The Refusal of Work : The Theory and Practice of Resistance to Work

‘Amid the hard-work rhetoric, this book feels liberating and a worthy provocation.’ Financial Times Paid work is absolutely central to the culture and politics of capitalist societies, yet today’s work-centred world is becoming increasingly hostile to the human need for autonomy, spontaneity and community. The grim reality of a society in which some are overworked, whilst others are condemned to intermittent work and unemployment, is progressively more difficult to tolerate. In this thought-provoking book, David Frayne questions the central place of work in mainstream political visions of the future, laying bare the ways in which economic demands colonise our lives and priorities. Drawing on his original research into the lives of people who are actively resisting nine-to-five employment, Frayne asks what motivates these people to disconnect from work, whether or not their resistance is futile, and whether they might have the capacity to inspire an alternative form of development, based on a reduction and social redistribution of work. A crucial dissection of the work-centred nature of modern society and emerging resistance to it, The Refusal of Work is a bold call for a more humane and sustainable vision of social progress. "Paid work is absolutely central to the culture and politics of capitalist societies, yet today's work centered world is becoming increasingly hostile to the human need for autonomy, spontaneity and community. The grim reality of a society in which some are overworked, whilst others are condemned to intermittent work and unemployment, is progressively more difficult to tolerate. In this thought provoking book, David Frayne questions the central place of work in mainstream political visions of the future, laying bare the ways in which economic demands colonise our lives and priorities. Drawing on his original research into the lives of people who are actively resisting nine-to-five employment, Frayne asks what motivates these people to disconnect from work, whether or not their resistance is futile, and whether they might have the capaciity to inspire an alternative form of development, based on a reduction and social redistribution of work. A crucial dissection of the work-centred nature of modern society and emerging resistance to it, 'The Refusal of Work' is a bold call for a more humane and sustainable vision of social progress"--Page four of cover. Modern capitalist society runs on paid work. Yet for many of us, paid work is at best a frustrating experience. Some of us are burdened with too much work, while others fight the hard realities of precarious, low-paid, low-quality work amid persistent mass unemployment. So what if we rethought the whole system? That's the ambitious challenge David Frayne takes up. Drawing on substantial empirical research into the lives of people who are actively resisting employment--either by reducing their work hours to the minimum or by giving up work altogether--Frayne delves into the reasons that people disconnect from work, the strategies they develop for coping with not working in a society that demands work, and, perhaps most interestingly, what they do with their free time. The resulting book offers a fascinating portrait of an alternative approach to life under capitalism, and a bracing reminder that a humane and sustainable vision of social progress is possible Front Cover Contents Acknowledgements Introduction The work dogma One A provocation Two Working pains Three The colonising power of work Four The stronghold of work Five The breaking point Six Alternative pleasures Seven Half a person Eight From escapism to autonomy Notes Bibliography Index Back Cover