I was only a few pages into Max Weber’s influential 1930 work The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, when I came across this sentence: “The modern rational organisation of the capitalistic enterprise would not have been possible without two other important factors in its development: the separation of business from the household, which … Continue reading Is it Bedrock All the Way Down?
Month: December 2018
Two Codas
One of the perils of this sort of blogging is that you don't ever really get to go back and add stuff in, that's less blogging and more drafting, and is as such reserved for the writing process proper. Nevertheless, these two tidbits add some depth to prevous posts. For my post on Graeber's Bullshit … Continue reading Two Codas
Households of One: Shadow Work in the Epoch of Self-Management
My alarm used to wake me up. For some reason of late I haven’t needed it. Every morning I am drawn from slumber well ahead of when I’d like to be by the fact I need to be at work. Every morning, despite the fact I don’t work for two days out of seven. I … Continue reading Households of One: Shadow Work in the Epoch of Self-Management
The Book I’m Currently Writing
Two months ago, I set out to answer the question, "why do we work?" I haven't answered it yet, but I feel like I know a lot more than I did back then. Namely, I know how much I don't know. The writing I've been doing over the last two months is helping to firm … Continue reading The Book I’m Currently Writing
The Fall of the ‘Household’
In this post, I want to turn from the idea of home as a refuge from the public to consider the centrality of the ‘household’ to work, perhaps as the first tentative step towards a ‘history of the present’ of work. Remember the aim of a history of the present is not to look for … Continue reading The Fall of the ‘Household’
Performance Anxiety 