The Problem with Work PDF Download

Author: Kathi Weeks
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 0822351129
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 300

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Book Description
The Problem with Work develops a Marxist feminist critique of the structures and ethics of work, as well as a perspective for imagining a life no longer subordinated to them.

Author: Kathi Weeks
Publisher: Verso Books
ISBN: 1786636042
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 257

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Book Description
Kathi Weeks suggests that one of the most important tasks for contemporary feminist theory is to develop theories of the subject that are adequate to feminist politics. Although the 1980s modernist-postmodernist debate put the problem of feminist subjectivity on the agenda, Weeks contends that limited debate now blocks the further development of feminist theory. Both modernists and postmodernists succeeded in making clear the problems of an already constituted, essentialist subject. What remains as an ongoing project, Weeks contends, is creating a theory of the constitution of subjects to account for the processes of social construction. This book presents one such account. Drawing on a number of different theoretical frameworks, including feminist standpoint theory, socialist feminism and poststructuralist thought, as well as theories of peformativity and self-valorisation, the author proposes a nonessential feminist subject, a theory of constituting subjects.

Author: Brent D. Peterson
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 9781416967750
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 272

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Book Description
How many countless working hours have you spent on projects, proposals, paperwork, and meetings that felt useless or were ignored or dismissed? Hard work is not the same as real work. Half of the work we do consumes valuable time without strengthening the short- or long-term survival of the organization. In a word, it's fake. Not only does fake work drain a company's resources without improving its bottom line, it steals conviction, care, and positive morale from employees, and adds the burden of high turnover, communication breakdowns, and cultural patterns of poor productivity. But how can you turn fake work into real work? Internationally renowned business consultants Brent D. Peterson and Gaylan W. Nielson explain how to identify needlessly time-consuming and sometimes difficult tasks (which aren't always as easy to spot as they seem) and shift your focus toward rewarding work that will achieve results. With more than twenty years of experience, Peterson and Nielson have successfully helped corporations, government agencies, nonprofits, schools, and community groups increase their productivity and retain talented employees by understanding and using their skills on things that actually matter. They illustrate their advice with stories about real world employees who have been trapped by fake work. Fake Work offers solutions that will change the way you view work, including how to recognize fake work and how to get out of it, how (and what) to communicate with your colleagues to eliminate fake work, how to recognize and counteract the personality traits that encourage fake work, and how to close the gap between your company's strategies and the work that needs to be done to reach the results critical to your and your company's survival.

Author: George M. Alliger
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000467848
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 182

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Book Description
The first book to delineate anti-work in a systematic fashion by identifying and compiling positions from a wide spread of literature, Anti- Work: Psychological Investigations into Its Truths, Problems, and Solutions defines the tenets of anti-work, reviews them from a psychological and historical point of view, and offers solutions to aid the average person in his or her struggle with work. Anti-work thinkers have vigorously argued that work entails a submission of the human will that is constraining and even ultimately damaging. The author has refined 18 tenets of anti-work from the literature, which range from the suggestion that all jobs are bad, to the remarkable ability of modern capitalist enterprises to build "job engagement" among workers, to the proposal of alternative work- deemphasized worlds. Anti-Work begins with a discussion of these tenets, in particular the submission of the will required by work, followed by an overview of topics such as worker resistance, merit, and precarious work. The second part of the book unfolds various possible human responses to the work problem, such as detachment, thinking while working, and right livelihood. In the third part, several lessons about anti-work are drawn from parables, koans, and tales. Discussions of cults and work, working from home, unions, and cooperatives, as well as lessons from Buddhism, Hinduism, and Christianity, offer additional perspectives on the topic of work and provide guidance on developing a helpful attitude toward it. By highlighting the tensions that exist between anti-work and pro-work positions, the book provides new ways to view and plan life, and will give thought- provoking and valuable insights for students, instructors, and practitioners in industrial and organizational psychology and related fields, as well as all people who have worked, will work, have never worked, or will never work.

Author: Stefano Harney
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 082238406X
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 240

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Book Description
An innovative contribution to political theory, State Work examines the labor of government workers in North America. Arguing that this work needs to be theorized precisely because it is vital to the creation and persistence of the state, Stefano Harney draws on thinking from public administration and organizational sociology, as well as poststructuralist theory and performance studies, to launch a cultural studies of the state. Countering conceptions of the government and its employees as remote and inflexible, Harney uses the theory of mass intellectuality developed by Italian worker-theorists to illuminate the potential for genuine political progress inherent within state work. State Work begins with an ethnographic account of Harney’s work as a midlevel manager within an Ontario government initiative charged with leading the province’s efforts to combat racism. Through readings of material such as The X-Files and Law & Order, Harney then reviews how popular images of the state and government labor are formed within American culture and how these ideas shape everyday life. He highlights the mutually dependent roles played in state work by the citizenry and civil servants. Using as case studies Al Gore’s National Partnership for Reinventing Government and a community-policing project in New York City, Harney also critiques public management literature and performance measurement theories. He concludes his study with a look at the motivations of state workers.

Author: David Frayne
Publisher: Zed Books Ltd.
ISBN: 1783601205
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 242

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Book Description
Paid work is absolutely central to the culture and politics of capitalist societies, yet today’s work-centred world is becoming increasingly hostile to the human need for autonomy, spontaneity and community. The grim reality of a society in which some are overworked, whilst others are condemned to intermittent work and unemployment, is progressively more difficult to tolerate. In this thought-provoking book, David Frayne questions the central place of work in mainstream political visions of the future, laying bare the ways in which economic demands colonise our lives and priorities. Drawing on his original research into the lives of people who are actively resisting nine-to-five employment, Frayne asks what motivates these people to disconnect from work, whether or not their resistance is futile, and whether they might have the capacity to inspire an alternative form of development, based on a reduction and social redistribution of work. A crucial dissection of the work-centred nature of modern society and emerging resistance to it, The Refusal of Work is a bold call for a more humane and sustainable vision of social progress.

Author: Sarah Jaffe
Publisher: Bold Type Books
ISBN: 1568589387
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 432

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Book Description
A deeply-reported examination of why "doing what you love" is a recipe for exploitation, creating a new tyranny of work in which we cheerily acquiesce to doing jobs that take over our lives. You're told that if you "do what you love, you'll never work a day in your life." Whether it's working for "exposure" and "experience," or enduring poor treatment in the name of "being part of the family," all employees are pushed to make sacrifices for the privilege of being able to do what we love. In Work Won't Love You Back, Sarah Jaffe, a preeminent voice on labor, inequality, and social movements, examines this "labor of love" myth—the idea that certain work is not really work, and therefore should be done out of passion instead of pay. Told through the lives and experiences of workers in various industries—from the unpaid intern, to the overworked teacher, to the nonprofit worker and even the professional athlete—Jaffe reveals how all of us have been tricked into buying into a new tyranny of work. As Jaffe argues, understanding the trap of the labor of love will empower us to work less and demand what our work is worth. And once freed from those binds, we can finally figure out what actually gives us joy, pleasure, and satisfaction.

Author: Kathryn Stafford
Publisher: Association for Talent Development
ISBN: 1947308580
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 190

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Book Description
Cultivate the Mindset to Overcome Anything A software engineer sees her tech skills slipping even as she rises to manage her own team. A marketing director is squeezed between a demanding, artistic boss and her staff. A tech-savvy manager of operations wants to modernize his warehouse but is surprised when he is stymied. Everyone has experienced a situation at work where challenges pile so high that the only solution seems to be to cut and run. But what if we faced our problems head on instead of quitting? Each fictionalized case study in Work the Problem is coupled with in-depth analysis and commentary by two learning and development experts who offer fresh ways of looking at seemingly insurmountable difficulties. The result is an engrossing collection of unique yet familiar stories that build on one another, creating a conversation about universal workplace problems and how we can think about solving them for ourselves. Work the Problem is about more than the specific demands of any one workplace—it’s about cultivating the mindset and skills to take on the inevitable challenges that will arise in any career. Whether you’re thinking of quitting your job, you feel stalled out at your workplace, or you’re advising someone who has hit a wall, Work the Problem is the book to reach for.

Author: Betty Friedan
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 0393322572
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 587

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Book Description
The book that changed the consciousness of a country—and the world. Landmark, groundbreaking, classic—these adjectives barely describe the earthshaking and long-lasting effects of Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique. This is the book that defined "the problem that has no name," that launched the Second Wave of the feminist movement, and has been awakening women and men with its insights into social relations, which still remain fresh, ever since. A national bestseller, with over 1 million copies sold.

Author: Sara Ahmed
Publisher: Duke University Press
ISBN: 1478022337
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 225

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Book Description
In Complaint! Sara Ahmed examines what we can learn about power from those who complain about abuses of power. Drawing on oral and written testimonies from academics and students who have made complaints about harassment, bullying, and unequal working conditions at universities, Ahmed explores the gap between what is supposed to happen when complaints are made and what actually happens. To make complaints within institutions is to learn how they work and for whom they work: complaint as feminist pedagogy. Ahmed explores how complaints are made behind closed doors and how doors are often closed on those who complain. To open these doors---to get complaints through, keep them going, or keep them alive---Ahmed emphasizes, requires forming new kinds of collectives. This book offers a systematic analysis of the methods used to stop complaints and a powerful and poetic meditation on what complaints can be used to do. Following a long lineage of Black feminist and feminist of color critiques of the university, Ahmed delivers a timely consideration of how institutional change becomes possible and why it is necessary.