Overview

In What Work Means, Claudia Strauss observes that Americans are often described as workaholics driven by a Puritan work ethic. Drawing upon the evocative stories of unemployed Americans from a wide range of occupations, from day laborers to corporate managers, both immigrant and native-born, Strauss shows that this Puritan ethic cultural description homogenizes diverse work motivations. Describing Americans as workaholics conflates different forms of the Protestant work ethic. It ignores competing work ethics, such as working to live well instead of living to work. It overlooks the differing ways Americans understand work-life balance, appropriate consumption, self-sufficiency, the division of breadwinning responsibilities in couples, and meanings of work for one's gender identity. Moreover, the workaholic description misses the fun that many Americans say they find from their jobs. Stretching from the Great Recession to the Covid-19 pandemic, What Work Means inspires discussions about current work and its many meanings in current contexts of teleworking, greater automation, and nonstandard employment.

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9781501775505

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Intricate. Includes both theory and conversations with people of varying racial backgrounds and economic classes who were laid off during the Great Recession. The way Strauss frames 'work centrality' in our lives is instructive. * Harvard Business Review *

Author Information

Claudia Strauss is Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Pitzer College. She is the author of Making Sense of Public Opinion and coauthor of A Cognitive Theory of Cultural Meaning.

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