The focal article by Seth Kaplan and colleagues is followed by 14 sharp commentaries focusing on key aspects of work in our age of rapid technology change. Here’s the lead article’s abstract:

Nearly 100 years ago, economist John Maynard Keynes predicted that, by today, technological advancements would allow the workweek to dwindle to just 15 hours, or 3 hours per day, and that the real problem of humanity would be filling their time with leisure. Although much has changed in the world of work since this prediction, such a drastic change has not taken place. In this article, several industrial-organizational psychology scholars discuss why this is the case. Why do we continue to work as much as we do, and how might that change? More fundamentally, what do these trends, contra Keynes’ prediction, tell us about the nature of work itself? We use this discussion to propose several research directions regarding the nature of work and how it might change in the future. We depict the phenomenon of working hours as multilevel in nature, and we consider both the positive and negative possible implications of working less than we do now.

Published in Journal of Industrial Relations, online first

Robert Bruno is professor of labour and employment at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and director of the labor education program in that university. This book is a summation of over 25 years of teaching leaders and members of the labour movement in his state. Given the book’s origins, “work” here has a restricted meaning. It refers specifically to the labour carried out for a wage under the authority of managers and business owners, where the wage is the single most important source of income. The book does not consider the work performed by people in positions of power, or professional work, or the new forms of income-earning activities that are available in contemporary labour markets (typically gig work). Care and volunteer work are mentioned only in passing as important forms of work, which are however outside the purview of the book. Similarly, the book’s outlook is restricted to the American working class. There is no consideration of the role of migrant work in modern economies, or of the ties, dependencies and power asymmetries that connect workers across borders in global value-chains. The book’s purpose is to articulate the multidimensional meaning of work as it is experienced by the contemporary working-class in the United States. Its fundamental goal is to respond to what it clearly defines as a structural contradiction of the modern economy: namely, that the productive efforts of the workingclass are the direct cause for the material reproduction of society, and yet the voices of those who ensure this social reproduction are consistently silenced, and the voices that dominate public discourse are of those who have the power and privilege to set up the rules under which work is performed and in the end who decide “what work is”.

In seeking to render visible the interests and concerns of the American working class, the book in fact combines a plurality of voices. An apt subtitle could well be “symphony for the working class”, or indeed “a symphony of the working class”. The primary voices are those of Bruno, the teacher, and his students. Bruno transcribes and expands upon class discussions sparked by an original essay assignment: to define “what work is” in no more than six words. The book’s main substance is thus the author’s discussion, informed by a large body of scholarly literature, of a wide selection from the thousands of student responses gathered over his career, using this simple question to explore the key dimensions of the work experience. Other important voices are those of Bruno’s parents. The scholarly analyses of student reflections are complemented by biographical and autobiographical passages where the multifaceted dimensions of working-class labour are captured from an intimate perspective. To these direct expressions of work experience are added several external voices. Bruno often cites American poets who also wrote about working life. The book’s title is borrowed from a prize-winning collection by former car factory worker Phillip Levine. And the analyses of student answers are framed by the classical theories of work from the Western tradition, for instance Arendt or Locke, as well as important sociological inquiries, such as Rose Hackman’s Emotional Labor or Anne Case and Angus Deaton’s Deaths of Despair. Amongst those scholarly references, Marx in particular is particularly prominent, as Bruno finds his seminal analysis of capitalist exploitation and the domination of labour in capitalist regimes consistently preempted and confirmed by the statements of his student workers.

The polyphonic nature of the book reflects the different aims it sets out to achieve. It is a reflective, retrospective contemplation of the many lessons learnt and dispensed over a long career of teaching and writing about work. It is also a homage to parents whose major goal in dedicating their life to work was simply to care for their children. Beyond the personal, the book wants to be a celebration of work in the American popular conversation. It seeks to performatively elevate work as a topic to be celebrated in everyday culture. It is also an original, experience-based vindication of large bodies of philosophical and sociological studies of work which have thematised and theoretically explored its significance for individuals and communities. The importance for individuals of the skills and knowledges acquired through their occupation and the pride in the expertise thus achieved, of autonomy and agency in fulfilling tasks, of recognition for efforts and achievements, of the relationships created through work, of the contribution one makes to others and to the community at large, the major impact of work on body, mind and psyche; all these themes raised in the book have been explored at length in specialized academic studies in the last decades. Bruno shows confirmations and illustrations of these findings in the words of the workers. This lends a significant pedagogical quality to the book. Indeed, the book can serve as an excellent introduction to contemporary theories of work, presented in accessible style by an expert teacher, through the lens of everyday experience. From this point of view, the book will be particularly useful for teachers and students in the disciplines where the experience of work and the forms of injustice suffered through work and at work are major topics.

The volume is organised into five chapters, each chapter focusing on a major aspect of work experience: “the time of work” (chapter 1); “work and space” (chapter 2); “work’s impact” (chapter 3); “the purpose of work” (chapter 4) and “the subject of work” (chapter 5). Across these chapters, content overlaps are many and many analyses appear repetitive after a while. On a cover-to-cover reading of the book, the arc of its demonstration seems quite circular. Within each chapter, whilst the conversational tone ensures the reading is smooth and engaging, structure and progression of the arguments seem a little haphazard.

These are minor flaws, however, which are largely compensated for by the book’s many positives. In particular, Bruno’s analysis of his students’ vision of work lets some important themes emerge, which are rarely discussed in recent scholarship on work. This is a particularly valuable aspect of the book. The main theme highlighted across all the chapters is the inherent ambivalence of work, as a place “somewhere between heaven and hell” (164). It is the fundamental condition to create and sustain individual and community life, but also a major means to “shape a sense of self” (33), which can become “the well-spring of a purposeful life” (55). At the same time, work is also a waste of one’s time, and often an indirect, or indeed a direct threat to life. Another major theme is the invisibility of work. Bruno highlights powerfully in several passages how much the work of ordinary people is taken for granted, both the value of their outputs, the skills required to achieve them, and the difficulties attached to it: “the world the workers make is proof of their salience” (54), and yet “even in plain sight workers are invisible to the end users and the passers by” (76). In capitalist societies, “the property relations of work obscure the activity of workers” (79). A third important and original highlight of the book is its emphasis on the “reverential” aspects of working: even in difficult or unjust working conditions, workers “often reserve a sense of sacredness for the worksite itself” (73), and equally for their tools and indeed their craft. These reverential dimensions of work stem directly from its links to life, the life of the worker, of others and of the community, all impacted by and dependent upon everybody else’s work.

The Conclusion reprises the significance of work as it has been delineated through the lens of the five main dimensions (time, space, impact, purpose and subjectivity), to briefly consider the present state of work in the United States, and what political battles will need to be waged in the near future for a healthier and fairer American society. Regarding the present situation, it is of course extremely deteriorated. Reporting the concerns of his students, Bruno bemoans the rise of app-based and agency-based contract work, which drastically increase precariousness, the absence of basic leave and health care provisions that are provided in other rich countries, the rise in technologies of control, the attacks on unions, the weakness of the labour movement, ever-expanding financial inequality based in continually increasing political disempowerment of the majority, the absence of truthful representations of worker concerns and struggles in popular media. Regarding “What needs to be done”, the author offers no concrete suggestion. But this was not the book’s brief. More deeply, with his book Bruno wants to highlight the full existential and social significance of work. He also demonstrates that such deep layers of working are captured equally well by those who think about it as by those who engage in it. The concept that sums up this philosophical depth is that “work is a virtue” (161), in the Aristotelian sense of the word, as a form of knowledge and of being developed through practical experience which ensures a good development for both the agent and the community. “What needs to be done” is not difficult to outline once this fundamental normative status of work is recognised: in each particular case, for each particular issue, it comes down to deciding collectively to organise work in such a way that it is decent and fair.

1. The collection of essays I edited with Denise Celentano, Michael Cholbi and Kory Schaff is now out in its online version; the printed version is scheduled for mid-June. The volume is called Debating a Post-Work Future. Perspectives from Philosophy and the Social Sciences (Routledge) and features some significant contributions to the current debates on work and its future (or lack thereof). The opening roundtable discussion between Michael Cholbi, John Danaher, Helen Hester and Kathi Weeks alone makes the book a worthwhile read.

2. The OnWork repository has gone past 5,000 items. Recent additions include texts by Denise Celentano, Thomas Coutrot, Jared Parmer, Caleb Althorpe, Engels’ classical analysis of work as the determining factor in the evolution of humankind, and one of the very first anticipations in the 19th century of a fully automated society, John Etzler’s 1842 “ The Paradise Within the Reach of All Men, Without Labor, By Powers of Nature and Machinery” (cited by Edward Granter in his Critical Theory and the End of Work).

As always, suggestions for new entries are very welcome.

The manifesto’s underlying goal is to seize the moment opened by the pandemic crisis and transform the latter’s destabilizing impact on institutions and citizenries into an opportunity to “radically reorganise the economy.” The authors claim it is time to address the structural injustices and dysfunctions of the global economic system, in particular its staggering levels of inequality and the climate emergency. The key proposal put forward by the manifesto is that the twin exigencies of social justice and environmental action can be best achieved through a democratization of work. The manifesto’s main propositions are thus encapsulated in four key verbs: work, democratize, decommodify, and decarbonize.

In the introduction, Julie Battilana emphasizes the links between the three “levers”: to decarbonize the economy, economic power must be wrested from corporations, and the interests of all must be considered, which means democratizing work; and work can only be sustainable and equitable if it is no longer governed solely by profitability considerations, which means that work needs to be at least partly decommodified.

Following the introduction and the manifesto, the first, longer chapter by Isabelle Ferreras focuses on the democratization of work. The Covid crisis has highlighted the enormous power asymmetry in the organization of capitalist economies, between those who work and those who own the means of production. To characterize this classical imbalance, Ferreras describes work efforts as being themselves a form of investment, one however that is entirely different from financial investment for the purpose of higher returns. Working people “invest” their own person in their work through their dedication and the mobilization of their cognitive, emotional, and physical resources. These efforts in turn help fulfill the needs of all. Work is thus anything but a commodity. Yet it is those who invest financial capital, as opposed to their own selves, who hold the largest share, and in many jurisdictions the whole share, of executive power. The interests of owners and investors take systematic precedence over those of workers and of communities, and the former’s voices systematically overrule those of the latter. During the Covid crisis, the disconnect between the rights of the economy’s key constituents became particularly blatant for workers deemed “essential,” who were often people enjoying the least voice and benefiting from the least protection: women, racialized groups, and undocumented migrants. The conclusion Ferreras draws, which she expounded extensively in earlier landmark publications, is that the investment workers make through their work should translate into political rights to the same extent as capital investment does. Historically, the institution that has realized the imperative of democracy has been the representation of citizens’ interests in chambers that reflect different constituencies. Correspondingly, full representation of workers’ interests ought to occur through “chambers” of their elected representatives sitting alongside the boards defending the interests of capital owners. The manifesto extends the argument and proposes that institutionalized workplace democracy, generalized across entire value chains, would be a major step toward a redemocratization of society at large, and thereby an essential condition for social justice and decisive environmental action. Besides the conceptual shift of no longer thinking of labor as a commodity, in opposition notably to neoclassical economic theory, decommodification thus implies also the practical attempt, realized for instance in collective bargaining, of no longer defining the terms and conditions attached to work solely through market mechanisms. In turn, the link Ferreras establishes between democratization of work and decarbonization of the economy is twofold. First, decarbonization will require low-tech, labor-intensive solutions, which in many cases will not correspond to the demands of high-return capital investment but can be embraced by democratized firms. Second, the democratization of firms extends naturally into a democratization of economic decisions beyond firms, to include all stakeholders, which allows environmental concerns to be seriously considered.

In the concluding chapter, Dominique Méda presents parallel arguments, but with the urgency of the environmental situation rather than inequality between capital and labor as her starting point. A radical ecological “upshift” will not be accomplished if economic power remains in the hands of corporations and economic activity continues to be driven exclusively by the logic of profitability. The interests of communities, and of humanity at large, need to dictate economic thinking. Furthermore, environmental remediation demands that polluting and nonnecessary sectors are wound down. Only through democratic processes can economic reorganization ensure that workers engaged in these sectors see their interests protected and accept the transition. Conversely, effective ecological remediation requires massive work efforts, in housing and infrastructure for instance. Democratically organized work can ensure that the work necessary for the ecological transition is directed where it is needed, not where the return on investment is maximized. The necessity to decarbonize therefore also hangs on the democratization of economic activity.

The rest of the book is organized as a string of short interventions by other contributors. Each intervention draws on the author’s expertise, focuses on a particular point in the manifesto, encapsulated in a particular citation, and explicitly echoes the texts surrounding it. The book is thus organized as a polyphonic ensemble, demonstrating and encouraging discussion and participation. It is not a standard academic book, but more like a snapshot of the intellectual and political movement started by the three main editors and their colleagues, relayed across many countries through conferences, interviews, and publications, a movement that is ongoing and thriving (see the list of signatures, publications, and events at democratizingwork.org).

Hélène Landemore focuses on democratizing work and highlights the reasons, especially instrumental reasons, why such a transformation matters. Democratizing work helps to make society more democratic as a whole. This is important not just for correcting different forms of social injustice but also for ensuring that ecological transition is fair as well as more efficient, as such an approach mobilizes the participation and knowledge of all. Lisa Herzog picks up this thread and emphasizes how social justice and political participation rely on epistemic justice, ensuring that the voice of each is heard properly. Imge Kaya-Sabanci shines a light on the disproportionate toll economic and environmental crises take on groups who are undervalued, notably women. Workplace democracy from this point of view is a key institutional measure to combat structural gender inequalities. Adelle Blankett highlights how extending democratic participation across all of society means focusing in particular on the status of informal workers, whose precarious conditions and lack of voice at work often reflect their lower social standing, especially if they are migrants. Blankett cites the example of Martin Luther King, Jr.’s involvement with the sanitation workers in Memphis as a historical model for how to link the struggle for the recognition of the dignity of everyone with the recognition of the dignity of their work and the significance of their work contributions. Sara Lafuente takes up a theme discussed throughout the book, namely, that a full democratization of work means it has to occur across entire value chains, and therefore has to be transnational. She highlights the role of trade unions and notes the serious limitations of existing transnational legal frameworks in Europe. Julia Cagé emphasizes the importance of decommodifying the work of journalism for truly democratic societies. Drawing on her paradigm-setting research, Pavlina Tcherneva rehearses the main features of job guarantee schemes, showing the different ways in which they can achieve a decommodification of work and bring about an organization of the economy that is fairer and more adept at meeting the huge challenges of ecological remediation. Echoing the concerns of Blankett and Lafuente, Neera Chandhoke highlights the tension between formal and informal, organized and unorganized work, and the plight of migrant workers, including in their own country, as in India. The call for a democratization of work should begin with full recognition of all those who produce value. Flávia Máximo follows the same concern and emphasizes the weight of silence and invisibility shrouding the bodies of marginalized workers. The structural invisibility of those bodies makes the call for the institutionalization of democracy an ambivalent one, as the boundary between formal and informal work has been one of the structural causes for the subjection of marginalized groups. Simply calling for the erasure of this boundary does not do justice to how ingrained hierarchies in labor statuses have been to date and how much they currently organize global and national value chains. Alyssa Battistoni’s text anticipates Dominique Méda’s last chapter, listing the main ways in which work, democratization, and decommodification are involved in ecological transition.

With the pandemic now in its fourth year, a vicious war in Europe, major economic disruptions globally, and the attacks on democratic values and institutions in many countries, the health crisis has been relegated from a hegemonic headline to almost a side issue. This book, which was conceived in 2020, reflects the sense of shock and unpreparedness the world was feeling at the start and at the height of the pandemic, as cities shut down, countries closed their borders, and all economies were heavily disrupted. Some of the formulations in the book already seem eerily outdated, as the world seems to have moved on. Yet many of the crises feeding newspaper headlines are just different symptomatic effects of a systemic unraveling. This small book is a vigorous call to intellectual and political action to avert the worst outcomes of this unraveling. The principles and proposals it lays out offer genuine options for an intelligent response to future catastrophes.

https://www.abc.net.au/radionational/programs/godforbid/a-defence-of-human-work/102258420

In empirical studies of the psychological centrality of work, one area of research concerns lottery winners, assessing whether winning high sums of money is a motive for quitting work. Here is a revealing quote from a 2004 article by Arvey, Harpaz and Liao:

Our findings indicated that the average amount won among those who chose to continue working was relatively high ($2.59 million), suggesting a relatively high monetary threshold for discontinuing work, and even among these high winners, a sizable number still continued working. For instance, a 64-year-old bus driver who won $20 million dollars stated (in the open-ended section of the questionnaire) that the “lottery is just a bonus that came my way, it has not or will not affect my work habits and goals in life. (p 415-6)

Or from Vecchio (1980):

one report concerns several London factory workers who won substantial sums of money from football pools. With wise investment, the sums of their individual winnings would have provided sufficient income for these men to live comfortably for the remainder of their lives. Yet each of the men returned to work after a brief vacation. Perhaps even more amazing in these cases is the fact that these men held jobs that could be reasonably described as dull, routine, and repetitive” (p. 362)

These individual examples of strong commitment to work need to be tempered by the shifts noted by the psychologists across decades, as well as variations across groups and within groups, correlated to factors internal and extraneous to work (family situations, relations with colleagues, professional status, level of pay, and so on). Nonetheless, these two examples above are representative of a broad section of populations in many countries identified by psychologists, who demonstrated strong commitments to work even though they no longer had any financial reason to stay in their job.

Henry David Thoreau’s classic work Walden (2008 [1854]) is widely appreciated for its poetic insights into deliberate living, immersion in nature, and its critique of modern industrialism. But there is a complex philosophy of work in Walden that has received less academic and public attention. In fact, much of Thoreau’s writing addresses the right place of work in our lives – this not only the case with Walden but also “Life Without Principle” (1863), and his Journal written between 1837 and 1861 (2009).

It is a common practice to think of Thoreau as an anti-work advocate who espouses leisure and contemplation whilst deriding hard work. This image is supported by the superficial ad-hominem critiques of Thoreau as the ‘loafer’ or ‘freeloader’ – the isolated hermit who took from Emerson, his own family, and society, and contributed nothing in return. A deeper reading of Thoreau’s work, however, offers great evidence to the contrary. Thoreau’s critique of industrialised work served as the foundation for his ideal vision of work. His experiment at Walden Pond was an attempt to reconceive of work as a deliberate and life-affirming activity, rather than a merely instrumental activity that fulfils our biological need for food and shelter.

Thoreau’s Negative Account of Work

Thoreau begins Walden, on the very second page, with a discussion of work. It is already clear that work is of greatest importance for his experiment and his text:

But men labor under a mistake. The better part of the man is soon ploughed into the soil for compost. By a seeming fate, commonly called necessity, they are employed, as it says in an old book, laying up treasures which moth and rust will corrupt and thieves break through and steal. It is a fool’s life, as they will find when they get to the end of it if not before. (Walden 2008, 7).

According to Thoreau, an error has occurred. Bound by unquestioned work and necessity, individuals foolishly commit themselves to a single mode of life. Work is conceptualised as an unchangeable struggle oriented towards obtaining material goods. This is a struggle that finds its end only in death. Here, and throughout his writing, Thoreau frames work as an existential issue. When work is not carefully scrutinised, the greatest loss is felt at the level of the individual. This is one of the most tantalising dimensions of Thoreau’s work – individual existence is the most fundamental ground against which work activities are assessed, rather than their contribution to economic or societal functioning.

Thoreau further articulates the negative effects of modern industrialised work on individual character and individual life:

Most men, even in this comparatively free country, through mere ignorance and mistake, are so occupied with the factitious cares and superfluously coarse labors of life that its finer fruits cannot be plucked by them. Their fingers, from excessive toil, are too clumsy and tremble too much for that. Actually, the laboring man has not leisure for a true integrity day by day; he cannot afford to sustain the manliest relations to men; his labor would be depreciated in the market. He has no time to be any thing but a machine… The finest qualities of our nature, like the bloom on fruits, can be preserved only by the most delicate handling. Yet we do not treat ourselves nor one another thus tenderly. (Walden 2008, 7-8). 

The modern worker unduly focused on materiality has become reduced to a machine. They are unable to pluck life’s “finer fruits” – the most important and essential facts of life, including psychological, moral, and spiritual goods. Under the guise of increased efficiency and productivity, this machine-like work squanders away the quality and intimacy of the work itself. Such mechanical action can be contrasted against the deep sensory experience of life and nature that Thoreau articulates in The Maine Woods (2009 [1864], 64):

Think of our life in nature, - daily to be shown matter, to come into contact with it, - rocks, trees, wind on our cheeks! the solid earth! the actual world! the common sense! Contact! Contact! Who are we? where are we?

However, this contact and intimacy with nature is not only attainable in pristine wilderness, but always available in our present location and even at work.

To grasp the “finer fruits” of life, Thoreau asserts that work must be performed with a critical awareness of its place in our individual lives. And the very first task is to re-examine the relationship between work and necessity, or what is truly required for life.

Necessity

It is clear that necessity is a central theme in Walden. A primary objective of Thoreau’s two-year experiment at Walden Pond was to discover what was needed to materially sustain human life, at its most rudimentary levels. Thoreau defines these “necessaries of life” as:

…whatever, of all that man obtains by his own exertions, has been from the first, or from long use has become, so important to human life that few, if any… ever attempt to do without it. (Walden 2008, 13).

Thoreau designates these necessaries of life under the categories of Food, Shelter, Clothing and Fuel. They are set as the standard for what is truly needed and what is not. But the level at which these needs are satisfied must be inspected too:

Most of the luxuries, and many of the so called comforts of life, are not only indispensable, but positive hinderances to the elevation of mankind. (Walden 2008, 15).

There are some things that are absolutely necessary and require work, whilst others may not require work, and must be inspected before we engage with them.

We must draw attention to the fact that Thoreau’s philosophical framework does not only consider higher, spiritual matters, but also everyday material concerns. It is striking that a spiritual, moral, and existential experiment would even mention or capitalise ‘trivial’ concerns such as Food and Shelter. However, Thoreau’s experiment is precisely one concerned with life as a whole. This means that every aspect of life is examined, especially the problem of work. Work is not just one aspect amongst others, but unerringly central in realising Thoreau’s experiment.

Furthermore, Thoreau’s understanding of basic material concerns collapses the traditional boundaries between the physical and the spiritual. He declares:

The grand necessity, then, for our bodies, is to keep warm, to keep the vital heat in us. (Walden 2008, 14).

At its simplest, “vital heat” is sustained by material goods, by Food, Shelter, Clothing, and Fuel. But Thoreau simultaneously asserts that vital heat extends to spiritual forms of “vitality”. To retain the vital heat within ourselves, we must also retain our spiritual heat:

The philosopher... is not fed, sheltered, clothed, warmed, like his contemporaries. How can a man be a philosopher and not maintain his vital heat by better methods than other men? (Walden 2008, 15).

The philosopher, who feeds, shelters, clothes, and warms their body, should simultaneously maintain their spiritual vitality. To accomplish this in his doctrine of work, Thoreau layers the metaphysical upon the physical. Like the “reverse side of the tapestry” (Emerson 1842), the basic metabolic dimensions of existence concurrently hold spiritual significance. In this schema then, even the most humble acts of meeting one’s physical needs – such as farming, housework, acquiring one’s food – are endowed with the highest existential and poetic potential.

Thoreau’s Positive Account of Work

Deliberate Action

One of Thoreau’s most striking insights is his elucidation of the moral and existential dimensions of work. Thoreau considers how every activity, including and perhaps most importantly the activities we engage in in our working lives, can be deliberately oriented towards truth, goodness, and our ‘higher’ natures. The conclusion of Walden ends with such a celebration of work:

Give me a hammer, and let me feel for the furrowing. Do not depend on the putty. Drive a nail home and clinch it so faithfully that you can wake up in the night and think of your work with satisfaction, - a work at which you would not be ashamed to invoke the Muse... Every nail driven should be as another rivet in the machine of the universe, you carrying on the work. (Walden 2008, 294).

Work, for Thoreau, is a holistic undertaking that requires deliberate action even in the most mundane details and everyday activities. Thoreau calls for productive action that does not only patch up holes, but that is performed with such conviction that it has a lasting metaphysical, not only physical, effect.

Satisfaction

Thoreau also provides a plethora of examples of what good work looks like. Good work has the characteristics, amongst others, of being satisfying and enjoyable, deliberate, and not merely for economic ends. Several of these characteristics of good work are captured in Thoreau’s discussion of his neighbour Minott, the “poetical” farmer:

He does nothing with haste and drudgery, but as if he loved it. He makes the most of his labour, and takes infinite satisfaction in every part of it. He is not looking forward to the sale of his crops or any pecuniary profit, but he is paid by the constant satisfaction which his labor yields him. He has not too much land to trouble him, - too much work to do, - no hired man nor boy, - but simply to amuse himself and live... He knows every pin and nail in his barn... He is never in a hurry to get his garden planted and yet [it] is always planted soon enough, and none in the town is kept so beautifully clean. He always prophesises a failure of crops, and yet is satisfied with what he gets (Journal III in Raymond 2009, 149).

The farmer loves what they do. If undertaken in the right way, humble toil holds the intrinsic value of being satisfying and enjoyable in itself. This satisfaction “makes the most” of labour in that it extracts the greatest value from human activity, and holds existential value against the backdrop of an individual life. To set about this satisfying work, however, one must have faith in their own capacities and faith that one’s material needs will be met. This faith, for Thoreau, is a quality that must be trained and developed.

Self-cultivation

A further characteristic of good work is that it cultivates one’s mind, body, and spirit. This concept of work as self-cultivation is clearly articulated in the chapter “The Bean-field”, where Thoreau embraces the analogy between literal and metaphorical cultivation:

I will not plant beans and corn with so much industry another summer, but such seeds, if the seed is not lost, as sincerity, truth, simplicity, faith, innocence, and the like, and see if they will not grow in this soil, even with less toil and maintenance, and sustain me. (Walden 2008, 148).

Here, the boundary between the material and the moral are blended. Self-cultivation sustains the spirit, as toil sustains the material body. The virtues are qualities that must be sown and reaped as food of the spirit. Similarly, Thoreau writes:

But labor of the hands… has a constant and imperishable moral, and to the scholar it yields a classic result. (Walden 2008, 142).

Planting, hoeing, and harvesting beans, like any other work, is an innately moral activity that cultivates the worker in some way. For Thoreau the writer and poet, this labour also rewarded him with an intellectual profit. A striking analogy is created here between the labour of the hands and the labour of the artist – a good farmer creates ‘classics’, akin to a Homer of the garden.

At its core, Thoreau’s message asserts that work to meet material necessity is most valuable when it takes on the significance of self-cultivation, and without this higher purpose, work will remain in a cycle of materiality.

Intimacy with Nature

Given our inevitable finitude, Thoreau asserts that good work should be an activity oriented towards the finest aspects of human life, including our intrinsic “divinity” and sensitivity to the world. He gives examples of the spiritual and sensory pleasures that are attainable through good work:

When my hoe tinkled against the stones, that music echoed to the woods and the sky, and was an accompaniment to my labor which yielded an instant and immeasurable crop. It was no longer beans that I hoed, nor I that hoed beans; and I remembered with as much pity as pride, if I remembered at all, my acquaintances who had gone to the city to attend the oratorios. (Walden 2008, 143).

Whilst Thoreau worked in the field, his deliberate labour afforded him an “instant and immeasurable crop”, a spiritual harvest that sustains the spirit. He details an ecstatic and immediate act of self-transcendence where the object of his labour was elevated (“It was no longer beans that I hoed”) and his own identity, dissipated (“nor I that hoed beans”). Furthermore, Thoreau likens such work to the true realm of freedom that is leisure. His work contained such musicality and spirituality, that it could challenge his friends’ leisurely experiences of attending the religious musical works of the oratorios.

Thoreau further articulates the deep poetic sensibility and dignity attainable through work:

Meanwhile my beans, the length of whose rows, added together, was seven miles already planted, were impatient to be hoed, for the earliest had grown considerably before the latest were in the ground; indeed they were not easily to be put off. What was the meaning of this so steady and self-respecting, this small Herculean labor, I knew not. I came to love my rows, my beans, though so many more than I wanted. They attached me to the earth, and so I got strength like Antaeus. But why should I raise them? Only Heaven knows. This was my curious labor all summer,— to make this portion of the earth’s surface, which had yielded only cinquefoil, blackberries, johnswort, and the like, before, sweet wild fruits and pleasant flowers, produce instead this pulse. What shall I learn of beans or beans of me? I cherish them, I hoe them, early and late I have an eye to them; and this is my day’s work. It is a fine broad leaf to look on. (Walden 2008, 140).

Thoreau describes work that endows the worker with strength, self-respect, and intimacy with nature. Whilst writers in the Romantic-Transcendentalist tradition typically used the emotion and drama of classical Greek mythology to describe nature or art, Thoreau remarkably uses this same mythology to describe the topic of work. By growing beans, which themselves contain a life “pulse”, Thoreau became connected to the living earth, like the divine hero Antaeus who received his power from the earth, his mother Gaea. It is also striking that the form of work that Thoreau most elevates is the labour of the humble farmer. Yet this reflects Thoreau’s return to the original purpose of work. Rather than being an inherently economic activity concerned with money acquisition, work is an activity of sustaining our bodies through nature.

Leisure

Where does leisure fit into Thoreau’s philosophy of work? Thoreau is well known for his elevation of leisure and contemplation, yet many have ignored the fact that for Thoreau, good leisure comes only after good work:

The student who secures his coveted leisure and retirement by systematically shirking any labor necessary to man obtains but an ignoble and unprofitable leisure, defrauding himself of the experience which alone can make leisure fruitful. (Walden 2008, 47).

It is work alone that gives leisure its noble and beneficial character. This remarkable theory of leisure directly challenges a long philosophical tradition, running from Aristotle to Hannah Arendt and André Gorz, of opposing leisure and work as spheres of freedom and unfreedom. Rather, these two domains of life are very much intertwined for Thoreau. Individuals who acquire their leisure without engaging in necessary labour experience an existentially unprofitable leisure.

But Thoreau also emphasises the unique benefit of idleness and leisure. In our modern context, the strain and frustrations of work frequently bleed into our leisure time. We use our leisure time to recover from and compensate for bad or excessive work, rather than as a positive domain of freedom where we enact our higher projects. Thoreau, however, maintains that leisure and contemplation are of vital importance to his philosophy of work:

There were times when I could not afford to sacrifice the bloom of the present moment to any work, whether of the head or hands. I love a broad margin to my life. Sometimes, in a summer morning, having taken my accustomed bath, I sat in my sunny doorway from sunrise till noon, rapt in a revery, amidst the pines and hickories and sumachs, in undisturbed solitude and stillness... I grew in those seasons like a corn in the night, and they were far better than any work of the hands would have been. They were not time subtracted from my life, but so much over and above my usual allowance. I realized what the Orientals meant by contemplation and the forsaking of works. (Walden 2008, 102).

This passage is not a contradiction of Thoreau’s work ethic above. Leisure, idleness, and contemplation are not antithetical to work, but instead vital elements for a life of flourishing. They cultivate the individual towards deep attention, stillness, and lingering. There were times when Thoreau worked, sustaining his body and simultaneously his spirit, and there were times set aside simply and wholly for leisure and contemplation. Thoreau thus harmonises the seemingly irreconcilable realms of leisure and work within a philosophy of work oriented towards human flourishing.

There are many preconceptions about Thoreau’s thoughts on leisure, contemplation, and work. But upon closer reading, we find an unexpected and remarkable doctrine of work that challenges several long-standing notions of work in the philosophical tradition. Work is conceptualised, not as an ignoble or merely instrumental activity, but a deeply moral and existential domain with the potential for self-cultivation and spiritual elevation.

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Henry David Thoreau, by B. D. Maxham. Daguerrotype of Thoreau in 1856. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Daguerreotype_of_Thoreau_in_1856_by_BD_Maxham.png

Byung-Chul Han is a Korean-German philosopher, of high notoriety in Germany and the Spanish-speaking world, the author of over twenty books on topics from aesthetics to political philosophy and East Asian philosophy. His work focuses on changes in subjective experience in the transformation from post-industrial to digital society. Han was born in Seoul, South Korea, where he studied metallurgy before moving to Germany to study to philosophy, German literature, and theology. In 1994 he received a PhD with a thesis on mood in Heidegger. His approach to philosophy reflects both his training in German philosophy and his cultural roots in East Asian thought.

A subset of Han’s work critiques neoliberal society, power, burnout, freedom, subjectivity, and digital technology and all these themes connect in varying degrees to the philosophy of work. The books of most interest for the study of work are: The Burnout Society (2015); The Transparency Society (2015); In the Swarm: Digital Prospects (2017); Psychopolitics: Neoliberalism and new technologies of power (2017); Topology of Violence (2017) and Capitalism and the Death Drive (2021). In these books, Han defines modern society as a condition of excess positivity and an obsession with achievement, performance, and self-optimization. This, he explains, is a consequence of new power relations that harness freedom as a means of control. We have all become achievement subjects, according to him, as we try to extract the maximum benefit from all our activities because achievement has become an expression of freedom. This creates a society of hyper-active individuals who pressure themselves to constantly perform, resulting in passivity and exhaustion. Work (and society) for Han is turned into a state of bare life and labouring in which the inability to engage or manage negative experiences means we are no longer able to appropriate thought for meaningful change and as constitutive elements of real freedom. Han is therefore not against work as such, but critical of neoliberal modes of work and subjectification that enslave us to economic imperatives.

Pathologies of Modern Work

Byung-Chul Han’s dystopian analyses in The Burnout Society (2015) should not be read as a call to abandon work but rather as a sign that neoliberal instrumental rationality has produced an ideology of work activity which has engendered numerous social pathologies leading to individual disorders, such as neuronal disorders, depression, burnout, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and borderline personality disorder. Burnout and depression have their genesis in new power relations that hijack freedom for productive means. Neoliberal ideology has produced a culture obsessed with achievement and performance as ends in themselves.

Han’s diagnosis does not give support to post work theory but rather illuminates the current agenda of maximizing efficiency as something that stands in the way of making work more meaningful and less exploitative. While Han does not make a serious attempt at a positive theory of meaningful work or a good society, he does provide a method of critique and ways of thinking about our current situation that invites us to ‘linger’ with him as he diagnoses the social problems facing modern society.

The pathologies of neoliberal work are not immunological conditions, he argues, like infections that come from outside of the self, but rather, they are infarctions (blockage or saturation) caused by an excess of positivity and an inability to engage in negative experiences. The excess of positivity is where “everything grows and proliferates beyond its goal, beyond its purpose, indeed, beyond the economy of use” (Topology of Violence, 90). Pathologies such as burnout do not result exclusively from the structures of work, or from work itself, but rather have their genesis in the internal demand for freedom that manifests as over-achievement, over-performance, and self-optimization.

The way we work, Han argues, has fundamentally changed. Rather than doing what we must do out of a sense of duty or obligation, we are pressured, often by ourselves, to do as much as we can, and to always do more, out of a cultural obsession with achievement and self-optimization. This obsession governs how we educate ourselves, the life plans we make, how we optimise our leisure time and how we engage with others. We are always trying to extract the most instrumental value out of all our activities. When we are not successful, we blame ourselves, feel anxious, burn out, or become depressed. The sad truth, Han explains, is that we voluntarily surrender to this new regime of work and consumption, or more accurately we have been co-opted by “psychopolitics”, a new form of governmentality, into always trying to outperform ourselves and to accumulate more material goods, because our identities are linked to the belief that we are acting freely. This is what Han calls compulsive and paradoxical freedom, a form of freedom based on new power relations in which the freedom of achievement and performance become the positive affirmation of agency and power. However, because achievement and performance are indefinite, are instrumental and have no ends, they become compulsive and produce self-exploitation. As Han explains:

‘The disappearance of domination does not entail freedom. Instead, it makes freedom and constraint coincide. The achievement subject gives himself over to compulsive freedom—that is, to the free constraint of maximizing achievement. Excess work and performance escalate into auto-exploitation.’ (The Burnout Society, 11).

Hyper-individualism is the main target of this critique, and according to Han, we have all become entrepreneurs of the self, which he calls “achievement subjects”. We are always trying to refashion or re-invent ourselves to make ourselves more competitive and to garner the most benefit or value out of our activates and relationships. This is a form of subjectivity that, through its own activity of self-optimisation, has come to represent the condition of an absolute slave—both a slave who wants to be a master and a master who has become enslaved.

‘The society of laboring and achievement is not a free society. It generates new constraints. Ultimately, the dialectic of master and slave does not yield a society where everyone is free and capable of leisure, too. Rather, it leads to a society of work in which the master himself has become a laboring slave.’ (The Burnout Society, 19).

This does not mean Han is against work in general, rather he describes the pathological consequences of a society in which work is defined by principles of achievement, performance, and self-optimization and not by human emancipation and flourishing. The achievement subject seeks to emancipate themselves through the freedom implied in these principles but in the process, eventually optimises itself to death. As Han argues,

‘Burnout is not a sickness caused by work but by the pressure to perform. The human soul is affected not because of work but because of performance, this new neoliberal principle.’ (Capitalism and the Death Drive, 77).

These principles have become like a drug addiction, distilled, and normalised in the social consciousness. Even when the amount of work carried out is not that great, the constant pressure to perform, both from others and the pressure that we place on ourselves, can have an immobilizing and pathological affect. We have surrendered to these principles under the guise of freedom, and we all freely participate in what Han calls the “digital panopticon”. In Foucault's panopticon there was a clear system of control, we knew who the guards were and who were the prisoners, but the digital panopticon is aperspectival, you cannot distinguish between inside and outside, and we freely participate in its surveillance and monitoring. We are simultaneously prisoners and guards, or perpetrators and victims and we do this freely. Neoliberalism, according to Han, is a highly advanced system of domination. Exploitation accompanied by a sense of freedom becomes a more effective means of productivity than exploitation by others.

‘The term ‘neoliberalism’ captures well the condition of today’s society as one that exploits freedom. The system wants to constantly increase productivity, and it switches from exploitation by others to self-exploitation because the latter is more efficient and more productivity—and all this under the guise of freedom.’ (Capitalism and the Death Drive, 128).

Neoliberal smart power employs other interlinking technologies of power to enhance productivity. Among these is transparency, a neoliberal tool of domination that has infiltrated modern society and the workplace for purpose of smoothing things out, shedding them of negativity, so they can become ‘calculable, steerable, and controllable’ (The Transparency Society, 1). If we only connect transparency to the freedom of information and corruption, then we have failed to understand its scope. ‘The demand for transparency takes hold of all social processes in order to operationalize and accelerate them.’ (The Transparency Society, 2). Communication and production reach their maximum efficiency when purged of the negativity of alterity, foreignness, or the resistance of the Other. They operate most efficiently when ‘like’ responds to ‘like.’   

‘Today’s compulsive transparency no longer has an explicitly moral or biopolitical imperative; above all, it follows an economic imperative. People who illuminate themselves entirely surrender to exploitation. Illumination is exploitation. Overexposing individual subjects maximizes economic efficiency ... the social degrades into a functional element within the system of production and undergoes operationalization.’ (The Transparency Society, 48-49).

No community, or cohesive ‘we’ can form in a society of transparency. Rather, according to Han, we have become functional elements within a system in which transparency, achievement, and performance are producing positive forms of violence. Burnout and depression are systemic and result from this cultural obsession. They have become a substitute for revolution. The reaction against exploitation is no longer directed outwards towards forms of transgression but instead manifest internally and is directed towards the self. Therefore, the modern subject does not represent what Nietzsche called the sovereign man, but rather what he called, the last man, an animal laborans ‘who does nothing but work’ (The Burnout Society, 10), and who exploit themselves voluntarily without external limitations forcing them to work. They stand exposed and defenceless in the face of an excess of positivity because they have been stripped of all sovereignty.

‘Burnout, which often precedes depression, does not point to a sovereign individual who has come to lack the power to be the ‘master of himself.’ Rather, burnout represents the pathological consequences of voluntary self-exploitation.' (The Burnout Society, 44).

Han’s conclusion is that the modern project of freedom has failed. Modern society now absolutizes survival and is not concerned with the good life. We live and work under the illusion that more capital means more life and concern for the good life, or for any higher value, evaporates and yields to a hysteria for survival. For Han, the society of achievement and transparency is not a free society but one that displays deficient social rationality. It has lost sight that the purpose of human activities should be for producing human emancipation and flourishing.

‘The loss of all ideal values leaves, other than the exhibition value of the ego, only health value behind. Bare life makes all teleology vanish—every in-order-to that would give reason to remain healthy. Health becomes self-referential and voids itself into purposiveness without purpose.’ (The Burnout Society, 45).

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Byung-Chul Han, by Actualiité, cropped by MRCLD . At Prix Bristol des Lumières 2015, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=126839347

Neoliberalism’s Work Paradox and Finding a New Work Ethic.

…it is important to realise that a Kiriwinian is capable of working well, efficiently and in a continuous manner. But he must work under an effective incentive: he must be prompted by some duty imposed by tribal standards, or he must be lured by ambitions and values also dictated by custom and tradition. Gain, such as is often the stimulus for work in more civilised communities, never acts as an impulse to work under the original native conditions. It succeeds very badly, therefore, when a white man tries to use this incentive to make a native work. This is the reason why the traditional view of the lazy and indolent native is not only a constant refrain of the average white settler, but finds its way into good books of travel, and even serious ethnographic records. With us, labour is, or was till fairly recently, a commodity sold as any other, in the open market. A man accustomed to think in terms of current economic theory will naturally apply the conceptions of supply and demand to labour, and he applies them therefore to native labour. The untrained person does the same, though in less sophisticated terms, and as they see that the native will not work well for the white man, even if tempted by considerable payment and treated fairly well, they conclude that his capacity for labour is very small. This error is due to the same cause which lies at the bottom of all our misconceptions about people of different cultures. If you remove a man from his social milieu, you eo ipso deprive him of almost all his stimuli to moral steadfastness and economic efficiency and even of interest in life. If then you measure him by moral, legal or economic standards, also essentially foreign to him, you cannot but obtain a caricature in your estimate.

But the natives are not only capable of energetic, continuous and skilful work; their social conditions also make it possible for them to employ organised labour. At the beginning of Chapter IV, the sociology of canoe-building was given in outline, and now, after the details of its successive stages have been filled in, it is possible to confirm what has been said there, and draw some conclusions as to this organisation of labour. And first, as we are using this expression so often, I must insist again on the fact that the natives are capable of it, and that this contention is not a truism, as the following considerations should show. The just mentioned view of the lazy, individualistic and selfish savage, who lives on the bounties of nature as they fall ripe and ready for him, implicitly precludes the possibility of his doing effective work, integrated into an organised effort by social forces. Again, the view, almost universally accepted by specialists, is that the lowest savages are in the pre-economic stage of individualistic search for food, whereas the more developed ones, such as the Trobrianders, for instance, live at the stage of isolated household economy. This view also ignores, when it does not deny explicitly, the possibility of socially organised labour.

The view generally held is that, in native communities each individual works for himself, or members of a household work so as to provide each family with the necessities of life. Of course, a canoe, even a masawa, could obviously be made by the members of household, though with less efficiency and in a longer time. So that there is a priori nothing to foretell whether organised labour, or the unaided efforts of an individual or a small group of people should be used in the  work. As a matter of fact, we have seen in canoe-building a number of men engaged in performing each a definite and difficult task, though united to one purpose. The tasks were differentiated in their sociological setting; some of the workers were actually to own the canoe; others belonged to a different community, and did it only as an act of service to the chief. Some worked in order to derive direct benefit from the use of the canoe; others were to be paid. We saw also that the work of felling, of scooping, of decorating, would in some cases be performed by various men, or it might be performed by one only. Certainly the minute tasks of lashing, caulking and painting, as well as sail-making, were done by communal labour as opposed to individual. And all these different tasks were directed towards one aim: the providing the chief or headman with the title of ownership of a canoe, and his whole community with its use.

It is clear that this differentiation of tasks, co-ordinated to a general purpose, requires a well developed social apparatus to back it up, and that on the other hand, this social mechanism must be associated and permeated with economic elements. There must be a chief, regarded as representative of a group; he must have certain formal rights and privileges, and a certain amount of authority, and also he must dispose of part of the wealth of the community. There must also be a man or men with knowledge sufficient to direct and co-ordinate the technical operations.

(…)

Another point must be enlarged upon somewhat more. I have spoken of organised labour, and of communal labour. These two conceptions are not synonymous, and it is well to keep them apart. As already defined, organised labour implies the co-operation of several socially and economically different elements. It is quite another thing, however, when a number of people are engaged side by side, performing the same work, without any technical division of labour, or social differentiation of function. Thus, the whole enterprise of canoe-building is, in Kiriwina, the result of organised labour. But the work of some twenty to thirty men, who side by side do the lashing or caulking of the canoe, is communal labour. This latter form of work has a great psychological advantage. It is much more stimulating and more interesting, and it allows of emulation, and therefore of a better quality of work. For one or two men, it would require about a month to do the work which twenty to thirty men can do in a day. In certain cases, as in the pulling of the heavy log from the jungle to the village, the joining of forces is almost indispensable. True, the canoe could be scooped out in the raybwag, and then a few men might be able to pull it along, applying some skill. But it would entail great hardships. Thus, in some cases, communal labour is of extreme importance, and in all cases it furthers the course of work considerably. Sociologically, it is important, because it implies mutual help, exchange of services, and solidarity in work within a wide range.

Communal labour is an important factor in the tribal economy of the Trobriand natives. They resort to it in the building of living-huts and storehouses, in certain forms of industrial work, and in the transport of things, especially at harvest time, when great quantities of produce have to be shifted from one village to another, often over a great distance. In fishing, when several canoes go out together and fish each for itself, then we cannot speak of communal labour. When on the other hand, they fish in one band, each canoe having an appointed task, as is sometimes done, then we have to do with organised labour. Communal labour is also based upon the duties of urigubu or relatives-in-law. That is, a man’s relatives-in-law have to assist him, whenever he needs their co-operation. In the case of a chief, there is an assistance on a grand scale, and whole villages will turn out. In the case of a commoner, only a few people will help. There is always a distribution of food after the work has been done, but this can hardly be considered as payment, for it is not proportional to the work each individual does.

By far the most important part communal labour has to play, is in gardening. There are as many as five different forms of communal labour in the gardens, each called by a different name, and each distinct in its sociological nature.

THE canoe, painted and decorated, stands now ready to be launched, a source of pride to the owners and to the makers, and an object of admiration to the other beholders. A new sailing craft is not only another utility created; it is more: it is a new entity sprung into being, something with which the future destinies of the sailors will be bound up, and on which they will depend. There can be no doubt that this sentiment is also felt by the natives and expressed in their customs and behaviour. The canoe receives a personal name, it becomes an object of intense interest to the whole district. Its qualities, points of beauty, and of probable perfection or faultiness are canvassed round the fires at night. The owner and his kinsmen and fellow villagers will speak of it with the usual boasting and exaggerations, and the others will all be very keen to see it, and to watch its performances. Thus the institution of ceremonial launching is not a mere formality prescribed by custom; it corresponds to the psychological needs of the community, it rouses a great interest, and is very well attended even when the canoe belongs to a small community. When a big chief’s canoe is launched, whether that of Kasanai or Omarakana, Olivilevi or Sinaketa, up to a thousand natives will assemble on the beach.

This festive and public display of a finished canoe, with its full paint and ornament, is not only in harmony with the natives’ sentiments towards a new sailing craft; it also agrees with the way they treat in general the results of their economic activities. Whether in gardening or in fishing, in the building of houses or in industrial achievements, there is a tendency to display the products, to arrange them, and even adorn at least certain classes of them, so as to produce a big, aesthetic effect. In fishing, there are only traces of this tendency, but in gardening, it assumes very great proportions, and the handling, arranging and display of garden produce is one of the most characteristic features of their tribal life, and it takes up much time and work.

Bronislaw Malinowski, Argonauts of the Western Pacific (London: Routledge, 2002 [1922]), p.62-63.

Half of the natives’ working life is spent in the garden, and around it centres perhaps more than half of his interests and ambitions. And here we must pause and make an attempt to understand his attitude in this matter, as it is typical of the way in which he goes about all his work. If we remain under the delusion that the native is a happy-go-lucky, lazy child of nature, who shuns as far as possible all labour and effort, waiting till the ripe fruits, so bountifully supplied by generous tropical Nature, fall into his mouth, we shall not be able to understand in the least his aims and motives in carrying out the Kula or any other enterprise. On the contrary, the truth is that the native can and, under circumstances, does work hard, and work systematically, with endurance and purpose, nor does he wait till he is pressed to work by his immediate needs. In gardening, for instance, the natives produce much more than they actually require, and in any average year they harvest perhaps twice as much as they can eat. Nowadays, this surplus is exported by Europeans to feed plantation hands in other parts of New Guinea; in olden days it was simply allowed to rot. Again, they produce this surplus in a manner which entails much  more work than is strictly necessary for obtaining the crops. Much time and labour is given up to æsthetic purposes, to making the gardens tidy, clean, cleared of all debris; to building fine, solid, fences, to providing specially strong and big yam-poles. All these things are to some extent required for the growth of the plant; but there can be no doubt that the natives push their conscientiousness far beyond the limit of the purely necessary. The non-utilitarian element in their garden work is still more clearly perceptible in the various tasks which they carry out entirely for the sake of ornamentation, in connection with magical ceremonies, and in obedience to tribal usage. Thus, after the ground has been scrupulously cleared and is ready for planting, the natives divide each garden plot into small squares, each a few yards in length and width, and this is done only in obedience to usage, in order to make the gardens look neat. No self-respecting man would dream of omitting to do this. Again, in especially well trimmed gardens, long horizontal poles are tied to the yam supports in order to embellish them. Another, and perhaps the most interesting example of non-utilitarian work is afforded by the big, prismatic erections called kamkokola, which serve ornamental and magical purposes, but have nothing to do with the growth of plants

(…)

much time and energy is spent on wholly unnecessary effort, that is, from a utilitarian point of view. Again, work and effort, instead of being merely a means to an end, are, in a way an end in themselves. A good garden worker in the Trobriands derives a direct prestige from the amount of labour he can do, and the size of garden he can till. The title tokwaybagula, which means “good” or “efficient gardener,” is bestowed with discrimination, and borne with pride. Several of my friends, renowned as tokwaybagula, would boast to me how long they worked, how much ground they tilled, and would compare their efforts with those of less efficient men. When the labour, some of which is done communally, is being actually carried out, a good deal of competition goes on. Men vie with one another in their speed, in their thoroughness, and in the weights they can lift, when bringing big poles to the garden, or in carrying away the harvested yams. The most important point about this is, however, that all, or almost all the fruits of his work, and certainly any surplus which he can achieve by extra effort, goes not to the man himself, but to his relatives-in-law. Without entering into details of the system of the apportionment of the harvest, of which the sociology is rather complex and would require a preliminary account of the Trobriand kinship system and kinship ideas, it may be said that about three quarters of a man’s crops go partly as tribute to the chief, partly as his due to his sister’s (or mother’s) husband and family. But although he thus derives practically no personal benefit in the utilitarian sense from his harvest, the gardener receives much praise and renown from its size and quality, and that in a direct and circumstantial manner. For all the crops, after being harvested, are displayed for some time afterwards in the gardens, piled up in neat, conical heaps under small shelters made of yam-vine. Each man’s harvest is thus exhibited for criticism in his own plot, and parties of natives walk about from garden to garden, admiring, comparing and praising the best results. The importance of the food display can be gauged by the fact that, in olden days, when the chief’s power was much more considerable than now, it was dangerous for a man who was not either of high rank himself, or working for such a one, to show crops which might compare too favourably with those of the chief.

In years when the harvest promises to be plentiful, the chief will proclaim a kayasa harvest, that is to say, ceremonial, competitive display of food, and then the straining for good results and the interest taken in them are still higher. We shall meet later on with ceremonial enterprises of the kayasa type, and find that they play a considerable part in the Kula. All this shows how entirely the real native of flesh and bone differs from the shadowy Primitive Economic Man, on whose imaginary behaviour many of the scholastic deductions of abstract economics are based.3 The Trobriander works in a roundabout way, to a large extent for the sake of the work itself, and puts a great deal of æsthetic polish on the arrangement and general appearance of his garden. He is not guided primarily by the desire to satisfy his wants, but by a very complex set of traditional forces, duties and obligations, beliefs in magic, social ambitions and vanities. He wants, if he is a man, to achieve social distinction as a good gardener and a good worker in general.

The most recent entries have been in the Anthropology of Work and Economic Anthropology.

Anthropologists cited include: Herbert Applebaum, Philippe Descola, Maurice Godelier, Raymond Firth, Tim Ingold, Richard Lee, Frank Marlowe, Lorna Marshall, Elizabeth Povinelli, Marshall Sahlins, Marjorie Shostak, Gerd Spittler, Sandra Wallman.

Research in anthropology is highly significant for debates on the centrality of work.

For instance, following a paradigm-setting conference in Chicago in 1966, the “Man the Hunter” symposium, a whole new picture of hunter-gatherer societies was promoted by leading US anthropologists, one which seemed to present a counter-model to work-obsessed, consumer-driven, market-centred modern societies. In a famous text presented at the conference, Marshall Sahlins drew a picture of hunter-gatherers as having created “the original affluent society”, one in which individuals are wise enough to limit their wants and have to work only to the extent required by the level of affluence these wants define. In such a society, work is limited in duration, it is not a value in itself, yet it is not viewed as toil either, leisure is abundant for all, the absence of property and of the drive to acquire translate into egalitarian relations, notably between the sexes, and to low levels of conflictuality overall.

The authority of Sahlins and the many other anthropologists who continued this approach to hunter-gatherer societies meant that the vision of a societal model in which work is of secondary importance for the community and the individuals, has become a major argument in debates on work. Many social theorists reference this anthropological research to indict modern society and its work-cult.

However, another substantial strand of research in anthropology has debunked these optimistic descriptions of hunter-gatherers . David Kaplan’s “The Darker Side of ‘The Original Affluent Society’” provides a thorough review of the findings contradicting the optimist descriptions of the affluent society thesis. More than 30 entries document these debates.

Beyond the factual issue of whether such leisure societies actually existed, these debates matter for other reasons. Studies of 20th century hunter-gatherers, for instance Richard Lee’s book on the !Kung San of the Kalahari Desert, Elizabeth Povinelli’s book on “labour-action” of the Belyuen in Northern Australia, or Frank Marlowe’s study of the Hadza of Tanzania, are, as a matter of fact, amongst other things, ethnographic studies of work that demonstrate the complex strategies employed by women and men in these societies to procure their livelihoods, the social organisations in which work efforts are embedded, and the rich cultural facets of working activities. Against the claim by theorists external to anthropology that only in modern, Western societies does work matter for the community and the individuals, ethnographic accounts document just the opposite: to what extent skills and knowledges acquired for and at work shape persons of all sexes, how much success at work matters socially, how deeply work is integrated in religious rituals and artistic expressions.

Accounts of other human societies, for instance Philippe Descola’s In the Society of Nature, which recounts his fieldwork with the Achuar of the Amazon, or Raymond Firth’s classic Work of the Gods in Tikopia, about work and religion in the Soloman Islands, prove just the same. Against the recurrent claim by many social theorists, that work as a general category is an invention of modern, capitalist society, that the concept does not exist in non-Western societies and therefore its importance should not be emphasised outside the Western context, anthropologists who study other societies and cultures highlight the complexity and the psychological, social and cultural importance of work for non-Western peoples.

Another debate in anthropology, in which Sahlins made an important contribution, between formalist and substantivist conceptions of the “economy”, also impacts directly on the conceptual understanding of work outside of that discipline. Substantialists like Sahlins define work as economic activity and the economy itself as one sphere within the general cultural organisation. Formalists by contrast follow Lionel Robbins’ seminal definition of economics as the science which “studies human behaviour as a relation between ends and scarce means that have alternate uses” (see for instance Burling 1962 for an early application to anthropology). In one conception, work is at the centre of economics, as it concerns the production of the goods needed for livelihood, as defined in a particular culture. In the other conception, work is less important, since there are different ways to rationally apply means of all kinds to achieve whatever ends individuals pursue. At first, the substantialist approach seems to be the one that the centrality of work thesis would favour. But things are not that simple. If by work is meant more than just the production of food, shelter and tools, if “livelihood” includes all that is necessary for human life within the entire coordinates of a particular culture, then the formalist claim that economic activity is not a sphere of society but rather a way of acting, becomes an appealing idea that might be applied to work. Following this line of thought, we might say that trying to delineate which part of social life is work and which is not, is not the most fruitful perspective to take, but rather work should be viewed as one way to act within society, in whichever sphere this occurs. On that account, the definition of work would insist, not on the objects to which it is applied (typically, a narrow set of objects on the traditional conception of “production”), but rather on key features of working activities: the expenditure of physical and mental energy; the deployment of skills and technical knowledge; technical and aesthetic standards of action; particular modes of relating to others.

The definition of work provided by Sandra Wallman in the introduction to her edited volume on the social anthropology of work captures this vision of work as activity ensuring the reproduction of individual and collective lives:

“work is the performance of necessary tasks, and the production of necessary values - moral as well as economic. The tasks of meeting obligations, securing identity, status and structure, are as fundamental to livelihood as bread and shelter. On this basis, work may be defined as the production, management or conversion of the resources necessary to livelihood”

(Social Anthropology of Work Introduction, reprinted in Current Anthropology 21(3), 1980, p.302)

Recent additions include:

• more than 50 citations from the writings of Alasdair MacIntyre, as well as more than 50 references to secondary literature, by Lindsay Roberts as part of an internship in her BPhil. In the previous post, Lindsay wrote a rich presentation of the main features of MacIntyre’s views on work.

• citations from the writings of Adorno, Horkheimer, Marcuse, Sartre, de Beauvoir and Camus, courtesy of third year students, as part of their “participation unit”.

Here are a few nuggets unearthed by the students:

Adorno:

“If the world were so planned that everything one did served the whole of society in a transparent manner, and senseless activities were abandoned, I would be happy to spend two hours a day working as a lift attendant”. (Towards a New Manifesto, p.15)

Horkheimer:

“In the process of selling household necessities and especially food, those who help in the selling have a few necessary tasks but otherwise are only stopgaps, temporary substitutes for self-service and automated equipment. This is true of the economy generally for that part of the work force which does not simply supervise automation. As formerly, so now the customer is a subject, but he is now to some extent a self-supporting subject: he must quickly orient himself, know his way around among the current standardized brands, and react promptly as though he were working in a factory”. (Critique of Instrumental Reason, p.124)

“labor as such cannot be abolished. To affirm the contrary would be in fact to repudiate what Marx called the metabolic exchange between man and nature. Some control, mastery, and transformation of nature, some modification of existence through labor is inevitable, but in this utopian hypothesis labor would be so different from labor as we know it or normally conceive of it that the idea of the convergence of labor and play does not diverge too far from the possibilities”. (The End of Utopia, p.2)

Marcuse:

“The real danger for the established system is not the abolition of labor but the possibility of nonalienated labor as the basis of the reproduction of society. Not that people are no longer compelled to work, but that they might be compelled to work for a very different life and in very different relations, that they might be given very different goals and values, that they might have to live with a very different morality – this is the “definite negation” of the established system, the liberating alternative”. (“Aggressiveness in Advanced Industrial Societies”, in Negations, p.193)

“The erotic aim of sustaining the entire body as subject-object of pleasure calls for the continual refinement of the organism, the intensification of its receptivity, the growth of its sensuousness. The aim generates its own projects of realization: the abolition of toil, the amelioration of the environment, the conquest of disease and decay, the creation of luxury. All these activities flow directly from the pleasure principle, and, at the same time, they constitute work which associates individuals to "greater unities"; no longer confined within the mutilating dominion of the performance principle, they modify the impulse without deflecting it from its aim. There is sublimation and, consequently, culture; but this sublimation proceeds in a system of expanding and enduring libidinal relations, which are in themselves work relations”. (Eros and Civilisation, p.212)

Camus:

“Sisyphus,  proletarian  of  the  gods,  powerless  and  rebellious,  knows  the  whole  extent  of  his wretched  condition:  it  is  what  he  thinks  of  during  his  descent.  The  lucidity  that  was  to  constitute  his torture at the same time crowns his victory. There is no fate that cannot be surmounted by scorn”. (Myth of Sisyphus, p.90)

“One can reject all history and yet accept the world of the sea and the stars. The rebels who wish to ignore nature and beauty are condemned to banish from history everything with which they want to construct the dignity of existence and of labor”. (The Rebel, p.241)