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Full Description
The modern work ethic is in crisis. The numerous harms and injustices harboured by current labour markets and work organisations, combined with the threat of mass unemployment entailed in rampant automation, have inspired a strong "post-work" movement in the theoretical humanities and social sciences, echoed by many intellectuals, journalists, artists and progressives. Against this widespread temptation to declare work obsolete, The Case for Work shows that our paltry situation is critical precisely because work matters. It is a mistake to advocate a society beyond work on the basis of its current organisation.
In the first part of the book, the arguments feeding into the "case against work" are located in the long history of social and political thought. This comprehensive, genealogical inquiry highlights many conceptual and methodological issues that continue to plague contemporary accounts. The second part of the book makes the "case for work" in a positive way through a dialectical argument. The very feature of work that its critics emphasise, namely that it is a realm of necessity, is precisely what makes it the conduit for freedom and flourishing, provided each member of society is in a position to face this necessity in conditions that are equal and just.
Contents
Introduction
PART I: THE CASE AGAINST WORK
1: A modern value
2: The work ethic
3: Abstract labour
4: Work as discipline
5: Aristotelian objections
6: Nihilistic work
7: The imminent obsolescence of work
8: The social and political irrelevance of work
PART II: THE CASE FOR WORK
9: Feminism's ambivalent attitude to work
10: The work of social reproduction
11: The long history of work
12: The social centrality of work
13: Facing necessity
14: Organizing necessity
Conclusion: Transcending necessity
