In light of the ongoing BC teachers’ strike, I thought it a relevant time to post this talk, which I originally gave at Brown University in 2011 (during another strike). In it I introduce the concept of gift economies, via Marcel Mauss and Pierre Bourdieu, and illustrate how the Liberal government mobilizes this rhetoric in order […]

I just finished reading yet another piece, by a teacher, that argues “teaching is a gift, not a job.” I am a teacher. Both my parents were teachers. My mother-in-law was a teacher. And let me tell you, teaching is a job. A hard one. I understand the sentiment in the story. It is, of […]