Colloquia Series - The Necessary Evil: A Sociology of Hating Work

Research talk on The Necessary Evil: A Sociology of Hating Work

Abstract: How can we reimagine work? We love to ask that question. Year after year, decade after decade. It feels like an elusive quest. But we keep asking. To reimagine is “to imagine again or anew; to form a new conception of.” Before we reimagine work, however, we need to understand its current status in our minds. And these days, it’s mostly a morass of badness. After years of negative rhetoric, bad vibes, and trendy anti-work neologisms (e.g., “quiet quitting), work’s reputation has gone from bad to worse. Drawing upon national survey data from tens-of-thousands of Canadian and American workers, supplemented with open-ended free-text data, I describe how most people tend to believe most others are dissatisfied with their job—and how they react when presented with the actual (more favorable) statistical reality. I unearth a suite of what I call “perception glitches” that both reflect and reinforce the bad vibes about the quality of working life—including work stress, pay inadequacy, meaningful work, job insecurity, employee-employer relations, organizational commitment, and turnover intentions. Across all indicators, individuals’ ratings of their own conditions tend to be more positive than what they perceive as the norm. If the goal is to reimagine work, after years of bad vibes, I argue that a more accurate read on what most people think and feel about work can lay the foundation for change. My project develops a guide to move us towards that more optimistic subjective space.

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