Back to Work: New Theories of Work

Session Submission Type: Full Paper Panel

Session Description

Since the financial crisis of 2007-8, political theorists have begun to address a range of related concerns, from longstanding issues of capitalism and political economy to the rise of populist movements in the long aftermath of the crash. One of the most pressing problems in the ongoing crisis of contemporary capitalism concerns work and its future: from the problem of unemployment after the financial crash to the rise of temporary and insecure work, from renewed labor organizing to racialized fears about immigrant labor, from the struggle to create jobs amidst long-term productivity slowdowns to anxieties about automation, technology, and the environment, political theorists are faced with an array of provocations to new theorizing. Yet so far, much of the thinking about work has been done at the level of policy - recent discussions of universal basic income and a job guarantee being only the most prominent examples. Often, however, these discussions fail to interrogate the category of work itself. Meanwhile the Trumpian imaginary has responded to the challenges posed by the transformation of work by actively seeking to restore a traditional view of work—a view often reflected in analyses of populism that center a traditional view of the working class. What can political theorists contribute to such debates? How should political theorists conceptualize work?

This panel will take up this challenge and discuss new ways of theorizing work in a moment when it is in crisis, insisting work is central to the dynamics of populism and privilege. We will ask which kinds of work, and which workers, have traditionally been privileged in political discussions of work, and how we might think work otherwise. By exploring a range of non-traditional forms of work, from housework to digital labor to the labor of nature, this panel will expand the conversation about work and bring new insights to old debates. In particular, each of the papers on this panel looks to feminism as a crucial yet often overlooked resource for understanding what work is, what it should be, who does it, and what it means for politics.

Alyssa Battistoni’s paper challenges the view of work as productive activity, considering instead what the idea of work as maintenance adds to feminist discourses about reproductive labor and ecological discussions about sustainability. Moira Weigel’s paper will re-examine recent debates about micropayments and other strategies for pricing “data as labor” being developed in the tech sector from the perspective of debates among feminist activists and economists regarding how to define and value housework and other unpaid reproductive or immaterial labor. Finally, Katrina Forrester’s paper will show how a particular neglected strand of debates about domestic labor and housework can not only offer novel approaches to theorizing the future of work, but can also point to new interpretations of utopianism, ideal theory and the feminist politics of demand.

Sub Unit

• DIVISION 2: Foundations of Political Theory

Cosponsor

• DIVISION 42: New Political Science

Individual Presentations

• On Maintenance Work - Alyssa Battistoni, Yale University

• Feminist Demands and the Problem of Domestic Labor - Katrina Forrester, Harvard University

• Wages for Facebook? Feminist Perspectives on Valuing Data - Moira Weigel, Harvard Society of Fellows

Chair

• Corey Robin

Discussant

• Adom Getachew University of Chicago