I haven’t written a blog post in two months. That’s dangerously close to dead-ending a blog. A few things have got in the way of my writing. Rather fittingly, the first of those is work. I gave notice at my old job at the end of March (a few days after my last post), and … Continue reading Some (ambivalent) news…
Author: Nick Irving
Gender and Power at Work
I know it's been a while between updates. I've been struggling at work, and haven't had a whole lot of energy for writing. I'm also starting to firm up a plan for my first chapter, so I'm not sure how often I'll update here. After all, I want to write the chapters, not just the … Continue reading Gender and Power at Work
Work is an Ordering Principle
A few months ago I posted a working definition of work. I've been becoming more and more unhappy with it as time's worn on. It's far too materialist, for starters. It won't deal with the psychic or emotional effects of work on our lives. As Steven Salaita puts it in his recent post on post-academic … Continue reading Work is an Ordering Principle
Discipline and Governance in the Neoliberal Workplace
My boss recently told me that in order to do my job I’d need to take work home with me. This is not the first time this has happened, but this time was different. I work in sales, and what my boss was trying to tell me was that to generate leads I needed to … Continue reading Discipline and Governance in the Neoliberal Workplace
The Lost Future of the Final Frontier
For my first post of 2019, I want to expand on something I noticed back in October, namely, that a number of the male writers I've been reading (and one female writer in particular) make passing but significant mention of the space race when they write about work. Given that this year marks the 50th … Continue reading The Lost Future of the Final Frontier
Is it Bedrock All the Way Down?
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?
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’
