Shifting Categories of Work Unsettling the Ways We Think about Jobs, Labor, and Activities

"Because so much discussion of work and how it is changing across the world involves analysts and policy makers employing work categories to understand what is happening, this book offers a vital contribution to ongoing and emerging debates. Those wanting a critical perspective on the various fashionable discussions that abound in analysis of work and its future will find this volume of especially notable interest."

Tony Watson, Professor of Sociology, University of Nottingham

"The key question in this exciting volume is one that has become extra important during our post-pandemic times: How do we look at work, and what consequences does this view have - for the people who work, for the rest of us, for society? The answers to this question turn out to be both complex and surprising. Highly recommended."

Richard Swedberg, Professor of Sociology, Cornell University

"This book offers an original perspective on the contemporary transformations of work. It proposes ingeniously to start from the categories used by social actors to talk about work, to organize it, to regulate its forms (such as remote work, dirty work, emotional labor, platform work...). Through the 18 proposed entries, all of which are equally fascinating, a kaleidoscope of tensions and tendencies affecting our social world takes shape."

Eve Chiapello, Research Director at EHESS, Paris