Book contents
- The Politics of Working Life and Meaningful Waged Work
- The Politics of Working Life and Meaningful Waged Work
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Tables
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Meaningful Work
- Part I Problems in Analyses of Meaningful Work
- Part II Theoretical Traditions in Analysing Meaningful Waged Work
- 5 Approaching the Meaning of Waged Work through Its Meaninglessness
- 6 Designing, Organising and Managing Meaningful Waged Work
- 7 Meaningful Wage Labour as a Human Condition:
- 8 The Political Philosophy of Meaningful Wage Labour
- Part III Meaningful and Meaningless Waged Work
- References
- Index
5 - Approaching the Meaning of Waged Work through Its Meaninglessness
from Part II - Theoretical Traditions in Analysing Meaningful Waged Work
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 November 2023
- The Politics of Working Life and Meaningful Waged Work
- The Politics of Working Life and Meaningful Waged Work
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Tables
- Preface
- Acknowledgements
- 1 Meaningful Work
- Part I Problems in Analyses of Meaningful Work
- Part II Theoretical Traditions in Analysing Meaningful Waged Work
- 5 Approaching the Meaning of Waged Work through Its Meaninglessness
- 6 Designing, Organising and Managing Meaningful Waged Work
- 7 Meaningful Wage Labour as a Human Condition:
- 8 The Political Philosophy of Meaningful Wage Labour
- Part III Meaningful and Meaningless Waged Work
- References
- Index
Summary
The thought of the meaning of work in the capitalist labour process has been a central pillar in many discussions of work, employment and organisational life in the social sciences. Meaningful work, however, is, if anything, an undercurrent in the modern classics of working life research, where the spotlight is on the struggle that is at the heart of workers’ attempts to derive meaning from paid work. In this chapter we discuss understandings of meaningful work that emerge between the nexus of the meaningfulness and the meaninglessness of wage labour in some of the most noted of this literature in the post–World War II period. From this discourse we crystallise six tendencies in discussions of the possibility to solve the problem of the lack of meaning of waged work. We derive from this discussion implications for approaching an understanding of the politics of meaningful and meaningless waged work.
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- The Politics of Working Life and Meaningful Waged Work , pp. 91 - 114Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2023