The Problem with Work

Feminism, Marxism, Antiwork Politics, and Postwork Imaginaries

Kathi Weeks

• Publisher: Duke University Press Books
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN: 9780822351122, 9780822350965
• eBook ISBN: 9780822394723
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Political History & Theory
• Index: Politics & International Relations

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 unpaid 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, as an ethical obligation, and as a means of defining ourselves and others as social and political subjects. Taking up Marxist and feminist critiques, Weeks proposes a postwork 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.

Table of contents

• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: The Problem with Work
• Chapter 1: Mapping the Work Ethic
• Chapter 2: Marxism, Productivism, and the Refusal of Work
• Chapter 3: Working Demands: From Wages for Housework to Basic Income
• Chapter 4: ‘‘Hours for What We Will’’: Work, Family, and the Demand for Shorter Hours
• Chapter 5: The Future Is Now: Utopian Demands and the Temporalities of Hope
• Epilogue: A Life beyond Work
• Notes
• References
• Index