Book Review: What is A Bullshit Jobs?

On February 12, 1961 in America was born David Rolfe Graeber, who later became known as David Graeber. He is a professor of anthropology at the London School of Economics. As a social theorist, some of his works are quite phenomenal, one of which I will review in a further article, viz Bullshit Jobs (2018). In addition to these books, several books he has written are Debt: The First 5000 years (2011) and The Utopia of Rules (2015).

Through Bullshit Jobs (2018), he provides views related to the world of work. In his book, Graeber divides the discussion into seven sections which are entitled in the form of questions, as if targeting his readers to reflect on what debate Graeber wants to convey. Seventh chapters These are: First, What is a bullshit job?, Second, What sorts of bullshit jobs are there?, Third, Why do those in bullshit jos regularly report themselves unhappy?, Fourth, What is it like to have a bullshit job?, Fifth, Why are bullshit proliferating jobs?, Sixth, Why do we as a society not object to the growth of pointless employment?, and Seventh, What is the political effect of bullshit jobs, and is there anything that can be done about this situation.

Kurt worked for a subcontractor (subcon) of subcontractors for the German military. More clearly the German military has subcontractors to take care of the field Information and Technology (IT). Since the IT company had no logistics, it hired a subcontractor to do personnel management, and Kurt worked there. So what did Kurt do?

A soldier A moved the study farther down the hall. Instead of moving his computer, the soldier had to fill out a form. Then. The IT sub-contractor will prepare the form and ask someone to read and approve it, then proceed to the logistics. The logistics then agreed and would ask someone from personnel. Then someone from the personnel department will do whatever they want, this is where Kurt will work. From here, Kurt received an electronic message to be at Barracks B at time C. The location of Barracks B is approximately 100-150 km from Kurt's house. So Kurt had to rent a car, drive it to the barracks, tell the officers he had arrived, then fill out a form, unplug the computer, put it in the box, and have the logistics company take the box to the room Soldier A would occupy. After that Kurt opened the city seal, installed the computer, filled out the form, and got some signatures. Then he drove home in a rented car, filed paperwork, and got paid.

The story above begins the discussion that Graeber wants to convey through Bullshit Jobs (2018). Instead of soldier A moving his computer to another room approximately 5 meters away, one has to rent a car and drive it for approximately 4-6 hours, filling out lots of paperwork and wasting taxpayers' money around four hundred euros (Graeber, 2018:39 -40). What Kurt was doing was not unclear, but this anxiety came from Kurt himself about what he was doing. In the end, what Graeber wrote was that Kurt thought and confirmed that what he was doing actually had no purpose. This then led Graeber to provide an initial conclusion about what it really was bullshit Jobs, namely work that is completely useless, unnecessary, no one will even notice later if the person who has the job disappears (Graeber, 2018:42).

Based on his own research, Graeber concluded that between 37 and 40 percent of a country's working population considers what they do to be bullshit jobs (Graeber, 2018:50). This data shows that not a few workers consider themselves useless in their work. Maybe they did the same thing Kurt did.

Not only is Kurt the story of Graeber, he then tries to provide an overview of what jobs can be categorized as bullshit jobs or not, although what he explained can also be contested because of its subjective nature. Therefore, Graeber tries to explain a job from the point of view of the workers themselves, because no one understands a job more than the workers themselves.

Of the several jobs described by Graeber, there was one that quite caught my attention, namely the hitman mafia. As Graber defines bullshit jobs as a job that is useless or even of no use in society, he actually rejects the notion that the mafia is a contract killer as a person bullshit jobs. As we know that the hitman mafia does not have a positive impact on society, it even tends to be destructive and useless, but once again this does not necessarily make it a crime. bullshit jobs according to Graeber. Then he associated this view with Socrates' thought. More or less what Socrates taught is that when our own definitions produce something that seems intuitively wrong to us, it is because we are not aware of what we are really thinking (Graeber, 2018:51-52).

Then how is a contract killer mafia not as bullshit jobs? There are many reasons. Graeber surmised that it was true that a mobster would usually claim to be a businessman if asked what his job was. But as far as Graeber is concerned, when a mob hitman is willing to tell you what they're really up to, they're more likely to open up. In fact, they will not pretend that what they are doing is very beneficial to society, or claiming that what they are doing is very helpful, at least for their team. What Graeber underlined was the mobsters' pretense about their job. With that, Graeber redefined what it was bullshit job. He then perfected that bullshit job not only is work useless or destructive, but there is an air of pretence. Sometimes job owners pretend that the job exists. Unlike the mafia, he actually covers up what they do by claiming to work in other fields, such as entrepreneurs. This actually shows they are admitting that their job exists. But if someone then asks about our work and then we try to explain what we do, that doesn't mean our job is real bullshit jobs. As Graeber explains, pretense and reality have very subtle differences, but it makes sense etymologically when bullshit however it is dishonesty (Graeber, 2018:53). This depends on how a person views himself and his environment.

Some of the discourses above are admitted by Graeber to be subjective, but he also believes that the only measuring tool to know the concept is the subjectivity of the workers which is the source of Graeber's argument. But then Graeber also focused on social valuesin viewing bullshit jobs. Because basically a job that could be the same as bullshit job, but at other times it may not be. Even so, Graeber again emphasized that when compared with social values, the perspective of the workers is the closest and most accurate thing to assess (Graeber, 2018:57-58).

Regardless of how it works social values in providing a paradigmatic standard about a job, Graeber emphasizes that it is also influenced by economic aspects that cause other social problems. The more developed capitalistic relations in a country, the more creation bullshit jobs. For Graeber, this is the result of market reforms which have resulted in an increasing number of bullshit jobs in the government bureaucracy, even at the private level (Graeber, 2018:60). Worse, at certain levels are sometimes made shit jobs, which for Graeber is real work, but exists to support those involved in it bullshit jobs (Graeber, 2018:76).

Until here, bullshit jobs Graeber still has not found a complete understanding, even though from the beginning Graeber's writings have always emphasized it as a useless work. What is argued and discussed above is just Graeber's initial angst in the book Bullshit Jobs (2018) on chaptersfirst. Next Graeber explains in a more complex way what it is bullshit jobs, categorization, and even drawn on political debates as one of the instruments present bullshit jobs.

What Graeber thinks is still worth exploring until the end of the article. However, the logic of his thinking is only up Bullshit Jobs, the book of his last work.
RIP David Graeber.
(12 February 1961-2 September 2020)

Bibliography

Graebber, Dabid. Bullshit Jobs: A Theory. New York: Simon & Schuster, (2018).