The Problem With Work

In The Problem with Work, Kathi Weeks challenges the presupposition that work, or waged labor, is inherently a social and political good. While progressive political 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. Weeks proposes a 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.