I’ve been sitting on a new version of my ‘The Book I’m Writing’ post for a few weeks because I’m not super happy with how it’s turned out. The guts of the post is that, having read Foucault, I’d like to have each chapter talk about the ‘birth’ (read: contingent construction) of an idea that … Continue reading A review of Melissa Gregg’s “Counterproductive”
Category: Literature Review
Words matter
Both ‘work’ and ‘job’ are key words today. Neither had its prominence three hundred years ago. Both are still untranslatable from European languages into many others. Most languages never have one single word to designate all activities that are considered useful. Some languages happen to have a word for activities demanding pay. This word usually … Continue reading Words matter
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
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’
Is a History of Work a History of Everything?
In the second year of my PhD one of the reviewers at my annual review queried the metastasizing scope of my thesis. As it started to slip from a transnational history of Australian protest into a sort of weird agglomeration of case studies touching on everything from 19th Century vaccinations in Britain to the Boer … Continue reading Is a History of Work a History of Everything?
Performance Anxiety 