Resisting work : Collective perspectives onequality and liberation

Abstract: Wage work, as a norm and institution, is more and more obviously incapable of fulfilling its promises: for gender equality, social integration, meaning, or even equitably meeting our basic needs. Yet, despite struggles for more, less, or better work, there is minimal public protest against work itself. Using qualitative, open-ended survey responses from 34 people who described themselves as resisting traditional work norms, this study explores the ways the participants conceive of work and their resistance to it. A feminist work-critical theoretical lens and reflexive thematic analysis as method are brought to bear on underexplored collective motivations and justifications for resisting work. The results indicate that people are not only driven by individualistic motives to resist work, but see work as in conflict with the basic needs of human connection and caring for social relationships.They also desire even more freedom from work than they have already achieved, and for this freedom to include everybody.