Will Stronge

Kyle Lewis

"Working isn't working. As precarity and low-pay spread across the labour market, and work-related stress and exhaustion become increasingly endemic, it's clear that a new, radical approach is required. Many industries already face existential threats from automation, climate breakdown, a crisis of care and demographic ageing. In this short book, Kyle Lewis and Will Stronge identify a powerful and practical response to these worrying trends: the shorter working week. This urgent and timely book shows what a shorter working week means in the context of capitalist economies, as well as the history of this idea and its political implications. Drawing on a range of political and economic thinkers, Lewis and Stronge argue that a shorter working week could build a more just and equal society, one based on collective freedom and human potential"--

Why We Need a Shorter Working Week

Overtime

Georges Bataille's influence upon 20th-century philosophy is hard to overstate. His writing has transfixed his readers for decades – exerting a powerful influence upon Foucault, Blanchot and Derrida amongst many others. Today, Bataille continues to be an important reference for many of today's leading theorists such as Giorgio Agamben, Roberto Esposito, Jean-Luc Nancy and Adrianna Caverero. His work is a unique and enigmatic combination of mystical phenomenology, politics, anthropology and economic theory – sometimes adopting the form of literature, sometimes that of ontology. This is the first book to take Bataille's ambitious and unfinished Accursed Share project as its thematic guide, with individual contributors isolating themes, concepts or sections from within the three volumes and taking them in different directions. Therefore, as well as providing readings of Bataille's key concepts, such as animality, sovereignty, catastrophe and the sacred, this collection aims to explore new terrain and new theoretical problems.Georges Bataille and Contemporary Thought acts simultaneously as a companion to Bataille's three-volume secular theodicy and as a laboratory for new syntheses within his thought.

Georges Bataille and Contemporary Thought

Why we should all work less! A radical and pragmatic manifesto for tackling the twin crises of work and care in contemporary capitalism With the rise of automation and precarious forms of work, jobs are becoming increasingly polarised. While some are overworked, there are many more people forced into precarious and underpaid work, work that falls heavily on those most vulnerable in society. All of this while countries in the Global North are experiencing a crisis of care, where the disproportionately gendered labour of care is and undervalued, and often unpaid. In this short book, Kyle Lewis and Will Stronge argue that one powerful and practical response to the worrying trend of job polarisation is the call for a shorter working week. The time we spend at work is neither natural nor inevitable. Instead the amount of time we spend working is a political, cultural and economic question. Overtime will explain what a shorter waged working week means, as well as its history and its political implications. The authors argue that any long-term plan for a sustainable, just economy must involve a reduction in the time we spend working. Drawing on a range of political and economic thinkers, Stronge and Lewis argue only by doing so can we create a more just and equal society, one that allows people the space and opportunity to develop an ethic based on citizen engagement and self-autonomy outside of market interaction.

Why We Need A Shorter Working Week

Helen Hester

What does the future hold for work in our new age of crisis? How do we make sure that the uncertain future into which we are heading is heavenly and not hellish? How can we take the pleasures of work with us and eliminate the pains? The answer: we need a post-work vision. Questioning the received wisdom that work is good for you, that you are what you do and that 'any job is a good job', Post-work offers a new challenge to the work-centred society. This timely book provides a vital introduction to the post-work debate - one of the most exciting political and theoretical currents of recent years. It explores not only what the future of work will be like, but more importantly what the future of work should be like.

Will Stronge

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