Speaker 1: So you keep hearing nobody wants to work anymore because
Speaker 1: you see these jobs that aren't filled, but they're not
Speaker 1: filed because there are fewer people of working age are
Speaker 1: being born. You know, birth rates are going down. The
Speaker 1: population is great, you get more people like me. For
Speaker 1: a while, we were very restrictive with immigration right under
Speaker 1: a prencident Trumps and that close. You know, that restricted
Speaker 1: the pool of available workers. So that was the real issue.
Speaker 1: There weren't enough workers. But immediately people start moralizing about it. Oh,
Speaker 1: the problem is people's work at did I find that
Speaker 1: fascinating because based on my research, I don't think that's
Speaker 1: the issue at all. You may not want to work
Speaker 1: any particular job that only pays minimum wage and is
Speaker 1: dirty or dangerous, or has weird hours or something. They
Speaker 1: may want to work at a better job, but that
Speaker 1: doesn't mean they don't want to work at all.
Speaker 2: Hello everybody, and welcome to this anthe life. I'm excited
Speaker 2: to have you all here today. I'm Adam gm All
Speaker 2: your host is always and I'm really excited to talk
Speaker 2: with Claudia Strauss today because, on the one hand, we
Speaker 2: know that our nature and ideas around work are changing, right,
Speaker 2: what does work mean to folks today? And that we
Speaker 2: have the rise of remote working. We've had a pandemic
Speaker 2: that has brought the rise of remote working and changing that.
Speaker 2: And then there's lots of contingent labor, gig work, things
Speaker 2: like that. So you know, do I have a nine
Speaker 2: to five? Do I have a forty hour work week?
Speaker 2: All these things are kind of changing and what work
Speaker 2: might mean to us. But the funny thing is that
Speaker 2: the narratives of the kind of national myths that we
Speaker 2: have around what work means are changing a lot much
Speaker 2: much more slowly. And I think that's something that is
Speaker 2: interesting that we can kind of dive into to get
Speaker 2: a sense with.
Speaker 3: But I'm really excited.
Speaker 2: You know, Claudius Stress, you are an anthropologist, you know,
Speaker 2: so I always a good talk with the fellow anthropologist
Speaker 2: and a prof over at Fitzer College. And you have
Speaker 2: a I think a really exciting and important new book
Speaker 2: out that's called What Work Means Beyond the Puritian work Ethic.
Speaker 2: And besides being a nerd that you know, I like
Speaker 2: this idea of the purity and work ethic to think
Speaker 2: about with Max Weber, I love how your work helps
Speaker 2: us explode and think about that. So let's we're going
Speaker 2: to dive into all those things. But first want to say, Claudia,
Speaker 2: thanks for joining me on the podcast today.
Speaker 1: Well, and and thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 1: I'm really excited to talk to another anthropologist, right and.
Speaker 2: Alway feels kind of dangerous, doesn't it.
Speaker 1: I think we are a dangerous profession.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we weed t shirts that say that. I think
Speaker 3: you know.
Speaker 2: So one of the things you know we're kind of
Speaker 2: staying up top cluty, is that your your research dives into,
Speaker 2: I think importantly, how Americans perceive their jobs right, perceive
Speaker 2: work for themselves.
Speaker 3: And you did a lot of really really.
Speaker 2: Interesting research talking with folks who are also kind of
Speaker 2: out of work or long term unemployed kind of figuring
Speaker 2: out that process for themselves. And I thought that was
Speaker 2: a really compelling way to frame your conversation. So I'd
Speaker 2: love to kind of kick off with getting a sense
Speaker 2: of why start there? Why do you find yourself starting
Speaker 2: talking with folks that are that are unemployed or kind
Speaker 2: of in this long term unemployment moment trying to figure
Speaker 2: themselves and their work out.
Speaker 1: Well, it was a moment following the Great Recession when
Speaker 1: a lot of people were unemployed and unemployed for a
Speaker 1: little time in the not that they wanted to be.
Speaker 1: They were looking for work. I was practically everybody I
Speaker 1: was talking to I found because they were looking for work.
Speaker 1: But this was the time, and it's a very different
Speaker 1: labor market then now, So you have to cast your
Speaker 1: mind back ten years or more to a time when
Speaker 1: the unemployment rate in southern California where I did my
Speaker 1: research was over ten percent, when there were three job
Speaker 1: seekers for every job opening, which is opposite now now
Speaker 1: there's less than one person looking for a job for
Speaker 1: every job opening. So it was a very different moment.
Speaker 1: That's why I was talking to people were out of work,
Speaker 1: because there were a lot of them. And the thing is,
Speaker 1: when you're out of work and for a little time
Speaker 1: out of work, but you want to work, it makes
Speaker 1: you no one usually reflect it about what work means.
Speaker 1: So it was a really good time to catch people,
Speaker 1: both because I had a well tride and because they
Speaker 1: were thinking a lot about what their jobs met to them,
Speaker 1: what they wanted in the next job, and what they
Speaker 1: would do differently maybe with their lives.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I think that's such an important point.
Speaker 2: Both remember, like if we're getting a sense of like
Speaker 2: where we are in history, but then also reflecting of
Speaker 2: what that means for us today. So I think that
Speaker 2: is a really interesting and important distinction to think about.
Speaker 2: One that if we're seeing which which you know, almost
Speaker 2: feels crazy to think about, right, that there's there's three
Speaker 2: folks for every one job that might be out there,
Speaker 2: and now we're kind of seeing an opposite problem, right,
Speaker 2: that there's more work than workers. It's interesting because in
Speaker 2: between both of those, right, we might still see narratives
Speaker 2: from employers or even even folks themselves looking for work
Speaker 2: around the you know, we might think of it as
Speaker 2: a moral imperative, right that either like you know, nobody
Speaker 2: wants to work anymore today, which is really funny to
Speaker 2: look at research of that and see that people have
Speaker 2: been saying that since like eighteen fifty, like literally a newspapers,
Speaker 2: no one wants to work anymore. You know, it depends
Speaker 2: on what the work is though, right, which I think
Speaker 2: we can dig into. But then on the other side too,
Speaker 2: that there's more like I want to work, but I
Speaker 2: can't write. But there might be a slow perception that, oh,
Speaker 2: these people don't want to work, right from from employers
Speaker 2: or from folks, and so like, what's what's happening there?
Speaker 2: Like there is this kind of weird moral tug narrative
Speaker 2: happening of that one should be working but can't or
Speaker 2: you know, doesn't want to, but should be. Like what's
Speaker 2: happening here in the American psyche about like what what
Speaker 2: should we be doing around work?
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think I think that rapid shift. It's
Speaker 1: taking people while to realize what's going on. So, yes,
Speaker 1: you keep hearing nobody wants to work anymore because you
Speaker 1: see these jobs that aren't filled, but they're not filed
Speaker 1: because there are fewer people of working age are being born.
Speaker 1: You know, birth rates are going down. The population is great.
Speaker 1: You get more people like me. You know, baby Bowers,
Speaker 1: I'm great too.
Speaker 3: You just can't tell.
Speaker 1: For a while, we were very restrictive with immigration right
Speaker 1: under Princident Trump and that close you know, that restricted
Speaker 1: the pool of available workers. So that was the real issue.
Speaker 1: There weren't enough workers. But immediately people start moralizing about it, Oh,
Speaker 1: the problem is people's work at Did I find that
Speaker 1: fascin because based on my research, I don't think that
Speaker 1: that's the issue at all. Hequal may not want to
Speaker 1: work any particular job that only pays minimum wage and
Speaker 1: is dirty or dangerous or has weird hours or something.
Speaker 1: They may want to work at a better job, but
Speaker 1: that doesn't mean they don't want to work at all.
Speaker 3: Mm.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I think that's that's such an important point too,
Speaker 2: because and you kind of I think said a key
Speaker 2: idea there too, in terms of like what is the
Speaker 2: the ones work ethic, right, like what do I want
Speaker 2: to do with my time and what kind of work
Speaker 2: do I want to do? But you know, I think
Speaker 2: you also importantly point out that that there is when
Speaker 2: we kind of gloss over in that narrative that we
Speaker 2: missed this idea that it's like not that I don't
Speaker 2: want to work, I just don't want to work this
Speaker 2: kind of job or that type of labor for multiple reasons,
Speaker 2: which you know, and that matters, you know, because it
Speaker 2: isn't just a do or do not want to work?
Speaker 2: And this gets into you know, we can kind of
Speaker 2: put our theory hats on for a second two and
Speaker 2: I think this is helpful to think about. We have
Speaker 2: these these ideas of kind of laborist and post laborist
Speaker 2: or productivist kind of frameworks of like what we should
Speaker 2: be doing for work, And I found this elucidating, like
Speaker 2: to kind of help make sense of why we're seeing
Speaker 2: this disjuncture and like kind of discomfortable.
Speaker 3: Talking about this.
Speaker 2: So can you tell me a little bit about this
Speaker 2: in terms of like the laborist and post laboris perspectives
Speaker 2: and how is that shaping our discourse around.
Speaker 1: Well, I'm really happy to talk about it. I find
Speaker 1: this really fascinating because when I think you said putting
Speaker 1: our theory hats on, I think social theorists and also activists,
Speaker 1: political activists, even on the left. We often think of
Speaker 1: left right differences, but these are differences among progressives on
Speaker 1: the left. There are two very different ways of thinking
Speaker 1: about work and organizing organizing around it. The class, you know, Marxism,
Speaker 1: workers are central. You know, you've got a heroic working person,
Speaker 1: and that's the idea is we want a full employment economy.
Speaker 1: So it's organizing to make sure that everybody who is
Speaker 1: able to work can work at a good wage. But
Speaker 1: the push there is towards full employment. I think one
Speaker 1: thing that's uh, doctor Martin Luther King his Things March
Speaker 1: on Washington was on March for jobs and free He
Speaker 1: very much believed in this that what we want is
Speaker 1: for everybody to have good employment. But there's this other
Speaker 1: approach on the left, a post work approach, where the
Speaker 1: idea is work is only enriching the owners at capital.
Speaker 1: Our labor is only enriching the owners at capital. Why
Speaker 1: is there the social imperative to do that when we
Speaker 1: figure out a different kind of economy where be where
Speaker 1: people are so engaged in wage labor but much less
Speaker 1: of it. And so it becomes very interesting when you
Speaker 1: think about the future of work. Now, I don't know
Speaker 1: what's whether all the predictions of high levels of technological
Speaker 1: unemployment are going to come true, And I'd be curious
Speaker 1: to know from the other guests you've talked to or
Speaker 1: your thinking is about that. So I'm not making any
Speaker 1: productions whatsoever. But people circulate right and this, and but
Speaker 1: what's interesting is from these two perceptives, if you start
Speaker 1: worrying about being displaced by the robots, the laborists, the
Speaker 1: what to believe in the dignity of work, the importance
Speaker 1: of work, the centrality of it, that your social benefits,
Speaker 1: anything you get from society should be dependent on either
Speaker 1: working or not currently being able to work, maybe not
Speaker 1: to work in the future when they think about a
Speaker 1: future of robots seeking jobs. The ideas we can't let
Speaker 1: that hat. We need to make work a central part
Speaker 1: of a good life. Wage. You know, when I'm talking, well,
Speaker 1: we're talking to work here, we always mean wage work, right,
Speaker 1: lots of things we can do that require effort, but
Speaker 1: we're wage. Whereas the post work theorists, the post work
Speaker 1: organizers are saying, bring on the robots, this is great.
Speaker 1: This is kind of future we want is longness. Obviously
Speaker 1: people have to live. But you know then they would say, well,
Speaker 1: the government's got to figure you know, the the massive
Speaker 1: political revolts in our hands if the government doesn't somehow
Speaker 1: keep people alive. So those are two very different approaches. Now,
Speaker 1: I have to say, the way I talked about it
Speaker 1: might make me sound like on the post work side
Speaker 1: fixed people I walk to. I'm actually kind of in between.
Speaker 1: I think, you know, and this is something we can
Speaker 1: talk about. I don't. I'm not all workshild the most
Speaker 1: important thing you're doing and taking up your whole life.
Speaker 1: The people I talked to didn't want that, but I'm not.
Speaker 1: Work has no intrints to value people don't want to
Speaker 1: be doing it, and if they could get them, and
Speaker 1: if they had some other way to make a loving
Speaker 1: you know, they wouldn't know. The people I talked to,
Speaker 1: most of them wanted to go back to work and
Speaker 1: even talked about enjoying work, having spot at work.
Speaker 2: I thought that was one of the most interesting parts
Speaker 2: also about your research finding too, is around this idea
Speaker 2: of enjoyment and fun because on the one hand, I
Speaker 2: think it is like very helpful to have these two
Speaker 2: framings in terms of when we see both employees wage
Speaker 2: workers people and then also business owners talking about what
Speaker 2: the labor market needs to be and if I'm looking
Speaker 2: for work, orf I need to find more employees, you
Speaker 2: know what that is? Like it's important for us to
Speaker 2: understand where they're coming from, you know, you know, as
Speaker 2: we like exanthra politics, just be able to not say
Speaker 2: that they're going to be specifically this one thing to
Speaker 2: your point, like they're going to be either labors or
Speaker 2: post laborers, but they can be a blend. But those
Speaker 2: do help us get a sense in terms of someone's
Speaker 2: kind of potentially background mental contact to write their mental
Speaker 2: models of like why I should be looking for the
Speaker 2: kind of work that I'm doing and why I should
Speaker 2: be working this way, or you know, why my employees
Speaker 2: need to be thinking.
Speaker 3: About work a certain way.
Speaker 2: And this is why I think this is an important
Speaker 2: conversation because it helps us both get a sense of
Speaker 2: you know, the kind of employee side, but then also
Speaker 2: the the often implicit employer side too. Right, you know
Speaker 2: when we said the thing above in terms of nobody
Speaker 2: wants to work anymore, right, this is an anxiety often
Speaker 2: from the employer side, wanting to make sure that people
Speaker 2: will be able to fill positions. But I think, as
Speaker 2: you rightly point out there too, that we have to
Speaker 2: be able to kind of move between these positions.
Speaker 3: And why ethnography I think is really helpful.
Speaker 2: It shows us that oftentimes people will have these much
Speaker 2: more gray perspectives. It's not this, you know, it's very
Speaker 2: easy to say it's a polarize this or that, right,
Speaker 2: it's laborist or it's post laborist. But most of us
Speaker 2: don't live in either a theory or or like, you know,
Speaker 2: a perspective that's just one in one box or the
Speaker 2: other one. And also, you know, let's think about that
Speaker 2: in terms of the kind of in between there too,
Speaker 2: because I show that perspective in terms of that, you know,
Speaker 2: there is this desire around being able to do something
Speaker 2: in the world right, and for a lot of people
Speaker 2: they attached that to work doesn't have to be that though,
Speaker 2: and I think a lot of your interlocutors kind of
Speaker 2: pointed that out. So let's we can share some stories
Speaker 2: around that, I think, and then I'm gonna I'll put
Speaker 2: a pin or brack at the future workpiece till little
Speaker 2: bit later, because I do we can definitely talk through
Speaker 2: that too. I think that's a really interesting piece as well,
Speaker 2: because a lot of this, like you know, a lot
Speaker 2: of business managers and business folks were trying to.
Speaker 3: They want to say, what is the future of work right?
Speaker 2: And you know, and I did. I have talked to
Speaker 2: a bunch of folks about that on the show. We
Speaker 2: can we can kind of think through there. But the
Speaker 2: important point about that too is as for the pin
Speaker 2: for that later is that like a lot of these people,
Speaker 2: I've talked with our business owners and so we can
Speaker 2: think about that in terms of what perspective they're going
Speaker 2: to bring around technology and what work can be.
Speaker 3: But we'll come come back to this.
Speaker 2: So for now, it's like this idea, the the kind
Speaker 2: of in between this that you saw talking with folks, right,
Speaker 2: this like that I work isn't everything, but it means
Speaker 2: a lot to me, and it means different things to
Speaker 2: different folks, right, And maybe enjoyment is a way to
Speaker 2: kind of get us in there, because it's it's interesting
Speaker 2: that we don't see fun as a term that comes
Speaker 2: up a lot in terms of tell me about your work,
Speaker 2: it's fun.
Speaker 3: You know?
Speaker 2: Have I described jobs like that? I don't know, And
Speaker 2: so I think that gives us a really interesting window
Speaker 2: into different attitudes that folks have.
Speaker 3: So so what's happening there?
Speaker 2: Like, you know, fun stood out for you and White
Speaker 2: because it was something that we don't usually hear, like
Speaker 2: what it was about kind of fun?
Speaker 1: Funness that cut your eyes just came up over and
Speaker 1: over again. This was such a surprise. This is why
Speaker 1: I love doing anthropological research out the sort that I do,
Speaker 1: where I talk to people. We could talk about my
Speaker 1: ned bits, but you know, it's an approach where I'm
Speaker 1: just talking to people and people say things you don't expect.
Speaker 1: So for example, yeah, I was talking to an administrative
Speaker 1: as system. You know, we used to say secretary okay.
Speaker 1: And she was currently in a situation where she was
Speaker 1: just taking temporary jobs looking for a full time job.
Speaker 1: But she was taught at some of her past temp
Speaker 1: jobs that you had. And she talked about one where
Speaker 1: she was working for a company or school district where
Speaker 1: they had to take information for one kind of file
Speaker 1: and put it into an Excel spreadsheet. And she said, Wow,
Speaker 1: that was so interesting. It was so much fun. And
Speaker 1: I said, take fun work.
Speaker 3: Wow.
Speaker 1: And then you know, when I asked her what does
Speaker 1: work mean to you? She said, I could get lost
Speaker 1: creating a power point, I could get lost formatting a document.
Speaker 1: I could get lost figuring out an Excel street. She
Speaker 1: that's just fun for it. I mean, it would just
Speaker 1: come up. Now. You wasn't the only one. I have
Speaker 1: a list of my book I have, you know, I
Speaker 1: think at least of the I forget the figures. I
Speaker 1: had to go back and check. It was like a
Speaker 1: third or quarter of my interviewees used fun the connection
Speaker 1: with their work. Nothing that is expecting. It just keeps up. Now.
Speaker 1: I have to say, this is a very American way talking,
Speaker 1: and not even all Americans believe that. I think Uh,
Speaker 1: it fits in with the sort of very positive thinking,
Speaker 1: optimistic sort of chipper and it's But the thing is
Speaker 1: one thing they were not being sarcastic, because sometimes people
Speaker 1: use fun sarcastically. Oh that was fun. No, it's no.
Speaker 1: They were only counting cases where they were sincerely found
Speaker 1: it fun. Now what's interesting is what kinds of things
Speaker 1: did they find fun? And that kind of broke it
Speaker 1: down into three kinds of things that they found fun. Uh.
Speaker 1: The most important really was relationships with other people's relationships
Speaker 1: with that they're you know, with your coworkers, with your boss.
Speaker 1: I had one woman who was an assistant in an
Speaker 1: accounting firm, and she you know what was interesting in
Speaker 1: these polarized times is this young woman is Republican and
Speaker 1: her bosses were Democrats. But they would just joke about
Speaker 1: the differences between them and their politics. So they just
Speaker 1: were joking teas another woman, again, an executive assistant, who
Speaker 1: just talked about how she would like to chick in
Speaker 1: with her coworkers and ask how her coworker's daughter did
Speaker 1: in that swim meet. And this is she said, this
Speaker 1: is how we're being human. She was the kind of yeah,
Speaker 1: it does you have to have a best friend at work,
Speaker 1: but making relationships like that. Yeah, the tasks themselves are
Speaker 1: really important. So do you enjoy the tasks? What are
Speaker 1: the what are you spending your time doing? Is it interesting?
Speaker 1: And some people, like the administrative assistant you liked wrangling
Speaker 1: Excel spreadsheets for her? Was that kind of intuctual task
Speaker 1: for others? You know? A young man I talked to
Speaker 1: was doing, uh, building racecourses for extreme sports, and he said,
Speaker 1: when I build a mud wall that's eight feet high
Speaker 1: and so many feet long, that's just fun. You know,
Speaker 1: it's so satisfying to see that at the end of
Speaker 1: the day, but really enjoyed. The tasks and the fiscal
Speaker 1: attributes of the workplace are really important to you know,
Speaker 1: are just does it uh the temperature, the lighting, how
Speaker 1: the furnitures. Does it look pleasant? Is it, you know,
Speaker 1: this feel pleasant? Does it smell pleasant? When man talked
Speaker 1: about working in a warehouse for a candy company and
Speaker 1: he loved coming into the.
Speaker 3: Smell of chocolate, that was pretty nice.
Speaker 1: Yeah. But anyway, so all these things could make work
Speaker 1: really enjoyable. Now that doesn't mean it was. Uh. They
Speaker 1: were passionate about they were doing it. Didn't mean, you know,
Speaker 1: they wanted to spend all their time doing it. And
Speaker 1: this is the other thing I want to talk about.
Speaker 1: Can I talk about the nature of the work that
Speaker 1: tends to go with this?
Speaker 3: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, because the people who talked about work at
Speaker 1: What was really interesting is that the worst of people
Speaker 1: I talked to who felt they had a calling to
Speaker 1: be doing what they were doing, and they would use
Speaker 1: words like calling or passion. It wasn't you know. It
Speaker 1: was a slow number, but there was a certain number.
Speaker 1: Somebody who is a teacher, a special teacher, her sister
Speaker 1: had special needs, and she felt a real calling to
Speaker 1: be doing that kind of work. It could be all
Speaker 1: different kinds of things they tendedn't. They were less likely
Speaker 1: to use the word fun. They enjoyed it, but it
Speaker 1: was sort of a deeper kind of enjoyment and meaning.
Speaker 1: The people who were more likely to talk about fun,
Speaker 1: like a woman who was a real associated Adresshap this
Speaker 1: wasn't their work wasn't central in their identity their sense
Speaker 1: of purpose in life. It was much lighter and they
Speaker 1: how would I call a diligent nine to five work ethic?
Speaker 1: And this is something I really want to say to people.
Speaker 1: You say, some of the people who listen to this
Speaker 1: podcast are business owners. This is one of my most
Speaker 1: important points that I really want to make to business owners,
Speaker 1: which is we tend to think about the good employee
Speaker 1: as the one who is passionate about their job. It
Speaker 1: is going to willingly spend long hours at that job.
Speaker 1: You know, you could call them up in the middle
Speaker 1: of the night. It's in the media owns whenever. They're
Speaker 1: just totally into it. This is all that matters to that.
Speaker 1: That woman I talked to it who found so much
Speaker 1: fun from wrangling itself spreadsheets. She also said, when five
Speaker 1: o'clock comes, I want to go home. That's him. I
Speaker 1: enjoy going to work, but when the day's over, I
Speaker 1: want to go home. And she said, no, work is
Speaker 1: not central to my identity. I asked everybody, so there's
Speaker 1: this in between category that we overlook of people who
Speaker 1: want to do a good job. They really take pride.
Speaker 1: They would say when I west, is work central to
Speaker 1: your identity? A lot of them, a lot of people
Speaker 1: I talked to, would say, well, no, I wouldn't say
Speaker 1: that I'm a good worker. I always do a good job.
Speaker 1: But no, this isn't the most important thing in my life.
Speaker 1: My family is more important to me, or my religion
Speaker 1: is more important to me, God is more important. Here,
Speaker 1: something else is more important to me. That was the
Speaker 1: majority of the people I talk to. They're good workers,
Speaker 1: they'll do a great job, but they want to protect
Speaker 1: their non work too. This isn't all they care about.
Speaker 3: That's I think that's an important point.
Speaker 2: And I found that that section really fascinating too, that
Speaker 2: there's this discrepancy or this kind of you know, uh
Speaker 2: challenge between the idea of what an employer might look
Speaker 2: for in terms of a you know, I'm passionate about.
Speaker 3: The job and this this when I was thinking about
Speaker 3: this too.
Speaker 2: This It's got me thinking of the challenge oftentimes in
Speaker 2: built the job application process and the interview process, right
Speaker 2: you you kind of have to I'm just going to
Speaker 2: say fane or lie about how excited you are about
Speaker 2: a job and like in not because there is the
Speaker 2: actual On the one hand, we might say one of
Speaker 2: the reasons you're getting the job is because there's a remuneration.
Speaker 2: You're getting paid for your time, you know, but you
Speaker 2: know there's a material benefit. But then also that the
Speaker 2: there's also just this you know, like it's employers want
Speaker 2: to hear about the intangible, like oh I I'm really
Speaker 2: excited about like this kind of work, or I'm you know,
Speaker 2: I'm very.
Speaker 3: Passionate about blah blah blah.
Speaker 2: You know, that's a really interesting kind of kind of
Speaker 2: piece because it's like, uh, I think to your point
Speaker 2: of like how we can see that the the idea
Speaker 2: or the norm of of like passionate workers like filters
Speaker 2: into them what employee employers are.
Speaker 3: Expecting from like an application process.
Speaker 2: And it's like interesting that what if we thought about
Speaker 2: this in terms of what if we provide a good
Speaker 2: working environment so that passion can grow for somebody's job, right,
Speaker 2: or if you find enjoyment in working on Excel sheets,
Speaker 2: you know, or it's like something I found recently for myself.
Speaker 3: It's you know, I'm mean at theropologies also, but it's
Speaker 3: like I've.
Speaker 2: Been working a lot in in computer tech stuff for
Speaker 2: a few years now, and it's like, and I found
Speaker 2: that I really like nerding out over coading.
Speaker 3: You know, I'm not great at it, but it's like
Speaker 3: I'd like to be able to solve.
Speaker 2: A very specific or try to solve a very specific problem, right,
Speaker 2: And that's you know, fun, it's kind of maddening, but
Speaker 2: like that's not something that I would have ever said before. Like, oh,
Speaker 2: I also really would want to go work on coding.
Speaker 3: But but like that's.
Speaker 2: Something that I wouldn't have known if I wasn't tinkering
Speaker 2: with something other other kinds of other kinds of working
Speaker 2: out and like and I will say, also, yes, I'm
Speaker 2: I'm as folks may not to, but I'm I'm you know,
Speaker 2: self employed.
Speaker 3: I run my own business.
Speaker 2: And that's an important part of like we can talk
Speaker 2: about that's alveso, you know, contingent labor and that thing,
Speaker 2: so we can dive with there too. But like, because
Speaker 2: I don't have an employer that's saying, hey are you
Speaker 2: are you really passionate about this work? I mean, I
Speaker 2: guess I'm my own boss, so I can I can
Speaker 2: be mean to myself, I guess, you know, But that's
Speaker 2: that's an important point, you know, to realize that. At
Speaker 2: the same time, though, I also want to say, like,
Speaker 2: you know, I don't always stop working at five, but
Speaker 2: I still feel like I need to stop around five,
Speaker 2: and I want to because I want to go play
Speaker 2: with my kid and my family, and like do other
Speaker 2: things right, and so it's like interesting that like across categories, right,
Speaker 2: there's a lot of this this there's more in between
Speaker 2: this than we than we kind of give credit for.
Speaker 2: So Agreen, I think it's a really important point that
Speaker 2: that we do want to hammer home to to business
Speaker 2: owners and folks that are that are also just you know,
Speaker 2: at the hiring managers too, thinking about like we do
Speaker 2: like passionate workers like that is an important part of
Speaker 2: finding folks that that really want to do good work.
Speaker 2: But a lot of this too is recognizing that we're
Speaker 2: all like we're all there's much more diversity in terms
Speaker 2: of how we might approach what work could mean to us.
Speaker 2: And like just because I may not say or come
Speaker 2: out saying I'm super passionate about this job right now
Speaker 2: or you know, part of it, or that I want
Speaker 2: to be done at five, that I'm somehow not a
Speaker 2: good worker right, or that I'm I'm or that someone
Speaker 2: else that's like obsessed is going to be better, right,
Speaker 2: because I do think like what's been nice. The correl
Speaker 2: it on the other side is that we are seeing
Speaker 2: increasing conversations and I think in large part things to
Speaker 2: gen Z about mental health and about wellness in the
Speaker 2: workplace and like burnout right millennials, you know the meme
Speaker 2: I can't even write. It's just this like it's just
Speaker 2: too much right now, Like we've been asked to do
Speaker 2: family and work and life bla blah blah blah, and
Speaker 2: like you know, other generations make fun of us. But
Speaker 2: like there's this interesting part to to kind of think
Speaker 2: through what can this, what can this be? You know,
Speaker 2: and like how do we think about wellness and well
Speaker 2: being as part of that process? And you know something
Speaker 2: else that you wrote about too, is that we had
Speaker 2: seen that the interesting rise you know in terms of
Speaker 2: like fun at work.
Speaker 3: Like there's the organic.
Speaker 2: Kind of fun, right that you know I might get
Speaker 2: from work in a spreadsheet, But then there's this other
Speaker 2: kind of like I guess inorganic, right that you startups
Speaker 2: are like famous for this sort of like putting ping
Speaker 2: pong tables and lunch every day, and like those are nice,
Speaker 2: you know, but then also you think about it's kind
Speaker 2: of a gilded cage, right, you know, you're never that
Speaker 2: far from your desk at that point. So I guess,
Speaker 2: how did you see folks kind of talking about this
Speaker 2: or you know what kind of takeaways you have around
Speaker 2: this this idea of like we need to be able
Speaker 2: to put passion in its own space and it's let
Speaker 2: it kind of be. Sometimes it's for the works of
Speaker 2: this specific tasks. Sometimes it's for my family, right, and
Speaker 2: they can all work and be a good worker. But
Speaker 2: then putting that in conversation with this idea of a
Speaker 2: well being in wellness, right, and that you know, and
Speaker 2: how can I guess how can fund and wellness play together?
Speaker 3: Right? You know? And how do you see folks kind
Speaker 3: of talking about these two arenas.
Speaker 1: Yeah, people talked about it a lot, and I thought
Speaker 1: that was really interesting, and that is saying something about
Speaker 1: this moment the importantness of wellness and not just gendn't see.
Speaker 1: I mean, I was seeing this from middle aged people
Speaker 1: I talked too, and it was really interesting how wellness
Speaker 1: played into their thinking about work, because they would say
Speaker 1: things like they would see working on a regular basis
Speaker 1: as part of what's needed to stay well. They would
Speaker 1: say things like it's like a car if it just
Speaker 1: sits out there at all ruts, or they'll say I
Speaker 1: looked at my father and when he was lost his
Speaker 1: job at the steel mill and couldn't get anything else.
Speaker 1: Then I think that's where he started going downhill. So
Speaker 1: people would say that they'd see regular works and a
Speaker 1: good job. It's not just working at anything what the
Speaker 1: job is, because some jobs wear you down. You think
Speaker 1: we'll leave you less all over it. But the right
Speaker 1: kind of job they saw was part of the good life.
Speaker 1: But they also saw again that balance as part important
Speaker 1: for wellness. They stall love they so one man I
Speaker 1: talked to again was a supply chain strategist for a
Speaker 1: cosmetic company. Loved the tasks, loved to found that intellectually
Speaker 1: really interesting, great variety. So he would sound very enthusiastic
Speaker 1: when he was talking about the content of what he's doing.
Speaker 1: But when he talked to these hours, he said, they
Speaker 1: ex took me to work ten hours a day, twelve
Speaker 1: hours a day, and then I've got a commute, you know,
Speaker 1: he had an hour commute in each direction, a top
Speaker 1: of a twelve hour day and ten or twelve hour day,
Speaker 1: and he said, it just made me bitter. It just
Speaker 1: took out all the joy of what he intrinsically liked
Speaker 1: the job. But those long hours, you know, that didn't
Speaker 1: leave them any time to de stress to pursue anything
Speaker 1: else that was important to it. So there was definitely
Speaker 1: this discourse around wellness. Again you had the work could
Speaker 1: be part of that, uh, but not to an excess hmm.
Speaker 3: Yeah.
Speaker 2: And it's it's interesting too because that that like makes
Speaker 2: me think about the there's I had. I have not
Speaker 2: read Mary Wolfenstein, but you mentioned her later on in
Speaker 2: this idea of like fun morality, which I thought was
Speaker 2: a really interesting and kind of creepy idea, you know.
Speaker 3: But but this like you know, curious.
Speaker 2: American notion that like we're obligated to have fun, you know,
Speaker 2: both at elsewhere but also at work, right, And you know,
Speaker 2: I think that that filters into kind of how you're
Speaker 2: you're talking about we have this like chipper chipperness right
Speaker 2: that we think about in the American Worker, And like
Speaker 2: that was an interesting piece to to put in there
Speaker 2: for for multiple reasons. But like two that came to
Speaker 2: mind was one that it sounds like fun and pleasure
Speaker 2: are things that we that don't jive well with this
Speaker 2: we haven't talked about yet, but we will now. Like
Speaker 2: the Puritan work ethic, right, this idea that like a
Speaker 2: lot of this is based on like seriousness and like
Speaker 2: there's there's a higher calling to your work, right, and
Speaker 2: that's why we do what we do. And this is
Speaker 2: why we talk about a calling as one of the
Speaker 2: highest forms of work in typical like you know, work theory,
Speaker 2: and and I think that filters into a lot of
Speaker 2: it and how how people think about work, whether they
Speaker 2: like consciously say yes, this is a you know, what
Speaker 2: I should be doing, but then like, uh, but in
Speaker 2: this case, like Wolfenstein says, and that you're pointing out
Speaker 2: to is that it's like fun morality is not about
Speaker 2: this idea that like over doing the opposite of like
Speaker 2: this the serious kind of calling out work. But it's
Speaker 2: actually like a not evolved but just like an adapted
Speaker 2: form of like this still kind of puritanical way that
Speaker 2: we should be working. And there's a challenge and the
Speaker 2: problem with that too, right that you point out that
Speaker 2: I want to break down because it's like this interesting
Speaker 2: idea that there's a diffuseness to that pleasure. Right, this
Speaker 2: is why it's okay, it's not like a super intense
Speaker 2: moment of pleasure, but that like it's spread out across
Speaker 2: work tasks and days, and so I don't know, this
Speaker 2: is this struck me as a really interesting and curious
Speaker 2: piece to think with in terms of like we do
Speaker 2: talk about the rise of need for fun and things
Speaker 2: like that, but there's these kind of interesting challenge points
Speaker 2: that like, you know, are we are we actually helping
Speaker 2: ourselves get out of the box and really think about
Speaker 2: what it means to say like let's let's have fun.
Speaker 2: I have work, and I think that's what your work
Speaker 2: does a good job of is helping us break down
Speaker 2: both the diversity of what what like small pleasures at
Speaker 2: work can be, but then also recognizing that like when
Speaker 2: an employer says we're going to have a picnic together
Speaker 2: or we're going to have a fun event, and like
Speaker 2: this kind of mandated fun or the kind of fun
Speaker 2: morality is this really tricky thing? Because I don't know you,
Speaker 2: but I've definitely had those things where like, you know,
Speaker 2: if you're working with someone or client or you have
Speaker 2: a boss and like they're like, hey, we're gonna have
Speaker 2: our you know, annual meeting, or like let's all get
Speaker 2: together and have an icebreak, and you're like, oh man,
Speaker 2: you know, it feels so forced.
Speaker 1: Right, yeah, And it might kind of if it's after hours,
Speaker 1: if I put into your free Also people, I mean,
Speaker 1: I know some young people, you know who sense Some
Speaker 1: of my students have said things like, well, I finan
Speaker 1: to take a job in a new city. I want
Speaker 1: the kind of job where people getting together after work
Speaker 1: is that's how all people. Yeah, that's fine, that's really fine.
Speaker 1: So yes, be boor different. But you know, among my interviees,
Speaker 1: being forced to attend, you know, social events after hours
Speaker 1: could be a real imposition. And you know, one of
Speaker 1: the women I talked to lost her job because she
Speaker 1: had a two year old and a one year old.
Speaker 1: She wanted to be home with them, but she was
Speaker 1: in HR and she was expected to attend these DHR
Speaker 1: events after hours and she didn't want to do it.
Speaker 1: So yeah, so that kind of mandated fun. Yeah, now,
Speaker 1: that's one person I talked to liked it, But most
Speaker 1: people did not like it. When they talked about fun
Speaker 1: at work, that's not what they were talking about. Was
Speaker 1: it things that organically arose just from the nature of
Speaker 1: the tasks, pleasant social interactions with co workers, the nature
Speaker 1: of the workplace. But I also wanted to get into this,
Speaker 1: and you brought up this idea that there I've seen
Speaker 1: occupational psychologists will talk about the highest approach being seeing
Speaker 1: your work as a cooling. I really take issue with
Speaker 1: that because I think there's sort of a built in
Speaker 1: value judgment there which we have to help just try
Speaker 1: and understand other people's values. We're trying not to puz
Speaker 1: our own. And the value judgment I see being a
Speaker 1: policier is you have to feel you're doing good with
Speaker 1: your work. You have to feel it's deeply meaningful. You
Speaker 1: have to feel it's making you a better person and
Speaker 1: making the world a better person. Yes, people I talked
Speaker 1: to did feel that they were doing that, and sometimes
Speaker 1: in very unexpected ways, you know. But but there was
Speaker 1: this other category we don't recognize. We sort of socially,
Speaker 1: we culturally recognize seeing your work as appalling or as
Speaker 1: a passion, and we call we recognize the opposite extreme
Speaker 1: of work is work. It's just a job. We also recognize,
Speaker 1: you know, get a good job, you know that'll pay well,
Speaker 1: and so forth. We recognize all those pasts. Well, we
Speaker 1: don't recognize it. Again, there's another one of these in
Speaker 1: between categories that I call the good enough occupation. That
Speaker 1: there was another Journalistsu's discovered the same thing with his interviews. Uh,
Speaker 1: but yeah, this idea I want to I don't want
Speaker 1: just any occupation. I want something that will not run
Speaker 1: contrary to my values. I want something that'll be interesting,
Speaker 1: but it doesn't have to be something that's necessarily making
Speaker 1: the whole world a better place. Maybe I just you know,
Speaker 1: I'm doing a good job there to help this organization
Speaker 1: achieve its goals. I enjoy it again. You know, there's
Speaker 1: this kind of in between category that's not recognized. It
Speaker 1: doesn't have to be a calling to be to give
Speaker 1: you a very satisfying thing to do with your life
Speaker 1: and way to make money, and.
Speaker 2: That runs, you know, somewhat contrary to the every single
Speaker 2: like you know, commencement speech we hear at college, right,
Speaker 2: Which is funny because it's like, on the one hand,
Speaker 2: we want to be inspired to do to do things
Speaker 2: in life, and that's you know, one of the great
Speaker 2: roles of universities.
Speaker 3: I think.
Speaker 2: But then it's an interesting point that like, but most
Speaker 2: of us you know, don't go either either know what
Speaker 2: our calling is or ever. And like most of us,
Speaker 2: I think to anybody after forty is like, you know what,
Speaker 2: I always talked about that idea, but now it's like, yeah,
Speaker 2: but I think I've ultimately just found a good enough
Speaker 2: job and I'm actually totally fine with that, you know,
Speaker 2: And that's and it's great because a I can to
Speaker 2: leave when I get home, or I found unexpected.
Speaker 3: Pleasure in the kind of work that I'm doing, or
Speaker 3: whatever it is.
Speaker 1: You know.
Speaker 2: It's like it's this funny idea that we we have,
Speaker 2: like we sort of tell one myth at earlier points
Speaker 2: in our lives and then like as we as we
Speaker 2: as we learn more, I guess we're like kind of
Speaker 2: see more than we kind of change some of that narrative.
Speaker 2: And obviously it doesn't have to be you know, only linear,
Speaker 2: but I thought this was a really really compelling idea too,
Speaker 2: that a lot of the work that people find and
Speaker 2: is ultimately like on one end, like anthropologist we know too,
Speaker 2: it's like people just make do with what they what
Speaker 2: they can in the circumstances that they're given. Like and
Speaker 2: it's not just that we you know, we we I know,
Speaker 2: we make them. We have agency too, but it's just
Speaker 2: like when there's you know, societal constraints or agentave constraints
Speaker 2: in terms of what we can do and structures kind
Speaker 2: of shaping things, then we often will do what we
Speaker 2: can to make the best in those scenarios, and like
Speaker 2: and the one in the goodnot occupation kind helps us
Speaker 2: point to that idea, and it also busts this this
Speaker 2: you know, I agree this value judgment that like the
Speaker 2: calling is really what you want to go for. And
Speaker 2: it's like, yes, I think passion is a nice thing
Speaker 2: to have in our lives, and many of us can
Speaker 2: find it, but it's like more that we're we're kind
Speaker 2: of also sold the narrative that that should be around
Speaker 2: your work, right like this there should be a kind
Speaker 2: of thing that you should be doing, and it's like, uh,
Speaker 2: maybe you know, but you know when a lot of
Speaker 2: us either can't do that, you know, and or that's
Speaker 2: not what we'less you're looking for. It's like it's interesting
Speaker 2: because like again this this tension of like, you know,
Speaker 2: what am I passion about? What what's like getting the
Speaker 2: intensity of my time and in my might want to
Speaker 2: want to do in the world versus like both helping
Speaker 2: me either get by or like kind of find work.
Speaker 2: You also spoke to like something else that that some
Speaker 2: of your interlocutors were talking about in terms of this
Speaker 2: idea of like the audition around wanting to move up
Speaker 2: in one's career or two like that. Sometimes it can
Speaker 2: be about like I either love the challenge of kind
Speaker 2: of like working on a big project and getting kind
Speaker 2: of move up there, like having this kind of ambition
Speaker 2: to do more. But sometimes it was also just this
Speaker 2: of like hey, I'm just actually happy to help my
Speaker 2: firm do better, right, or helping my improve my my
Speaker 2: colleagues day or something, And like I also kind of
Speaker 2: felt an echo here too. I know we've been teasing
Speaker 2: like the Protestant work ethic idea, but like I felt
Speaker 2: an echo in this idea too, of like an asceticism
Speaker 2: of like not wanting to like want too much, right,
Speaker 2: like you don't want to be over the ambitious because
Speaker 2: then also is kind of like a you know, points
Speaker 2: towards a sinful idea, I suppose, which is interesting as well,
Speaker 2: that you know, I don't think people kind of came
Speaker 2: out and said that specifically, but like this idea of
Speaker 2: like what's the what's the right way to think about, like.
Speaker 3: What do I enjoy? How do I want to move
Speaker 3: up in a company? What does that mean?
Speaker 2: For ambition doesn't mean too much too little, you know,
Speaker 2: and I am I doing everything right. So like a
Speaker 2: lot of this like there's just like this, you know,
Speaker 2: I don't know, just like this ambient sponge of like
Speaker 2: you know, this this like work ethic that is pervading
Speaker 2: a lot of the narrative that both people just break
Speaker 2: because of how they're actually living their lives. But then
Speaker 2: it's like still there, you know, and like this interesting
Speaker 2: like kind of substrate. But I think also, so I
Speaker 2: guess let's say a little bit about I keep talking
Speaker 2: about it, so like it's a little bit like what
Speaker 2: is what is this like Puritan work ethic, which I
Speaker 2: know you I think you correctly change the term of
Speaker 2: it and not call it that it it like this
Speaker 2: has been pervasive, And I do want to bucket this
Speaker 2: by saying that one thing we've been doing so far
Speaker 2: on our conversation, which is important, is like pointing out
Speaker 2: also the specificities of people's things are doing at work right,
Speaker 2: And so a lot of this can be like again
Speaker 2: a big theory like this this this from Max Faper,
Speaker 2: we'll talk about as work the abstract, right, and so
Speaker 2: we are talking about a little bit about that, but
Speaker 2: like also a lot of what we're saying here so far,
Speaker 2: and your point out in the book too, is that
Speaker 2: like specificity matters, right, Like context is going to make
Speaker 2: a huge difference of like what kind of work matters
Speaker 2: and when and what am I doing in the specific tasks,
Speaker 2: you know, and like what's going to make something fun
Speaker 2: makes a huge difference.
Speaker 3: Right.
Speaker 2: So so I'll just brock it and we're we're going
Speaker 2: to zoom up and zoom back down, right, And so
Speaker 2: we've been kind of in this specificity and so this
Speaker 2: is a bigger kind of theory to help us think
Speaker 2: about what's been shaping the broader narrative, right, And so
Speaker 2: this is the things we've been saying about asceticism and
Speaker 2: pleasure and fun and like that make us rethink, you know,
Speaker 2: passionate and calling these pieces are fitting into this, like
Speaker 2: they're kind of speaking from this this broader bucket of
Speaker 2: the work at the Purity work ethic.
Speaker 3: But I'll let you, I'll stop talking in the.
Speaker 1: What's happening here, you know, Well, maybe it would help
Speaker 1: at this point to explain what did Vapor mean by
Speaker 1: the purity work ethic, and that we can kind of
Speaker 1: go from there.
Speaker 3: Is that? So yeah, Okay, sounds great.
Speaker 1: So, first of all, what Vapor was really interested in
Speaker 1: was kind of a modern What he saw is a
Speaker 1: real shift that happened with modernity in Europe, a shift
Speaker 1: away from just working to live to living to work,
Speaker 1: and he he sees as decisive and not a good thing. Okay,
Speaker 1: he was a real critic of this. His theory and
Speaker 1: it's controversial, not everybody believes him, was that it happened
Speaker 1: two steps. There were two steps in the development of Protestantism.
Speaker 1: The first was Luther's idea that you can be virtuous
Speaker 1: in the eyes of God, not just by becoming a
Speaker 1: priest or at none, devoting yourself to a religious vocation,
Speaker 1: but doing whatever your worldly tasks are and doing them well.
Speaker 1: So work, just doing your work well is what makes
Speaker 1: you a good person in God's eyes. That was one shit.
Speaker 1: But then he saw the real shift for Vapor came
Speaker 1: with a development with calvin Calvinism is you know, Puritanism
Speaker 1: is a form of Calvinism where the pure chans were
Speaker 1: worried about am I going to be saved? There's no
Speaker 1: way for sure to know that I'm going to be saved.
Speaker 1: But if I'm very successful in my projects, it must
Speaker 1: be a sign that God has found favor with me,
Speaker 1: and I will be sick. And there was alts of
Speaker 1: this idea. You have to labor constantly for God in
Speaker 1: this world. You can rest all you want after you
Speaker 1: die in the next life. Okay, So it was an
Speaker 1: approach to tie spend all your time working in a
Speaker 1: constant anxiety. Am I successful enough? That my good enough?
Speaker 1: And it kind of led to this work becoming central
Speaker 1: to people's identity and purpose and meaning. And he said
Speaker 1: the religious part of it dropped out. He said, it
Speaker 1: dropped that very quickly or ready by the seventeen hundreds.
Speaker 1: That was not so important, but that centrality of work,
Speaker 1: just living to work, even if you had enough money
Speaker 1: to meet your needs. You know, it wasn't about making
Speaker 1: the money to live well, because, as you said, there
Speaker 1: was this ascetic element to it. You weren't you know,
Speaker 1: it was opposed to a conspicuous conception. You weren't doing
Speaker 1: it for the money. You're just doing it on this
Speaker 1: irrational desire to be highly successful. Keep working, work it
Speaker 1: because means so much to you, and because you feel
Speaker 1: guilty if you're not being producted. I see productivity and
Speaker 1: central here and so I like to call it a
Speaker 1: productivist work ethic. Protestant makes you think, oh, this only
Speaker 1: applies to Protestants, you know, And even Vapor is saying, no,
Speaker 1: you know, the religious elements dropping out. This isn't just
Speaker 1: apply to protest it. So I'd rather say it productive
Speaker 1: this work now. Yeah, so Vapor felt. Now Vapor was
Speaker 1: writing at the beginning of the twentiethcentric all right, and
Speaker 1: he already felt at that point that consumerism had become
Speaker 1: much more important, that industrial capitalism was so well established.
Speaker 1: I didn't care what people motivated people. They had to
Speaker 1: kind of go along with the cysts. So that's what
Speaker 1: Vapors say. And there's a lot of truth to those
Speaker 1: two points. What I think he misses, though, is he
Speaker 1: misses a couple of things. He still sees this centrality
Speaker 1: of this living to work ethic. That he's focusing just
Speaker 1: again on your entrepreneurs, your people who were into the
Speaker 1: household culture, not that people again Centric nine, but there
Speaker 1: were entrepreneurs then, yes, yeah, that those are the types
Speaker 1: that fascinated him, The types of just kept pouring their
Speaker 1: time into their business. Well they earned the profits from
Speaker 1: the business, of course, they bought the time into the business.
Speaker 1: What about the people who work for them? You know,
Speaker 1: they have a different they're enough, you know, earning something
Speaker 1: from the profits at the Yeah, okay, they're in a
Speaker 1: different position. And Vapor doesn't spend enough time thinking about
Speaker 1: ordinary workers, the sort of people I talked to, and
Speaker 1: they're attcude about it, and so you kind of come
Speaker 1: out of this thinking, well, the only way to think
Speaker 1: about it is you know, and he said it was
Speaker 1: particularly prevalent in the United States. He's German. Okay, so
Speaker 1: he's looking over the United States. It's saying, what's with
Speaker 1: these weird Americans? You know. It was so because he
Speaker 1: traveled to the US and he said, ah, yeah, this
Speaker 1: is a strange these businessmen and just think of nothing
Speaker 1: except business. But but yeah, the world, these ordinary workers
Speaker 1: who have lots of other things to think about. So
Speaker 1: that was one problem with what he talked about. The
Speaker 1: other problem is, and it is he still focuses on
Speaker 1: this very grim this very moralistic attitude. And yes, there
Speaker 1: definitely is a moralistic attitude. And I did find that
Speaker 1: even people had what I call it the diligent nine
Speaker 1: to five work ethic. They felt one should be a
Speaker 1: productive worker. They did see a morality in that they
Speaker 1: did look down on people they thought were lazy. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: but again that's separate from seeing work as everything, making
Speaker 1: it central to your identity. Wanted to work all the time. Now, no,
Speaker 1: that's a different thing. And then this whole fun element
Speaker 1: that he donic element of pleasure boy, that doesn't enter
Speaker 1: into Vapor's description at all, and out finding it both
Speaker 1: with the people who did I did talk to some
Speaker 1: people who lived to work, and you hinted that then
Speaker 1: a little bit. Some of them took real pleasure in
Speaker 1: meeting challenging goals. It wasn't just I need to do this,
Speaker 1: I'm rationally driven, pathologically driven to do it. It was
Speaker 1: fun for them to meet a challenging goal. They really
Speaker 1: enjoyed it. And then there were also the pep I
Speaker 1: talked to who didn't live to work, who wanted to
Speaker 1: leave at five o'clock but took fun. As I said
Speaker 1: in they could really enjoy the tasks or enjoy their coworkers.
Speaker 1: That will fund and elements totally messy.
Speaker 2: Vapor like that'd be an odd third subtitle of his book,
Speaker 2: right Rid of Capitalism and the Joy of Unners.
Speaker 1: You know, Yeah, the pleasure really kept coming up a
Speaker 1: lot my.
Speaker 2: Inner dudes, which I think, I think is fascinating, right,
Speaker 2: and I think it's an important It's an important point because, like,
Speaker 2: you know, part of the interesting piece in terms of
Speaker 2: like both the framing of your work too is like, well,
Speaker 2: you know, and one had like why was vapor helpful
Speaker 2: to like think about? Like, because I agree, like we
Speaker 2: need to push back on his framework, you know, like
Speaker 2: why was why was it helpful for you in organizing
Speaker 2: this thinking?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 2: And like did you I guess, did you go into
Speaker 2: the interviews having Aaberian kind of viewpointer like and obviously
Speaker 2: we already have some problems with it, but like or
Speaker 2: did it? Did it kind of come up as like, oh,
Speaker 2: this is an interesting foil to what people are talking
Speaker 2: about with their actual experiences around work.
Speaker 1: Oh that's so interesting. I mean I did ask everybody,
Speaker 1: would you say that work is central to your identity? No,
Speaker 1: that was there and just baked into my research as something.
Speaker 1: And I don't think I had an expectation about what
Speaker 1: they would say. I had already guess this isn't the
Speaker 1: first project I've done around work. Ah So, but my
Speaker 1: dissertation research, which was back in the eighties, I talked
Speaker 1: to factory workers and I felt something very similar that
Speaker 1: many of these factory workers had been offered promotions into
Speaker 1: management and turned them down because they knew that once
Speaker 1: they were in management, their time was out their own.
Speaker 1: They could be cold at any hour to come into
Speaker 1: this It was a chemical factory come in six of problem,
Speaker 1: and they wanted to be home. So I already seen
Speaker 1: in the nineteen eighties that there was this other way
Speaker 1: of thinking about it. So yeah, so I was trying
Speaker 1: to kind of push back the framework that all Americans,
Speaker 1: you know, are lived to work and our workaholics and
Speaker 1: don't care about anything else.
Speaker 3: It's funny too.
Speaker 2: We've also seen right, like the lionization of like the
Speaker 2: workaholic as an idea, which is funny because no one's like, yeah, alcoholics, right,
Speaker 2: you know, which is where it comes from. But it's
Speaker 2: just this funny idea that like there's there's a fetichization
Speaker 2: almost of what labor isn't.
Speaker 3: And can be, you know.
Speaker 2: And I think something else that I think could be
Speaker 2: really helpful to think about too, like both I mean
Speaker 2: both for our anthelitical conversation, but I think also again
Speaker 2: to think with with folks working in business that are
Speaker 2: trying to figure out both what anthropology can do but
Speaker 2: also what this specific conversation around work can do it
Speaker 2: and what your your book can help them think about.
Speaker 2: Is Like, even your methodology too, actually is really I
Speaker 2: think it fruitful because you take kind of a cognitive
Speaker 2: psychological approach and psycho psychological anthropological approach, and like what
Speaker 2: that means typically, right, is that you're dealing with an
Speaker 2: indie visual. You're talking with individuals, and I mean, you know,
Speaker 2: a broader culture. Anthropology will talk individuals too, but like
Speaker 2: it will then take kind of build a kind of
Speaker 2: team group perspective, right, And so there's an interesting distinction
Speaker 2: there of like why are we talking to individuals and
Speaker 2: then focusing premising on them rather than saying, here's the
Speaker 2: broad story of.
Speaker 3: What what this like group is doing. And so I'm
Speaker 3: kind of.
Speaker 2: Curious from your perspective, like how that you know, you
Speaker 2: feel like that helps your perspective what you're looking at
Speaker 2: and getting a sense of of what does work mean?
Speaker 2: Especially because you know, coming away from this, like we're
Speaker 2: seeing that there's just a ton more great area of
Speaker 2: what work means to people, and like this is important
Speaker 2: for how employers think about what jobs can be, like
Speaker 2: how they're talking to employees and what they're expecting both
Speaker 2: the employees and of themselves. So tell me a bit
Speaker 2: about this and like how your your approach in your
Speaker 2: methodology like helped elucidate things in ways for you, and
Speaker 2: like what you might do I don't know if you do,
Speaker 2: if you do it again, like what might else it
Speaker 2: look like?
Speaker 3: You know, yeah, would you change anything?
Speaker 1: Oh? Well that yeah, okay, that's literally thinking about that.
Speaker 3: That's a separate time question.
Speaker 1: Okay, God, it's really interesting. Good thing about Suppose you
Speaker 1: were just starting with a blank slate here and you
Speaker 1: were saying, I want to understand the meaning of work
Speaker 1: in American culture right now. I'm going to ask you
Speaker 1: at it. Suppose you're an anthropologist and you want us
Speaker 1: to design a project. What is the meaning of work
Speaker 1: in American culture right now? How would you go about doing.
Speaker 3: That's a great question. This is a good test.
Speaker 2: I mean, I think one, I want to see how
Speaker 2: people have talked about it before, and that could either
Speaker 2: be literature or interviews that we can see. Then I
Speaker 2: would just one hundred percent want to talk with people
Speaker 2: about their work lives right and like what work means
Speaker 2: to them. So that's why the title of your book
Speaker 2: is also good because it's basically to see, I need
Speaker 2: to see on the ground, how are people making sense
Speaker 2: of work? And then how can we connect that to
Speaker 2: broader trends that we're seeing, whether it's like labor statistics
Speaker 2: or demographics or things like that, and like, so what
Speaker 2: other kind of salient issues come up for folks that
Speaker 2: are shaping how they tell their stories.
Speaker 1: Okay, so your first song was sorred of the same
Speaker 1: as mine. Hey, I want to go out and talk
Speaker 1: to people. Now, not everybody would go there. Some people
Speaker 1: say American culture. Okay, well, what are some important documents
Speaker 1: or statements or who are thought leaders here? What are
Speaker 1: the thought leaders saying? What do we see in popular culture?
Speaker 1: What's reflected there? What do we see in religious documents?
Speaker 1: Or you know, they'll kind of look at public culture
Speaker 1: and so, you know, it could be popular culture, it
Speaker 1: could be you know, again, you know what politicians. You
Speaker 1: could look at the discourse of politicians around work and
Speaker 1: you would see a lot of statements about the you know,
Speaker 1: where people who believe in working for what we have
Speaker 1: right and being self vicious, being self reliant. Right, so
Speaker 1: therefore let's cut any wealthare entitlements and right, you know,
Speaker 1: so you could examine what politicians say and all that
Speaker 1: makes sense. That's all part of culture too, right, it
Speaker 1: becomes really interesting. Right if you look at the popular culture,
Speaker 1: my gosh, right, we get very complicated because are you
Speaker 1: looking at you know, the serious dramas set in hospitals,
Speaker 1: or are you looking at the office, you know, the
Speaker 1: sitcoms set dysfunctional offices? Right, right, you know, you got
Speaker 1: all these sixt messages. But for me, it's a psychological anthropologist.
Speaker 1: Our approach is called person centered. We're interested in Okay, Yes,
Speaker 1: all these messages are out there, and they're very diverse.
Speaker 1: You got your relatives talking about how they hate their jobs,
Speaker 1: or other relatives talking about that they love their jobs.
Speaker 1: You've got these different depictions. And but culture, you've got
Speaker 1: thought leaders saying be ambitious, thought leaders who are saying
Speaker 1: be content. You know, you're right. For me, psychological anthropologists,
Speaker 1: I'm really interested, Okay, how do people What are people
Speaker 1: taking from all that and what really becomes meaningful for them?
Speaker 1: And of course it's different for different people. And part
Speaker 1: of the message is who do you talk to you
Speaker 1: want to understand something about American culture. I got you know,
Speaker 1: it's a very diverse society. And it used to be
Speaker 1: that I people would say, well, the core of American
Speaker 1: culture is the white middle class. So all that I
Speaker 1: talked to white middle class people, Well, then you cutularly
Speaker 1: define me what it is by what this one group things,
Speaker 1: which itself is diverse. But but you know, I deliberately
Speaker 1: wanted to include lots of different occupations, different class levels,
Speaker 1: both early workers and solarly salary workers, people who were immigrants,
Speaker 1: all of the immigrants here at least ten years, but
Speaker 1: immigrants as well as people were born here, men and women,
Speaker 1: so different perspectives. This is all part of America. This
Speaker 1: is who we are now. And then you talk to
Speaker 1: people and you hear these unexpected things like wow, that
Speaker 1: job they don't say, you know, that job dealing with
Speaker 1: spurtsheets was so much fun, and go wow, really wow?
Speaker 3: Okay, yeah, does does it make Does it make? You know?
Speaker 3: When when we hear you know, things like you know, quiet.
Speaker 2: Quitting right, and that that term came up had about
Speaker 2: a year ago or something a year and a half
Speaker 2: like that to me, felt like a manufactured term, you know,
Speaker 2: And and that's like I'm trying to think about, like
Speaker 2: how do we how can we reconcile things like that that?
Speaker 2: So I would say that that comes through public culture, right,
Speaker 2: I mean I think it comes through through media and
Speaker 2: because you know, journalists, we're talking with with folks too,
Speaker 2: you know, and and like, you know, do we it
Speaker 2: a cool thing to think about how did like things
Speaker 2: like that like filter into kind of every day people's conversations.
Speaker 3: Or not right? And then like.
Speaker 2: You know, is there is it important to her? Do
Speaker 2: we need to like tease those those apart and like
Speaker 2: say that you know, if we do or do not
Speaker 2: see people talking about quiet quitting like that either means
Speaker 2: it isn't important to most people's lives and that it's
Speaker 2: actually this manufactured work term, or it's just like you know,
Speaker 2: what is it doing?
Speaker 3: You know?
Speaker 2: So it's it's kind of like one of these things
Speaker 2: of like how do we also account for either our
Speaker 2: own biases? Is what we think we're supposed to see
Speaker 2: right while we're doing research, and if we do or
Speaker 2: don't see it, like in the Funds of Good example
Speaker 2: of like I wasn't expecting to see fund, but it
Speaker 2: turns out it's actually diffuse in a lot of different.
Speaker 3: Places in really curious ways. So this is I mean
Speaker 3: something you know.
Speaker 2: And I get asked a lot too, like like, how
Speaker 2: do we think about our biases researchers to both make
Speaker 2: sure that we can have our research be sound, but
Speaker 2: then also recognize if we're not seeing something, which I
Speaker 2: think is also important. You know, how do we account
Speaker 2: for that if someone asks us like, hey, well you
Speaker 2: didn't see that.
Speaker 3: Does that tell us something?
Speaker 2: Yeah?
Speaker 1: Well, and you know what would I change? I'd love
Speaker 1: to do my research again. Now do we get ten years?
Speaker 1: We know? So?
Speaker 3: Right?
Speaker 1: So would anything be different? Now? I don't know. I mean,
Speaker 1: I know that in terms of I've had some interviewers
Speaker 1: kind of hint, well, maybe it's because you're joking to
Speaker 1: such a diverse group that you're seeing people not making
Speaker 1: work the center of their life. But I actually compared
Speaker 1: the numbers of people who were born this kind and
Speaker 1: people were immigrants to see how many sent work essential
Speaker 1: to well how many lived to work. It was under
Speaker 1: twenty percent for both evans, likely higher for those born
Speaker 1: in this country, but interestingly a lot of those born
Speaker 1: in this country who were and not. Actually, there were
Speaker 1: also some immigrants who lived to work. A lot of
Speaker 1: those who had before their period of unemployment lived to work.
Speaker 1: During that long period where they were looking for another job. Realized, wow,
Speaker 1: my life was really out of balance. This was not good,
Speaker 1: not healthy. They would again go back to that wellness discourse,
Speaker 1: that health discourse. This was not a healthy life. It
Speaker 1: was one hundred and twenty percent for both. And also
Speaker 1: this research I did in the nineteen eighties, these were
Speaker 1: white meal factory workers and they did not live to work.
Speaker 1: So now quiet quitting is something else. Quiet quitting is okay,
Speaker 1: you're there, body not in mind, You're just there for
Speaker 1: the pay check. You just putting in the nine to five.
Speaker 1: You don't care about the job. I think this reflects
Speaker 1: a real anxiety, you know. I mean I think there
Speaker 1: are two things. You know. Is there some anxiety on
Speaker 1: the part of employers that this is what we might
Speaker 1: be see And I wonder to what extent it's because
Speaker 1: you don't recognize another type beyond the one who lives
Speaker 1: to work and wants to state at nine o'clock at
Speaker 1: night or eight o'clock grows whenever. You don't recognize this
Speaker 1: diligent nine to five as somebody who is a really
Speaker 1: valuable employee who could fund fund the job, love the job,
Speaker 1: but just doesn't want to be, you know, disturbed after
Speaker 1: working hours. They're also I have a real problem with
Speaker 1: the Gallop Workplace Engagement Survey, which is sometimes us to
Speaker 1: back this up because there are only categories are gauged,
Speaker 1: engaged and disengaged, and then you got this group in
Speaker 1: the middle and the people to be engaged. You have
Speaker 1: to it's really about your add tod It's more about
Speaker 1: the workplace. Are they constantly giving you positive feedback for
Speaker 1: your recognition, you know, for waiting for cheat, you know,
Speaker 1: so kind of recognition for way to a cheat. Do
Speaker 1: all your colleagues want to do their best at their work? Well,
Speaker 1: what if you qute say yes, I could say, oh,
Speaker 1: my colleagues really seem to want to do there but this,
Speaker 1: and then you come off as less engaged because you know,
Speaker 1: you can't apply all these superlatives to your workplace. They're
Speaker 1: the sheriff of all the people they talk to, or
Speaker 1: in the middle group they're actively disengaged. That's a minority,
Speaker 1: and they may not be in the top group that
Speaker 1: they call engaged, but they could have called very engaged,
Speaker 1: or they could have labeled great workplace. You know, working
Speaker 1: just come in the middle in an okay workplace where
Speaker 1: they probably feel okay, they're not disengaged, but not gets
Speaker 1: used as evidence of always got the ps epidemic of
Speaker 1: quiet quitting.
Speaker 3: Well, yeah, feel that feels so inadequate.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, So I think it's a real mythological problem.
Speaker 1: And I applaud Gallop for wanting to prove workplaces. I
Speaker 1: don't like the way it's being used to as alleged evidence.
Speaker 2: Of dis Yeah, I mean that's a great point, and
Speaker 2: it makes me think of you know, even as we're
Speaker 2: talking about like economic indicators and like national health right,
Speaker 2: we have like you know, the gross domestic product, which
Speaker 2: is a super aggregate number, right, but it's like, you know,
Speaker 2: compared to other countries that might be higher in the US.
Speaker 2: But then you look at like the happiness index, whereas
Speaker 2: happiness index in the US is like fifty seventh or something,
Speaker 2: or it's like one of the lowest, and it's like,
Speaker 2: you know, or in terms of wellness index and wellness scores, right,
Speaker 2: that the US is one of the only industrialized nation
Speaker 2: that doesn't have like you know, healthcare and childcare and
Speaker 2: education for young kids, you know. And it's like, he's interesting,
Speaker 2: Like when we're talking about whatever our markers of success, right,
Speaker 2: it says something when like both we when we use
Speaker 2: like we need to be able to put in the
Speaker 2: same box like economic indicators that we say, and then
Speaker 2: also like workplace engagement as the thing we're using as
Speaker 2: the measurement, right as the metric, because it does make
Speaker 2: a difference, right in terms of both the narrative that
Speaker 2: we're telling. But then if we're blind to the kinds
Speaker 2: of metrics that we're using, like you know, we're only
Speaker 2: going to see what we're measuring, and then if only
Speaker 2: measuring one thing, that's all we're gonna be able to
Speaker 2: you know, see and like, but recognizing the value that
Speaker 2: the value judgments that we might put on engagement, man,
Speaker 2: it's interesting to kind of realize that the top tier
Speaker 2: is engagement.
Speaker 3: It's like, oh, well, it goes downhill from there.
Speaker 2: That's kind of scary, right versus like the super engaged
Speaker 2: in play, you know, versus.
Speaker 3: The the okay engaged you know.
Speaker 2: But even that idea too, like engagement is is an
Speaker 2: interesting thing to think about like I'm disengaged.
Speaker 3: Okay, does that mean the quality of my work is bad?
Speaker 2: Maybe maybe not, but you know it might be great worker,
Speaker 2: but it disengaged because I don't want to like go
Speaker 2: to you know, the after work function kind of thing.
Speaker 2: And it's that interesting piece you know that guess me.
Speaker 2: I mean it has been thinking about this this idea too,
Speaker 2: that you mentioned this at the end, you know, when
Speaker 2: you think about like both future work, but how we
Speaker 2: could like talk about like we need to be smarter,
Speaker 2: you know, in at least more kind just like what
Speaker 2: metrics we're using to measure you know, workplace wellness, engagement,
Speaker 2: you know, economic growth, and then also what that might
Speaker 2: mean for things like future work and how would is
Speaker 2: AI going to take jobs? You know, to come back
Speaker 2: to our labrist and post laborists ideas that we talked
Speaker 2: about up top, and you quoted technology journalist Kevin Rust
Speaker 2: that I think put this really well. That was just
Speaker 2: like we need to be not talking so much about
Speaker 2: like AI taking jobs, but like what's ais effects on
Speaker 2: the quality of jobs going to be? And I think
Speaker 2: that's that's one hundred percent right, Like not just because
Speaker 2: we're qualitative social scientists, but like quality matters versus quantity
Speaker 2: in this case too, it's like, you know, how many
Speaker 2: jobs there are, it does matter, But if all the
Speaker 2: jobs are terrible, then that's different than saying that there's
Speaker 2: like either a ton of jobs but they have great quality, right,
Speaker 2: or there's a few of them that have great quality.
Speaker 2: And so it's like, I think that's a fundamentally important
Speaker 2: piece that we need to think about for how we
Speaker 2: set up workplaces, right, and like what is the quality
Speaker 2: of the kind of work that we're doing? Again, this
Speaker 2: is not a do you have ping pong tables? And
Speaker 2: it's also not just a like are we removing drudgery?
Speaker 2: Because like, again, what drudgery is for some people is
Speaker 2: different than others. Right, you know, building a nine foot
Speaker 2: wall doesn't sound very fun to me, but like the
Speaker 2: one dude loved it, you know, and so it's like
Speaker 2: that's great, and like that matters, And so that's not
Speaker 2: drudgery for one person's drudgery is another person's like treasure.
Speaker 3: Right to mix metaphors there, you know, and it's.
Speaker 2: Like that's that matters because that means that there's actually
Speaker 2: space for all kinds of work, right, and all kinds
Speaker 2: of tasks within work and people to be well in
Speaker 2: workplaces beyond these like broad narratives like oh aa is
Speaker 2: going to help us get rid of like repetitive tasks
Speaker 2: like you know, moving I don't know, data from a
Speaker 2: piece of paper to a spreadsheet. You know, some people
Speaker 2: might really actually love that work because it for them
Speaker 2: is mindless. They can listen to the radio, or they
Speaker 2: can do something else with that, like it doesn't you know,
Speaker 2: we shouldn't kind of prejudge the kinds of work that
Speaker 2: that work and jobs might might ask, you know. So
Speaker 2: I think that's important because as we as tell these
Speaker 2: like bigger AI narratives like.
Speaker 3: We tend to miss these specificities.
Speaker 2: That like in New York, I think does a good
Speaker 2: job of showing us that there's such a big diversity
Speaker 2: of what can matter to people in their workplace.
Speaker 3: Like if we can learn.
Speaker 2: To ask and think towards that when like working with
Speaker 2: employees and work with other people, organizations like that can
Speaker 2: be a huge boon for like building a much better,
Speaker 2: you know, and healthier workplace because we're like finding what
Speaker 2: are your strengths, what's enjoyable to you, and let's build
Speaker 2: around that versus you know, come do this thing and
Speaker 2: we're gonna get rid of stuff that we don't we
Speaker 2: think is boring, even though.
Speaker 3: You might like it.
Speaker 1: Right, I do want to say there are some things,
Speaker 1: some aspects, some jobs that nobody liked. Okay, So I
Speaker 1: don't want this. I don't want to tick away message.
Speaker 1: D Hey, no matter how bad a job might seem
Speaker 1: to me, there'll be somebody out there who'll like it,
Speaker 1: because are somethings that nobody liked. Okay. So for example,
Speaker 1: the young man who was a lumper in a warehouse
Speaker 1: where he was kind of pulling this car and loaded
Speaker 1: with stuff. It kept bumping into the back of his ankle,
Speaker 1: and that's like I'm called bluffers. They would develop this
Speaker 1: huge welt we send in and it's noisy. The employees
Speaker 1: didn't enjoy being there. They shabby at each other. They
Speaker 1: you know, had none of those qualt these that makes
Speaker 1: work fun. Was not intrinsically interesting. That not good social relationships,
Speaker 1: a terrible workplace. Yeah. So another thing that was very
Speaker 1: harmful for a number of my interviewees were was harassment
Speaker 1: of various kinds. It could be around sexual orientation. One
Speaker 1: of my interviewees was a gay black man who was
Speaker 1: harassed around his sexual orientation and that just ate away
Speaker 1: at him, or he'd be here in a raceist harassment,
Speaker 1: you know, that things just kind of ate away at him.
Speaker 1: A immigrants who one who really worked very, very hard
Speaker 1: and was put down by others in her work group.
Speaker 1: She had a nervous break there, I know. So yeah,
Speaker 1: I mean there's certain things that are bottom line that
Speaker 1: every job has to have. It's not like there's some
Speaker 1: horrible job out there that so that he's just perfect
Speaker 1: for you know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, so totally y yeah, yeah, yeah, And I
Speaker 2: agree with you there too, And I think the examples
Speaker 2: you just share there too, like point out the importance
Speaker 2: of also having you know, a healthy, constructive work environment also, right,
Speaker 2: because it's like your colleagues and your boss can make
Speaker 2: a good job terrible.
Speaker 3: Yeah, you know, and.
Speaker 2: That matters too, right, So it's like it is one
Speaker 2: of those I guess that's actually the other side to
Speaker 2: think about this too. It's that like technology won't solve people,
Speaker 2: and people don't need to be solved, you know, like
Speaker 2: we have to we have to treat ourselves in each
Speaker 2: other like humans also as part of this as we
Speaker 2: figured this thing out, you know. And so that's the
Speaker 2: other the thing that can like numbers and technology can
Speaker 2: obfuscate for people is they forget that there's people behind it, right,
Speaker 2: And that's I mean, that's the entire thesis.
Speaker 3: We know.
Speaker 2: The work of Mary Gray's ghost work is that like
Speaker 2: all the technology that seems super shiny and AI and
Speaker 2: running it by itself is actually run by a ton
Speaker 2: of underpaid people often in other countries like that are
Speaker 2: doing the work that people here don't want to do,
Speaker 2: looking at like images that might be offensive, you know,
Speaker 2: so they don't show up on Facebook, you know, and.
Speaker 3: Things like that.
Speaker 2: And so it's like there's it's one of those like
Speaker 2: in tech terms, like human in the loop is what
Speaker 2: they might say with AI instead of having it just
Speaker 2: fun itself. Is like you're going to pop in and
Speaker 2: like answer a question. Most of all this technology stuff
Speaker 2: has humans in the loop, you know, we just sometimes
Speaker 2: talk about it like it doesn't, and like that's actually
Speaker 2: a huge detgment also because it ignores potentially harassing and
Speaker 2: work like bad workplace environment also right for folks, and
Speaker 2: so that I agree as a key piece. So lesson there,
Speaker 2: keep humans in the picture at all times because that's
Speaker 2: one of the ones.
Speaker 3: We're the ones doing the.
Speaker 1: Work, you know, absolutely, absolutely awesome.
Speaker 2: H Well, Laudia, I want to say thank you so
Speaker 2: much for joining me on the pod. That's been really
Speaker 2: really great to chat with you. So be where we
Speaker 2: sign off, I just want to check is there anything
Speaker 2: that we haven't talked about that you want to you
Speaker 2: want to make sure that we can we can kind
Speaker 2: of touch on the table is still open if that
Speaker 2: is interesting.
Speaker 1: I mean that you're this is this answer all life,
Speaker 1: and I just wanted to throw out that. What I
Speaker 1: love about anthropology is it says, you know, the way
Speaker 1: we think now, the way we live now, this is
Speaker 1: not the only possibility. There are their options and that
Speaker 1: applies to work. You know, work is changing. I mean
Speaker 1: you brought up the rhymes of freelancers, independent workers. They're
Speaker 1: now you know. McKinsey found in twenty twenty two that
Speaker 1: thirty six percent of US workers are like you, they're
Speaker 1: independent and it's and most of those it was their
Speaker 1: primary source of income. It wasn't just a secondary, you know,
Speaker 1: source of income. It was the primary source of income.
Speaker 1: So you the kind of thing you're doing working for yourself.
Speaker 1: This is the wafe of the future. And when we
Speaker 1: think about the future of work, we kind of have
Speaker 1: to put that together with the AI piece, the tech piece,
Speaker 1: and because they're going together, you know, and so it's
Speaker 1: not like, you know, I think in the future, you know,
Speaker 1: it's this becomes more and more important. It's not like
Speaker 1: you're either going to be employed or unemployed. If you're
Speaker 1: working for yourself, you can't be unemployed, right right. My
Speaker 1: black clients might lack income, but you're not. You know,
Speaker 1: there's nobody to fire you, right right. It's just a
Speaker 1: very different way of thinking about work.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I agree.
Speaker 2: How I'm curious like too, like how are are you
Speaker 2: thinking about that, like as a as a professor, as
Speaker 2: a teacher, like and thinking about your students and like
Speaker 2: helping shape their future, Like how how has that approached
Speaker 2: like either through your classes, through your department, or like
Speaker 2: how do you think about that in terms of like
Speaker 2: what what's our responsibility guess as anthropologists to help the
Speaker 2: next generation of anthropologists figure out this these like unstructured,
Speaker 2: uncharted pathways.
Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, what I think anthropology is good for is
Speaker 1: a look we can look at other societies we happened
Speaker 1: throughout history always had normal work right where with you know,
Speaker 1: you get a contract and you're hired, and that that
Speaker 1: wasn't the main way human beings made a living right
Speaker 1: right for Landia. Uh, this is a small slice of
Speaker 1: human history. And even today, most people around the world
Speaker 1: are in informal in the informal economy. They're not in
Speaker 1: the formal economy, and so you can look at examples
Speaker 1: in other societies for what are other ways of put
Speaker 1: creating a working economy that's not centered on full time
Speaker 1: standard employment.
Speaker 2: M Yeah, that's such an important point and it's always
Speaker 2: as one of my favorite things that I found early
Speaker 2: on that that when I when I got my first
Speaker 2: job out of college, as you know, I did anthrow
Speaker 2: majors all the way, you know, anthrow nerd from from
Speaker 2: bachelor's on the way up, and like one of my
Speaker 2: early colleagues, you know, had showed me that post it
Speaker 2: was another world is possible, and I was like, that's anthropology, right, yes,
Speaker 2: you know that that helps us realize that.
Speaker 3: Absolutely we can go cool.
Speaker 2: So super excited to to chat with you today. I
Speaker 2: really appreciate you taking the time for folks to check
Speaker 2: out your can. I all have it linked in the
Speaker 2: show notes, and I really excited, so thank you for
Speaker 2: doing the research, pointing it out in the world, and
Speaker 2: excited to see what conversations we can generate from this.
Speaker 3: So thank you so much, Thank you, Adam.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was a real honor and pleasure.