called “empty vacancies”, i.e. jobs resulting from the rules of bureaucracy, on which neither specific nor pragmatic activities are performed. This is an aspect of problems lying in the very foundation of the contemporary system.
The subjective, human aspect of the problem pointed out above is related to the lack of sense and significance of the work made by contemporary people. “Bullshit job” is work defined directly in that way: “it is a form of employment that is so completely pointless, unnecessary, or pernicious that even the employee cannot justify its existence”. A related concept proposed by the author is a “shit work”. It differs from “bullshit job” in that sense that it has a low social valorisation and low pay. Thus, it is associated with the feeling of marginalization of people working within it (while professions that are “bullshit jobs” are performed by people in relatively high and well-paid positions, as exemplified by corporations). Therefore, “shitty work” is a work that does not develop a person inside, does not satisfy the person, and makes him or her marginalized.
The sense of this marginalisation is the lack of sense of subjectivity and agency. The studies cited by the author are shocking. For example, around 50 percent of UK residents surveyed consider their work to be meaningless. There are many more such statistics (although the author does not indicate the number of people surveyed). The lack of personal fulfillment and life sense that comes from feeling own work is “shitty” translates into its quality – or rather lack of it. Discouraged officials do not do their job properly, postmen do not deliver letters but throw them away, etc. Often the employed person only “pretends” that what he or she does makes sense, but in fact they are deceiving themselves. The problem is pyramidal in its nature. People at the top of large companies and corporations are meaningless because of their “bullshit jobs” and cannot understand the perspective of rank-and-file employees (doing “shitty work”), often employed through complex lines of agencies (as in the case of Karl). This creates absurd situations of lack of coherence between the visions of managers and the pragmatic side of the possibilities of ordinary employees.
Another aspect of the problem of “shitty work” is the combination of low job prestige and low wages. This combination is paradoxical, because the “shit works” marginalized by society (e.g. cleaning) are in fact very important. This applies, for example, to cleaners who often feel despised. Ostracism towards people of certain professions creates negative divisions for society and makes certain people – due to their profession – the object of stereotypes. This breaks social unity and plunges them into personal unhappiness.
Another example are the memoirs of prisoners of Russian labour camps mentioned by the author, quoting e.g. Dostoyevsky. Both in gulags and German concentration camps, the simplest method of breaking prisoners was to order them to do useless work that had no purpose. Physical exhaustion, debasement, and senseless exertion were a devastating combination for their spirit.
In my opinion, we are partially helpless to face the problems indicated by the author. They primarily concern the general crisis of modern and postmodern culture. This crisis can be noticed and examined by contrasting it with cultures in which work and human action were very strongly sensed and had important meaning for people. As an example referring to the phenomenon of “shitty work”, we can point to the rural folk culture of Central and Eastern Europe, which, despite the years of feudalism, developed a ritual and almost ritual approach to agrarian work – which was a daily duty for peasants. He studied these traditions, e.g. Donat Niewiadomski in the work “Plowing and sowing. On Folk Agrarian Imaginations (“Orka i siew. O ludowych wyobrażeniach agrarnych)” indicating how strongly everyday work was sacralised in rural culture. The basic function of this sanctification was – as V. Turner wrote in “The Forest of Symbols” – the transformation through culture of what is necessary to do (farm work, food production) into that what is desirable and beautiful for people (divine creative sowing, the cult of Mother of the Earth, man’s participation in a mythical mystery). Thus, it can be said that, exactly as in the philosophy of E. Cassirer, that symbols and symbolism sanctified human life: they made it full and meaningful, placing effort and work in the centre and the greatest power of this meaning.
Are there ways out from this crisis in which we find ourselves today? Examples of European peasant cultures are far away from our reality because they concern work that was associated with basic human needs; work in which the responsibility lay directly on the man, work that was a necessity and the whole content of life, and not only – done for someone else, in the name of matters that are foreign to oneself – performed commission. In sphere of Polish criticism of modernity, an interesting book was written several years ago entitled “Prawia – myth which creates history. Systematical Theory of Culture” (“Prawie – mit dziejotwórczy. Systemowa teoria kultury”). It is not a work known in scientific circles, because it was created as a result of several years of private discussions between two friends – an economist and a philosopher, and is not directly related to the academy. This book was published as an attempt to meet the crisis of Polish culture and identity in the period of one generation after the fall of communism. The authors undertook a critical analysis of the thought of the pre-war Polish philosopher Jan Stachniuk, who developed an original project of an internally integrating Polish national culture, which was to become the “history-creating national myth”. Stachniuk’s nationalistic entanglements require verification, which the authors of the work did, pointing out that under the current of thought specific to the 1930s, there are several interesting ideas hidden in his works.
In any case – the conclusion of this long work is that resolution of problem of meaninglessness life and symbolic breakdown (a symptom of which “bullshit jobs” and “shitty works” are) can be a return to strong familiar, local and national identities in which human action was – through culture – an element of a wider system of social symbols. Then also the work was felt as some form of “participation” (using Lévy-Bruhl term).
This project responds to the contemporary problems of cosmopolitanism and lack of identity, but on the other hand it is a utopian vision similar to those that appeared in Europe in the 1930s – and their effect is known. The problem with any attempts to solve the crisis of the meaning and value of human life and work is that ultimately it is the man within himself who creates this meaning and decides about it. We cannot impose this sense on him, we can only invite a person – as in the community of family or friends – to share this feeling. But the final decision is made by the individual. And maybe that’s the problem?
Bibliography:
Cassirer, E. (1977). Esej o człowieku. Wstęp do filozofii kultury. Warszawa: Czytelnik.
Turner, V. (2006). Las symboli. Aspekty rytuałów u Ndembu. Kraków: NOMOS.
Niewiadomski, D. (1999). Orka i siew. O ludowych wyobrażeniach agrarnych. Lublin: Polihymnia.
Cenin, M., Słowiński, Z. (2013). Prawia – mit dziejotwórczy. Systemowa teoria kultury. Wrocław: Wydawnictwo Toporzeł.
Graeber, D. (2018). Bullshit Jobs: A Theory. New York: Simon & Schuster.
Anthropological Perspectives 
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