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

What do human beings do when they work, how is work organized, and what are its multidimensional – economic, social, political, biographical, ecological – effects? We cannot answer these questions without drawing on the numerous categories that we use to describe work, such as "skilled" or "unskilled" work, "domestic work" or "wage labor," "gig work" or "platform work." Such categories are not merely theoretical labels as they also have practical effects. But where do these categories come from, what are their histories, how do they differ between countries, and how are they evolving? Shifting Categories of Work asks these questions, illuminating the many ways in which our societies categorize work. Written by sociologists, philosophers, historians and anthropologists as well as management and legal scholars, the contributions in this volume contrast different cultural practices and frameworks of categorizing work across different countries.

Organized around the three axes of (un)organized work, (in)visible work and (in)valuable work, this book shows how ways of categorizing work express, but also recreate, lines of privilege and disadvantage – challenging our preconceived notions of what work is and what it could be, as it invites us to rethink the categories we use for understanding the work we do, and hence, to some extent, ourselves.

Lisa Herzog is professor of political philosophy and works at the intersection of political philosophy and economic thought. Since 2019 she has worked in the Faculty of Philosophy and the Center for Philosophy, Politics and Economics at the University of Groningen. She holds a master’s degree in economics from LMU Munich and a Master of Studies in philosophy and a Ph.D. degree in political theory from the University of Oxford. She has worked at or been invited to lecture at the universities of St. Gallen, Leuven, Frankfurt/Main, Utrecht and Stanford. She was a Rhodes Scholar (2007-2011) and in 2019 she received the Tractatus-Preis and the German Award for Philosophy and Social Ethics; in 2021 she received the Ammodo Science Award for her groundbreaking research. Herzog has published on the philosophical dimensions of markets (both historically and systemically), liberalism and social justice, ethics in organizations and the future of work. She is currently focusing on workplace democracy, professional ethics and the role of knowledge in democracies. Her publications include Inventing the Market: Smith, Hegel, and Political Theory (2013); Reclaiming the System: Moral Responsibility, Divided Labour, and the Role of Organizations in Society (2018).

Bénédicte Zimmermann is professor of sociology at L'École des hautes études en sciences sociales in Paris and a Permanent Fellow at the Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin. She holds a master’s degree in history from University Panthéon-Sorbonne in Paris, another one in political sciences and a Ph.D. degree in political science from Sciences Po Paris. Her main research interests are in the social history of categories of public action; the sociology of work, organizations and workers’ life courses; and epistemologies and methodologies of the social sciences. Her publications include La constitution du chômage en Allemagne. Entre professions et territoires (2001), Ce que travailler veut dire. Une sociologie des parcours et des capacités (2014).