The Problem with Work: Feminism, Marxism, Antiwork Politics, and Postwork Imaginaries(A John Hope Franklin Center Book)

About the Book

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

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

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.

Review :
"Kathi Week's excellent book shows us that the project to build a post-work society is a feminist project, one that understands that the real liberation of labor must be the liberation from labor." Antonio Negri, co-author Empire, Multitude, and Commonwealth "Less work or better work? Should alienated labor be a focus of political economic critique or is it more important to question the centrality of work to life and productivity to self-worth? Kathi Weeks builds a feminist political theory of work from these questions. The result is a provocative argument that not only sheds new light on Second Wave feminism by putting the 1970's demand for wages for housework in dialogue with autonomist Marxism, but reminds that tradition of its debts to feminist theory and activism." Lisa Disch, University of Michigan "The Problem of Work is one of the most exciting and original works of social theory that I have read in a great many years. Kathi Weeks's argument is daring and extremely well executed, and her book is remarkable for its clarity, compulsive readability, and insightful synthesis of critical social theories. This is a truly wonderful book."--Judith Grant, author of Fundamental Feminism: Contesting the Core Concepts of Feminist Theory "There's no better way to spend the summer months than thinking about waged labor, which is why I'm currently reading The Problem with Work, an inventive examination of how seemingly reformist measures such as universal basic income and reduced workweeks can be used as stepping stones toward a world beyond the daily grind." Frank Reynolds, The Nation, June 29th 2012 "Weeks...succeeds in showing that antiwork critique must be an essential aspect of feminist politics, and in her proposal that a contemporary 'feminist time movement' that seeks to reduce working hours must broaden the possibilities for nonwork time, including time for pleasure as well as fulfilment of duties... an illuminating and inspiring book." - Victoria Browne, Radical Philosophy 175, Sept/Oct 2012 "[Weeks] convincingly shows how an imperative to be productive, at work, in the home, school and in life generally ('Five Top Tips for Productive Dating Profiles!'), is central to the way capitalism not only puts us to work but makes us want to be put to work. We think work is right and just and when we imagine another world, even a 'post-revolutionary world', we imagine a world of work. Weeks argues that we need to break the hold that work has on our imaginations." - Nicholas Beuret, Red Pepper, October 2012 "It opens with a discussion of the work ethic, as theorised by Max Weber and others, along with a consideration of its vulnerabilities, particularly in the context of post-Fordism. This ethic haunts even many critical approaches. Developing Jean Baudrillard's 1975 critique of 'productivist' Marxism, Weeks demonstrates how its limits continue to inflect many feminist as well as Marxist perspectives. Importantly, however, she also points towards counter-currents within these traditions advocating a 'refusal of work' - a strategy simultaneously 'understood as a creative practice, one that seeks to reappropriate and reconfigure existing forms of production and reprodiction'" - Ben Trott, Political Studies Review, May 2013