Abstract
If you think that solar panels are a viable solution for producing sustainable energy, think again: it is more complicated than this. In fact, their photovoltaic cells are made of minerals, the extraction of which damages both the environment and the workers who mine them. The fact that alleged solutions sometimes create new problems is one of several crucial observations that Lynne Pettinger, Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Warwick, makes in her book, What’s Wrong with Work? The book is a courageous and inspiring contribution to today’s problems regarding work, as well as to the ways in which research is approaching them.
Initially, the author points out that it matters not only which answers we find, but also which questions we ask in the first place. Accordingly, she sets out to ask three central questions: ‘How is work organised?’, ‘How are different kinds of work interconnected?’ and ‘What does work do?’. Readers who expect clear answers to these broad questions will be somewhat disappointed and, in the concluding section, Pettinger actually notes that she does not think that the answers to the problem of work will be found in a book. The questions she asks, however, point to shifts in perspective, innovative reflections, provocative thoughts and impulses for further research.
Pettinger’s central approach to work, and likewise to the economy, is to see them both as made rather than given. She observes that economic explanations dominate questions about work and adopts an approach that instead views work as a set of practices. She is interested in the politics of the everyday, which also means to question the inevitability of what work and life are like.
The book encompasses nine chapters organised into two parts, a structure that is helpful but not altogether straightforward. Part I posits a conclusive explanation as to why such a book is needed, and it looks critically at current approaches and topical issues regarding work, including the equation of work with production, deleted (invisible) and hidden labour, and bodies at work. There are three work-related issues the author identifies as having particularly strong effects on the present, and these correspond roughly to the chapters of Part II: informal work, technology and green work.
Pettinger is not reluctant to express unpleasant truths or controversial arguments. For example, she questions the focus on social class in both Marxist and non-Marxist theories on work, emphasising that ethnicity or gender are more relevant in some contexts. This argument is linked to her general critique regarding the traditional understanding of work. If ‘normal’ work is implicitly or explicitly understood as production or factory work, done by male workers and in industrialised countries in the Global North, then this means ignoring other forms of work, especially women’s work, non-productive work, work in other parts of the world and work outside capitalism. Taking industrialisation as the point of departure for work research has important implications: ‘The history of industrialisation is inseparable from this history of colonialisation and slavery’ (p. 35f.).
In dealing with current challenges, such as gig-work and precarisation, the author points out that not all of the bad conditions that have been linked to them are entirely new. This, too, is a matter of perspective: ‘If you slice the historical cake differently, the current moment of an emerging gig economy stops seeming like an aberration from this norm of full employment for male breadwinners’ (p. 63).
Two further crucial points are emphasised in the book: questioning the universality of capitalism and scrutinising the explanatory power of ‘the confused, overextended idea of neoliberalism’ (p. 87). Pettinger takes up the concept of ‘capitalocentrism’, highlighting that capitalism is not the only economic system to be found in the world at the moment, and warns against accepting ‘the quick explanation of “it’s all neoliberal”’ (p. 95). Regarding technology and green work, she discusses how new technology causes problems that are worse than those it was supposed to solve. She is cautious about the issue of rising automation as it neglects the automation that already exists and draws attention away from other current issues (e.g. informal work, care work, programming work). She also criticises the notion of green work, noting that lower environmental damage does not always go together with decent work.
This book is easy to understand and can be an inspiring read for scholars in the field of sociology and work research as well as other interested readers, from academia and beyond. Pettinger’s critique is harsh but comprehensible. The structure of the book can at times seem a bit confused; it is not always clear how chapters are built up, or why some topics receive different kinds of attention. However, the strength of this important book is not that it is complete or seamless, but that it makes gaps visible and brings new framings to topical issues.