The Politics of Working Life and Meaningful Waged Work

A new theory exploring what makes modern waged work either meaningful or meaningless.

Knut Laaser (Author), Jan Ch. Karlsson (Author)

9781009098571, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 16 November 2023

350 pages
23.5 x 16 x 2.5 cm, 0.65 kg

'Work has become central to public discourse. Laaser and Karlsson provide an innovative and insightful mapping of issues that will prove a valuable resource for anyone interested in this topical but contested terrain.' Paul Thompson, Emeritus Professor of Employment Studies, University of Stirling

Can waged work under capitalism be meaningful? How does this meaningfulness express itself in the politics of working life? More fundamentally, how should work be socially and economically valued, rewarded, organised and regulated to become more meaningful? Knut Laaser and Jan Ch. Karlsson address these questions and provide a novel theory of meaningful work that is deeply ingrained in Critical Social Science approaches. The authors conceptualise meaningful work as a continuum between meaningful–meaningless work that rests on objective and subjective dimensions of autonomy, dignity and recognition, all pushed and pulled by the multi-layered control and power dynamics of waged work. They challenge the tendency to promote unpolitical concepts in the scholarship of meaningful work. The explanatory power of the meaningful work framework is illustrated by the analysis of empirical case studies on Norwegian industry operators, British bank employees, Indian security guards, German university academics and Swedish cabin crew members.

Preface
1. Meaningful work
Part I. Problems in Analyses of Meaningful Work: 2. Contradictions in the concept of work
3. The ideological meaning of exploitative work forms
4. The politics of working life
Part II. Theoretical Traditions in Analysing Meaningful Waged Work: 5. Approaching the meaning of waged work through its meaninglessness
6. Designing, organising and managing meaningful waged work
7. Meaningful wage labour as a human condition: humanist accounts of meaningful waged work
8. The political philosophy of meaningful wage labour
Part III. Meaningful and Meaningless Waged Work: 9. Objective and subjective dimensions of meaningful waged work: towards a new meaningful work framework
10. Theorizing meaningful and meaningless waged work
11. Conclusion: meaningful waged work and its implications for the critical analysis of work and employment
References
Index.

Subject Areas: Personnel & human resources management [KJMV2]