Crisis at Work

"What does it mean to 'have a career' when our working lives are becoming increasingly uncertain? As Jesse Potter persuasively argues, the 'crisis at work' throws up far-reaching questions about personal identity and selfhood. Work and biography are richly interwoven even or perhaps especially when our jobs are subjected to instability and change. What emerges here is an understanding of selfhood as a painstakingly crafted balance between material advancement and personal fulfi lment. This is a remarkable, insightful, and thought-provoking book." (Nigel Dodd, Professor of Sociology, London School of Economics, UK) "In Crisis at Work Jesse Potter manages to engage both his research 'subjects' and his readers in a series of rewarding conversations about work life and selfhood just when both have become precarious. One of those rare pieces of sociology that helps you know yourself as you get to know some new things about how the world works." (Richard Flacks, Emeritus Professor of Sociology, University of California, Santa Barbara, USA) "This is a book that makes human sense of labour. Jesse Potter has looked deep inside the experience of work today, to understand how people try to wrest a life narrative from their jobs, and what happens when they can't. He is a clear-sighted, deep-searching analyst." (Richard Sennett, Professor of Sociology, New York University, USA)

Crisis at Work examines the impact work, as a precarious entity, has on the intimate and intrapersonal lives of individuals. It examines how we negotiate our identities, the trade-offs we make, and how we achieve greater meaning and fulfilment when our productive lives fail to sustain and fulfil.This book explores how we make sense of ourselves when work is precarious and intrinsically alienating. We know little about how this experience of work impacts the lives of men and women, and less about the way individuals understand themselves in the face of institutions and organizations from which they feel marginalized. Based on the narratives of men and women who underwent extraordinary work life changes, Crisis at Work examines how we negotiate greater meaning and fulfilment when our productive lives fail to sustain and satisfy. Reflecting a growing fracture between what we value, believe in, and are committed to and the degree to which work and career have become incapable of assuaging those desires, Potter examines how individuals attempt to assemble working-lives they find rich and rewarding and how that work is negotiated within the constraints and possibilities of the contemporary moment.