Comment by netcan

So... I think a lot of people (not you) missed the fact that graeber writes from what I think is a traditional anthropological perspective, as opposed to other social philosophy traditions.

Bullshit jobs described as such by the worker was a very big part of his definition. I think the definition has to drift, since an anthropologist won't typically want to impose a typology.

In any case, if medieval monks themselves considered monkery bullshit... there are snug places in Graebers' typology for them. In fact, I believe an average monastery could man every type of bullshit job category. It would depend on whether or not they themselves believe in the monastic institutions... and I would not necessarily assume that they did.