This elegant essay on the justice of work focuses on the fit
between who we are and the kind of work we do. Russell Muirhead
shows how the common hope for work that fulfills us involves more
than personal interest; it also points to larger understandings of
a just society. We are defined in part by the jobs we hold, and
Muirhead has something important to say about the partial
satisfactions of the working life, and the increasingly urgent need
to balance the claims of work against those of family and
community.
Against the tendency to think of work exclusively in contractual
terms, Muirhead focuses on the importance of work to our sense of a
life well lived. Our notions of freedom and fairness are
incomplete, he argues, without due consideration of how we fit the
work we do.
Muirhead weaves his argument out of sociological, economic, and
philosophical analysis. He shows, among other things, how modern
feminism's effort to reform domestic work and extend the promise of
careers has contributed to more democratic understandings of what
it means to have work that fits. His account of individual and
social fit as twin standards of assessment is original and
convincing--it points both to the unavoidable problem of
distributing bad work in society and to the personal importance of
finding fulfilling work. These themes are pursued through a
wide-ranging discussion that engages thinkers from Plato to John
Stuart Mill to Betty Friedan. "Just Work" shows what it would mean
for work to make good on the high promise so often invested in it
and suggests what we--both as a society and as individuals--might
do when it falls short.
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