The Instinct of Workmanship and the Incidence of Bullshit Jobs

Erik Dean, Richard B. Dadzie and Xuan Pham

Journal of Economic Issues, 2022, vol. 56, issue 3, 673-698

Abstract: Throughout his work, Thorstein Veblen argued that humans are guided instinctively by a desire for purposeful, useful effort. Yet anthropologist David Graeber's recent volume, Bullshit Jobs, has revealed that many workers find themselves in jobs that do not contribute anything of value to society. This article first synthesizes the ideas of Veblen and institutional economists with Graeber’s to indicate how the co-evolution of the institutions of modern capitalism and technology has encouraged the proliferation of socially useless (or “bullshit”) jobs. We then formulate a series of hypotheses from this theoretical synthesis to be tested with data from the National Survey of College Graduates. A preliminary exploration and analysis of this data set is executed, followed by evaluation of the hypotheses through a series of logistic models. Results provide support for the arguments of Graeber and institutional theory as they concern the phenomenon of bullshit jobs.

Date: 2022
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DOI: 10.1080/00213624.2022.2079929

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