READ A BOOK/A Book I can’t stop thinking about….

As a self-confessed non-reader the prospect of reading an entire anthropological book for a book review assignment was an intimidating and dreaded one. My chosen book was ‘Down and Out in the New Economy: How People Find (Or Don’t Find) Work Today’ by anthropologist Ilana Gershon (chosen primarily on the basis it was considerably shorter than other on the reading list). However, the message I want to convey in this blog post is that there is immense value in reading an entire book (shock!).

This isn’t a particularly original argument and the book lovers amongst you are likely to be eye rolling at the simplicity of this suggestion, but for the non-readers stick with me on this one. Before I discuss Gershon’s ethnographic revelations I want to emphasise that the far greater level of understanding one gains from reading an entire book as opposed to a chapter or journal article.

Within anthropological scholarship pinpointing exactly what the central argument is can be a surprisingly difficult task; a task made significantly easier having read an entire book. With more space, the author is able to gradually lead you through their argument, illuminating the various elements that feed into it and detailing the fieldwork, theoretical perspectives and contextual factors that underpin the discussion. With such an in-depth understanding of Gershon’s book in this case, it made the task of writing far easier and also the knowledge of this book has remained with me and is now something I draw on regularly in essays or discussions.

Again, I appreciate that my advice to ‘read a whole book’ is not ground-breaking and may perhaps seem unrealistic during term time with work requirements. However, my recommendation based on my experience is to use university holidays as an opportunity to read a full book that is relevant to your degree; that which presents an interesting and applicable argument to constitute a knowledge bank in your head. Having just one, well digested book in this knowledge bank offers an excellent resource from which to withdraw value from in a variety of situations, be that tutorials, essays, dissertations or even parties if you’ve got clever mates. Aside from exploiting value from these texts you might actually enjoy reading the book, and it might just stick with you the way this one has for me.

And now for a quick summary of this book. Gershon investigates the corporate American job market through her discussions with job seekers and career advisors in Northern California. Her work recognises a shift in the way we think about ourselves within the job market, moving away from the ‘self-as-property’ notion and towards the ‘self-as-business’ understanding. She discusses the myriad of ways in which we have come to operate within ourselves and amongst others as though we are businesses rather than individual people. As the book progresses, the metaphor becomes ever more poignant and concerning as she continuously returns to the fact that we are human beings who cannot sustain the de-humanising operating practices of businesses that we have come to internalise. What resonated most with me was her discussion of the contradictions embedded in hiring practices, in that we are pushed to demonstrate a plethora of diverse skills and experiences whilst also appearing as entirely consistent and coherent commodities ripe for a company’s investment. This made me think about myself as a prospective job seeker, having attended professional development seminars on building a ‘personal brand’, advancing ‘key skills’ and making oneself appear unique but within the limited parameters of companies’ interests. In a sense I thought about the way I’ve strived to shape myself into a marketable product, through a commitment to the credentialised, capitalist society we live in, where the endless accumulation of certificates that constitute our value and worth is deemed essential to thriving or even existing in the job market. This brought me to something of an anthropological dead end. Gershon had illuminated the way we cannot, as subjective humans, go on pretending we are objective businesses – not to draw binaries – whose value is derived from the fluctuations of the market or the individual discretion of employers. To attribute worth to one’s self (as a business) in this fashion is ultimately demoralising and caters to the menacing embrace of our capitalist system. But alas, the question for one individual reading Gershon’s book whilst playing into the system is what can we do about such an unjust set up? Understandably, this doesn’t appear to be question Gershon can answer, hence the dead end. However, an awareness of the inconsistencies, contradictions and injustices that prevail in society is always worthwhile, if not for anything else then for essays….

So two takeaways 1) read a book (I would recommend this one) 2) our job market is flawed/has scope for some serious improvement.