The Problem With Work

by Weeks, Kathi

• ISBN13: 9780822351122
• ISBN10: 0822351129
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2011-09-09
• Publisher: Duke Univ Pr

Summary

In The Problem with Work, Kathi Weeks boldly challenges the presupposition that work, or waged labor, is inherently a social and political good. While progressive political movements, including the Marxist and feminist movements, have fought for equal pay, better work conditions, and the recognition of non-paid work as a valued form of labor, even they have tended to accept work as a naturalized or inevitable activity. Weeks argues that in taking work as a given, we have "depoliticized" it, or removed it from the realm of political critique. Employment is now largely privatized, and work-based activism in the United States has atrophied. We have accepted waged work as the primary mechanism for income distribution, an ethical obligation, and a means of defining ourselves and others as social and political subjects. Taking up Marxist and feminist critiques, Weeks proposes a post-work society that would allow people to be productive and creative rather than relentlessly bound to the employment relation. Work, she contends, is a legitimate, even crucial, subject for political theory.

Author Biography

Kathi Weeks is Associate Professor of Womens Studies at Duke University. She is the author of Constituting Feminist Subjects and a co-editor of The Jameson Reader.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	p. ix
Introduction
The Problem with Work	p. 1
Mapping the Work Ethic	p. 37
Marxism, Productivism, and the Refusal of Work	p. 79
Working Demands: From Wages for Housework to Basic Income	p. 113
"Hours for What We Will": Work, Family, and the Demand for Shorter Hours	p. 151
The Future Is Now: Utopian Demands and the Temporalities of Hope	p. 175
Epilogue: A Life beyond Work	p. 227
Notes	p. 235
References	p. 255
Index	p. 275
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