Anthropology of Work Review最新文献

South Carolina's Black Belt counties are perennial targets of economic development programs. Economic development personnel focus on industrial recruitment and workforce development to remedy the economic woes of the region. They advertise an available, non-union workforce and free workforce training programs for industries considering locating in South Carolina. These training programs emphasize “soft skills,” a term used by employers, economic development personnel, and workforce development agencies to refer to traits or behaviors an employer desires in a worker, but that are not directly related to a specific job. This research situates the neoliberal turn towards “soft skills” in its historical context in the U.S. South. I draw on Clyde Woods' concept of “moral micromanagement” strategies to compare 20th-century industrial education and 21st-century soft skills training programs, demonstrating that soft skills training programs represent a continuity of racial ideologies and racialized labor regimes. Placing soft skills training within a longer history of moral micromanagement indicates that labor management practices associated with soft skills have as much to do with old ways of disciplining labor as new and highlights the co-constitution of labor anxiety and racial ideologies.

This article explores the aspirations for digital work among two seemingly disparate groups: Lao rural–urban migrant youth and Western digital nomads. Based on ethnographic research in Laos and Thailand, we argue that despite differing socioeconomic backgrounds, both groups share strikingly similar aspirations for autonomy and self-reliance through online work. This challenges existing theories that emphasize the local context of aspirations, suggesting that global connections and neoliberal values increasingly shape desires for a “good life” centered on digital labor. We analyze how these aspirations are formed through encounters with digital technologies, online communities, and global narratives of success, highlighting the role of the internet as both a source of inspiration and a means of achieving these goals. By examining these convergent aspirations, we advance the understanding of how global connections influence the formation and expression of aspiration in the digital age. These findings highlight the importance of exploring the complex interplay between individual aspirations, global connections, and evolving notions of digital work.

The promise of knowledge society is clean, creative, and expressive work. Technological advancements would relieve humans from the tedium and hardship of labor, and access to knowledge and expansion of higher education would diminish the existing social inequalities of industrial society. Based on ethnographic fieldwork in Switzerland's mechanical and electrical engineering industry, this article illustrates how the work experiences of apprentices challenge the image of labor in a knowledge society ostensibly freed from all forms of material, technological, and social constraint. I demonstrate that the persistence of the tedium and potential danger of industrial work, of organizational hierarchies, the decreasing social validation of mechanical and manual labor, and expectations and aspirations to singularity make youth increasingly interested in other kinds of employment and training. The article takes the work and learning relations in the Swiss mechanical and electrical engineering sector as a symptom of emerging tensions around the division of labor and valorization of different forms of skills, and the meaning and motivations of work in late capitalism. I argue that future anthropological studies of work and education in de-industrialized settings might do well to examine the social critique of industrial work in concert with its aesthetic critique.

This paper analyzes the content of India's digital self-help gurus (SHGs), who are popular online figures in India, and engages a varied online audience across multiple social media platforms. We examine the role that the digital SHGs play to mediate cultural transformation following economic restructuring of the Indian economy that began in the 1990s and rapidly transformed the socioeconomic landscape. There was a shift to contractual and uncertain employment, and a simultaneous valorization of entrepreneurial citizenship. We propose that the digital SHGs facilitate this transformation by undertaking the work of mourning and the work of dreaming. Through their advice and content, they enable a letting go of the values historically attached with higher education and stable employment and help cultivate new attitudes toward skill accumulation, self-audit, and responsibilization—core tenets of enterprise culture—to posit entrepreneurial citizenship as a desirable goal. However, entrepreneurial citizenship can be exclusionary and offer unstable belonging. The digital SHGs assuage these fears and anxieties by normalizing failure and prescribing perseverance to cultivate the entrepreneurial self.

This article is part of the special issue “Laboring from Ex-Centric Sites: Disability, Chronicity and Work” (AWR July 2025; 46(1)) edited by Giorgio Brocco and Stefanie Mauksch. Neutrality, epitomized as Whiteness, confers privileges that hinge on being neurotypical, equating neutrality with both Whiteness and the perception of normalcy. For individuals who are both autistic and non-White, navigating this construct often means enduring intersecting forms of oppression. This article examines these dynamics through the personal narratives of a Black neurotypical woman and an autistic Latina in the workplace. Drawing on Critical Racial Studies, Critical Autism Studies, Whiteness Studies, and ethnographic research, we highlight the urgent need for collaboration across these fields. To advance this effort, we introduce the term neuroaquilombar, representing a deliberate approach to cultivating collective spaces that affirm cultural identity for Black and non-White populations while embracing neurological diversity as a natural aspect of humanity. Through collaborative autoethnography as escrevivências, we reflect on the challenges of conforming to capitalist productivity standards in a society structured for the success of the White, able-bodied majority. By recounting our workplace experiences, we aim to deepen understanding, foster connections that humanize diverse experiences, and issue a call to action for advocates in both spheres. Additionally, we seek to showcase new forms of engagement that transcend the extractive practices often associated with anthropological research conducted by non-disabled White scholars.