After Work: A History of the Home and the Fight for Free Time

by Helen Hester, Nick SRNICEK

Overview

A timely manifesto for a feminist post-work politics

Does it ever feel like you have no free time? You come home after work and instead of finding a space of rest and relaxation, you’re confronted by a pile of new tasks to complete – cooking, cleaning, looking after the kids, and so on.

In this ground-breaking book, Helen Hester and Nick Srnicek lay out how unpaid work in our homes has come to take up an ever-increasing portion of our lives – how the vacuum of free time has been taken up by vacuuming. Examining the history of the home over the past century – from running water to white goods to smart homes – they show how repeated efforts to reduce the burden of this work have faced a variety of barriers, challenges, and reversals.

Charting the trajectory of our domestic spaces over the past century, Hester and Srnicek consider new possibilities for the future, uncovering the abandoned ideas of anti-housework visionaries and sketching out a path towards real free time for all, where everyone is at liberty to pursue their passions, or do nothing at all. It will require rethinking our living arrangements, our expectations and our cities.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781786633095
Publisher:	Verso Books
Publication date:	07/18/2023
Sold by:	Penguin Random House Publisher Services
Format:	eBook
Pages:	288
Sales rank:	873,719
File size:	700 KB

About the Author

Helen Hester is Professor of Gender, Technology and Cultural Politics at the University of West London. Her research interests include technofeminism, social reproduction, and theories of work, and she's a member of the international working group Laboria Cuboniks. Her books include Beyond Explicit: Pornography and the Displacement of Sex (SUNY Press, 2014), Xenofeminism (Polity, 2018), and Post-Work (Bloomsbury, forthcoming, with Will Stronge).

Nick Srnicek is a Senior Lecturer in Digital Economy at King's College London. He is the author of Platform Capitalism (Polity, 2016) and Inventing the Future: Postcapitalism and a World Without Work (Verso, 2015 with Alex Williams).

Editorial Reviews

05/22/2023

Film scholar Hester (Xenofeminism) and economist Srnicek (Platform Capitalism) examine the history of domestic work over the past century and propose that changes in how housework is managed could restore free choice in how to use one’s time. Focusing on five Northern European countries and the U.S., the authors contend that technological progress—from washtubs to washing machines, for example—only creates more work, not more free time. Offering an alternative model, they highlight traditions of shared duties in communes of the past, such as Russia’s post-Czarist “new form of daily life—or novyi byt,” a type of collective living with shared laundries, kitchens, and childcare facilities—and the American “landdyke,” a lesbian separatist community committed to moving beyond a gendered division of labor. Arguing against “the needless repetition of domestic work” across many small households, the authors point to the increased efficiency and reduction of total work required from participants in communal care arrangements. Though lay readers may find the academic prose tough going, this is an incisive critique of the status quo and an earnest appeal to rethink why people work and how they spend their time. (July)

Publishers Weekly

"We are taught to think that there's no alternative to the sad model of social reproduction centered on the single-family home and privatized family. Here's is a practical and creative guide to how we might begin to move beyond that paradigm."
—Kathi Weeks, author of The Problem With Work

"Why do breakthroughs of technology so rarely lift the burden of drudgery? And how can we harness these breakthroughs to move beyond the capitalist conditions that they service today? Following their pioneering theory (Xenofeminism and Inventing the Future) Helen Hester and Nick Srinicek's new book After Work tackles this problem, and provides a new vision of a future that moves us past toil. This book advances the case for "the struggle against work - in all its forms", addressing a broad range of concerns from the rise of platform capitalism to the burdens of care that persistent in private households. Neither understating the scale of the social transformation needed for the planet to survive capitalism, nor lapsing into despair over the thorny trail ahead, After Work is indispensable reading for anyone committed to extending the realm of freedom."
—Jules Gleeson, co-editor of Transgender Marxism

"This is an incisive critique of the status quo and an earnest appeal to rethink why people work and how they spend their time."
—Publishers Weekly

"Anyone seeking cosy thoughts about the joys of spring cleaning should look elsewhere ... clear and concise, with a lot of learning worn lightly"
—Andy Beckett, Guardian

"After Work takes an important look at the implications for the domestic sphere if work is reduced"
—Janina Conboye, Financial Times

"A meticulously researched and agilely argued plea for the reduction of domestic labor from feminist scholar Helen Hester and Marxist economist Nick Srnicek."
—Becca Rothfeld, Washington Post

"As a building block for change this splendidly written book makes a most powerful case for the opposition."
—Philosophy Football

"After Work will get people talking about their interminable to-do lists. Anyone under 30 who wants to know what their life is going to look like should read it."
—Decca Aitkenhead, Sunday Times

"A dazzling work of applied utopianism"
—Enrico Monacelli, The Quietus

"After Work fuses visions for a post-work world with calls to recognise and tackle the crisis in care."
—Holly High, Inside Story

"Interesting and thought-provoking ... If even existing capitalist technologies can give a glimpse of the benefits of a different way of organising society, imagine what would be possible if we had full democratic working-class control of the means of production and a democratic planned economy."
—Christine Thomas, Socialism Today

From the Publisher

Why do breakthroughs of technology so rarely lift the burden of drudgery?…After Work tackles this problem and provides a new vision of a future that moves us past toil…Indispensable reading for anyone committed to extending the realm of freedom.”

co-editor of Transgender Marxism Jules Gleeson

We are taught to think that there’s no alternative to the sad model of social reproduction centered on the single-family home and privatized family. Here is a practical and creative guide to how we might begin to move beyond that paradigm."

author of The Problem with Work Kathi Weeks

The authors explore changes that have taken place in the home. American narrator Marisa Calin's accent was influenced by growing up in England. In a British-sounding voice she moves through the basics, slowing down to deliver more emotional words with intimacy. The topics, such as cooking, cleaning, and caregiving, lean toward discussions of gender roles, as well as technological and cultural change. Calin cheerfully rattles off the development of the stove, for example, taking listeners from the days of coal stoves to present-day ranges as she tells how modern conveniences have replaced domestic help. The authors look to a future that might bring such phenomena as guaranteed day care, financial incentives for friends to act as caregivers, and the shaping of tech development in a more female-friendly way. J.A.S. © AudioFile 2023, Portland, Maine

SEPTEMBER 2023 -- AudioFile