Toward an Anthropology of the Great Resignation (and Its Potential Cultural Legacy)
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.32473/nfja.5.1.140273Keywords:
The Great Resignation, Work Culture, Commoning, COVID Lockdowns, AporiaAbstract
In this article, by utilizing both a Certeauian (1984) framing for boss-worker relationships and an understanding of the process of “commoning” as delineated by De Angelis (2017), we ruminate on matters of cultivated identity and self-actualization in spaces of hegemonic narrative aporia, thereby applying such analysis to the ongoing phenomenon that began in 2021 called the “Great Resignation” worker mass-exodus. In addition, we reframe the COVID-19 lockdown period that preceded the Great Resignation, primarily in the US, as being an example of such an aporia, giving it an enduring transformative quality. By building this anthropological, culturally sensitive framework, we demonstrate how the Great Resignation movement both 1) possesses the earmarks of a movement of sociocultural identity more so than sole economic opportunism and 2) stands to leave long-lasting effects on the neoliberal culture of the “work” ideal.
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Copyright (c) 2026 Micah J. Fleck, Jack David Eller
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