The Work Cure
Critical essays on work and wellness
Published on 16. April 2019
268 pages
978-1-910919-44-6 (ISBN)
Description
With this collection of critical, challenging, startling and controversial essays, David Frayne compiles a powerful critique of contemporary discourse that cloaks the moralisation of work in the seemingly benign language of health and wellbeing. Work income-generating, and tax-incurring employment is now not only considered a moral necessity, good for our national economy; it is also now forcibly deemed to be good for our mental and physical health. Whilst social surveys commonly show that paid work makes us healthier and happier, and that people fail to thrive when denied the opportunity to work, what it rarely reported is any imagined or practical alternative for most of us. The contributors to this book write from the premise that a good job might carry particular health benefits, but the blanket claim that work is good for you cannot be anything but ideological. This is particularly troubling in a context where the UK Conservative government have moved to make employment a key health outcome, and where the palpable stress and insecurity of modern work tends to be met with individualising wellness programs, rather than more thoroughgoing attempts to create a more just and healthy social system. Chapters in the book highlight the psycho-compulsion and the intrusion of the psychotherapist as agent of the state into the workplace and the welfare system; the economic and theoretical arguments behind the concept that work and happiness are indissolubly related, and the political and ideological purpose this fallacy serves; the mental health impact of modern-day workplaces, with their zero-hours contracts, constant precarity and continual managerial scrutiny of performance, and the power of disability activism to challenge the drive to make the misfitting person fit the workplace, instead of the other way round. Together, the authors ask, is working the only and the best way to feel well, or can we imagine a different kind of future that offers other ways to attain the sense of security, meaning and integration that are so central to our health?
Reviews / Votes
The idea that work, including the enthusiastic search for work, is integral to mental health has become a key ideological tenet of post-industrial capitalism. By re-introducing critical and political perspectives to this agenda from those who have witnessed this new psychological government at first hand, The Work Cure demonstrates that resistance is possible, and in doing so offers hope of a more emancipatory psychology -- William Davies, author of The Happiness Industry; Most of us have to sell our labour to survive. What s worse, we also have to listen as a growing army of (well-paid) professionals explain that work is essential to health and wellbeing. This much-needed collection of critical voices (provocative, political, surreal, despairing) provides a forensic interrogation of the imposition of work and exposes the creeping tyranny of wellbeing. With contributions from academics, psy-professionals and activists, this book unsettles tired platitudes about meaningful work and instead focuses on the real consequences of the organisation of labour: work s colonisation of time and energy, to the extent that employers are not so much bosses as owners a trend enabled by the marriage of work discipline and therapy culture analysed in chapters by David Frayne and Recovery in the Bin. Introna and Casagrande s compelling account of the anti-productivist force of disability also describes the power and possibilities of resistance: It s up to us to recognise our misfitting as a source of restored dignity and connect our struggles through the refusal of work. This essential book makes a powerful, interdisciplinary contribution to the politics, practice and potential of work refusal. -- Lynne Friedli, researcher and activist; Some books are useful, and some, like this one, which shows the misery that is caused by the use of psychological and welfare apparatuses instrumentally in the service of an austerity agenda, are indispensable. The contributors together provide a vital resource for understanding how neoliberalism gets inside all of us and, crucially, into the lives of those who should be offered solidarity, rather than subjected to coercion. -- Ian Parker, Emeritus Professor of Management, University of LeicesterMore details
Language
English
Place of publication
Monmouth
United Kingdom
Target group
College/higher education
Professional and scholarly
File size
1,74 MB
ISBN-13
978-1-910919-44-6 (9781910919446)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
Book
04/2019
PCCS Books
€30.00
Shipment within 3-4 weeks
Person
David Frayne is a writer and social researcher, interested in the ethical, political and social dimensions of possible `post-work' societies. He is the author of several online articles and the book The Refusal of Work (Zed, 2015).
Content
Introduction - Putting therapy to work, David Frayne; Part 1: Mental management. 1 The black dog - Ivor Southwood; 2 No crying in the breakroom - Nic Murray; 3 Understanding affective labour - Jamie Woodcock; 4 Reproducing anxiety - Dave Berrie and Emily McDonagh; 5 Challenging McMindfulness in the corporate university - Steven Stanley. Part 2: Dogmas of Work and Health. 6 The employment dogma - David Frayne; 7 Not in my name, not in my profession's name - Jay Watts; 8 The IAPT assembly line - Paul Atkinson; 9 The social and political origins of wellbeing - Psychologists for Social Change; 10 `We rebel because We misfit' - Arianna Introna and Mirella Casagrande; 11 Unrecovery - Recovery in the Bin.
