Neoliberal eclipse: Donald Trump, corporate monopolism, and the changing face of work Gregory Duff Morton 1 # Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2017 Abstract At the core of his political rhetoric, Donald Trump speaks about work: the experi- ence of laboring, the agonies of the labor market, and the future of employment. This article considers how the anthropology of work can contribute to an analysis of the political moment. Many commentators, including Trump himself, have interpreted a vote for Trump as an act of labor nostalgia, a gesture of yearning for an industrial past. Such commentary describes Trump voters by describing the jobs that many of them once did—manufacturing jobs. But what if, instead, we considered the jobs that many Trump voters now do, that is, service jobs? What if Trump’ s discourse, with its themes of domination and submission, offers an incisive response to the intimacies of power as lived by restaurant workers and customer service representatives? Could the election come into focus as an uprising in the service sector? This article takes two steps. First, it engages with literature from sociology and economics in order to point towards a crucial transformation in the US workplace since the 2008 financial crisis: the ascendancy of monopolistic corporations that defy the neoliberal model. Second, the article explores new developments in the service sector by assessing the work experience of Uber drivers. Trump’ s rhetoric can be interpreted as a response to the 2008 crisis and the novel modes of service work that the crisis made possible—including Uber. As it faces the political consequences of today’ s toil, the anthropology of work gains a new research agenda. Keywords Labor . Neoliberalism . Populism . Uber . Sharing economy Dialect Anthropol DOI 10.1007/s10624-017-9465-6 This paper is dedicated to Bill Drew, dreamer and agitator. I discussed some of these ideas with Bill and hoped to share the paper with him. Before he died, Bill posted his autobiography—a story of communism, cocaine, and regeneration in the Midwestern US—at http://www.fortunateson.us/. And Bill, to answer your wish, you were an example in the struggle for a just society. Note: Some elements of this paper have been published online as Morton, Gregory Duff. 2017. Trump, Uber, and the Changing Shape of Work. Anthropology News website, May 18, 2017. http://www.anthropology-news. org/index.php/2017/05/18/trump-uber-and-the-changing-shape-of-work/. Accessed July 21, 2017. This paper revises and expands upon that text. * Gregory Duff Morton duffmorton@yahoo.com; gregory_morton@brown.edu 1 Bard College, PO Box 5000, Campus Road, Annandale-on-Hudson, NY 12504, USA