The Problem with Work: Feminism, Marxism, Antiwork Politics, and Postwork Imaginaries

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

Author: Kathi Weeks
Publisher: Duke University Press
Published: 08/16/2011
Pages: 287
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.93lbs
Size: 9.21h x 5.91w x 0.72d
ISBN: 9780822351122

About the Author

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