ABSTRACT
In previous work, Jensen demonstrated differences between working-class and professional middle-class lives profound enough to constitute different cultural foundations. She illuminated benefits of working-class culture and psychology. But if working-class life can be described as having its own cultural integrity, then it is a colonized culture. In this chapter, Jensen illuminates the rise of precarious employment over the past 30 years and mental, social and societal problems that have arisen as a result. Central among these is their lower status in a class-stratified society, as the ideology of individualism has dramatically increased as well. Obvious injuries arise from the fact that working-class people often do the most repetitive, mind-numbing, and physically dangerous work. But perhaps even more damaging are the invisible internal injuries. In this chapter, Jensen combines her expertise in psychology and working-class studies to find that learned helplessness, cognitive dissonance, and classism have accompanied the rise of precarious employment, ‘the gig economy’. The toxic combination of individualism and precarious employment creates invisibility, cultural collisions, and even serious psychopathology. While these societal changes have greatly benefited the burgeoning upper class, they take a mean and ugly toll on the working-class majority. She implores us to change the policies that make this inhumanity possible.
