Resisting Work: The Corporatization of Life and Its Discontents - Hardcover

Fleming, Peter

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1439911126 ISBN 13: 9781439911129

Publisher: Temple University Press, 2014

Synopsis

A job is no longer something we "do," but instead something we "are." As the boundaries between work and non-work have dissolved, we restructure ourselves and our lives using social ingenuity to get things done and be resourceful outside the official workday. 

 

In his provocative book, Resisting Work Peter Fleming insists that many jobs in the West are now regulated by a new matrix of power-biopower-where "life itself" is put to work through our ability to self-organize around formal rules. This neoliberal system of employment tries to absorb our life attributes--from our consumer tastes, "downtime," and sexuality--into employment so that questions of human capital and resources replace questions of employee, worker, and labor.  

 

Fleming then suggests that the corporation turns to communal life-what he calls "the common"-in order to reproduce itself and reinforce corporate culture.  Yet a resistance against this new definition of work is in effect, and Fleming shows how it may already be taking shape.

About this title

Book Description:

How life and work have become synonymous, and what we can do about it

About the Author:

Peter Fleming is Professor of Business and Society at Cass Business School, City University, London. He is the co-author of several books, including Contesting the Corporation: Struggle, Power and Resistance in Organizations (with André Spicer), Dead Man Working (with Carl Cederström), and The End of Corporate Social Responsibility: Crisis and Critique (with Marc T. Jones). 

About this edition

• Publisher: Temple University Press
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 1439911126
• ISBN 13: 9781439911129
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 218