Abstract
This is a book with a grand theme – the ‘cultural, technological and economic transformations that have changed the nature and meanings of work and the sorts of behaviours and dispositions imagined as being necessary for ongoing participation in paid labour’ (p. 2). The analysis is situated at the mysterious point where state legislation, managerial desire, organizational structure and human agent come together to produce or destroy the employee. This means that how work is talked about, regulated, controlled and accomplished are all present throughout the book.
The central claim the author makes is summarized in the book’s subtitle. Kelly presents us with a series of arguments and empirical evidences of new ethics that we are subject to, that guide us in how to live/work. The theoretical perspective that is worked out relies on a Foucauldian framework that suggests labour markets and cultural pressures combine to cultivate a very specific sense of self as enterprise. This is, as Kelly acknowledges, a pathway that has been walked by others; the originality of this book lies in working out how this normative expectation for, or calling to, people to navigate precarious global markets conditions the exercise of choice, freedom, responsibility and autonomy.
As the book title implies, this is also an argument that draws on Weber’s controversial thesis of the Protestant ethic’s influence on the development of European and North American rational calculative capitalism. The twist in the tale of work, employment and ethic that Kelly provides suggests influential contemporary narratives of competition and performance result in a very different ethic to that embodied by Weber’s sober, self-controlled Lutherans and Calvinists. Kelly’s alternative cosmology pays homage to the notions of liquidity, corroded character and risk developed by ‘big names’ (p. 22) such as Bauman, Sennett, Beck and Rifkin.
This is a complex book, written into a rather fragmented narrative. The complexity lies in the range of ideas – if this book were a building it would be made of many different materials. The narrative begins, for example, with a long discussion of Australian politician Kevin Rudd’s contradictory rhetoric about, and personal practice of, working life. This develops into an initial outline of the argument’s theoretical positioning, which is then developed through chapters three to six. These chapters are partly conceptual (engaging mainly with Foucault’s work, although there are references to a wide range of other post-structural and contemporary sociological theories) and partly methodological (following C Wright Mills and John Law to propose a form of literate social science that generates creative ways of understanding capitalism and its agents). These chapters also serve to clarify the gaps between this book and related work, such as Paul du Gay’s critiques of unthinking, unreflexive organization.
I read this as a very useful and stimulating book in its arguments and presentation of empirical materials, and one that is aimed primarily at an academic reader. It is possible to find or construct problematic issues within the narrative: for example, there is an unclear distinction made between encouragement and compulsion; furthermore, Kelly’s contemporary cosmology is entirely secular. I also found a lack of distinction between the subjects of analysis (e.g. the discourses framing contemporary work, the labour market) and the analytical subjects (ethic, spirit, work). A degree of separation between that which is being analysed and how that object can be understood might have helped clarify the central argument further. There are moments when the narrative feels like it is focused on the picture that is inside the discursive frame that work is now presented in, rather than examining the frame and how it is constructed. There is a substructure here of non-representational theory which is not sufficiently acknowledged, especially in its implications for how evidence, data and material realities are understood.
There is a very important and timely argument here, presently imaginatively, that is relevant to researchers, students, policymakers and all who are currently employed. It very much deserves to be articulated further; perhaps Kelly will go on to do so in future work, thereby locating this book as a starting point rather than a final statement.