Passionate Work: Endurance after the Good Life

by Renyi Hong

Overview

In Passionate Work, Renyi Hong theorizes the notion of being “passionate about your work” as an affective project that encourages people to endure economically trying situations like unemployment, job change, repetitive and menial labor, and freelancing. Not simply a subject of aspiration, passion has been deployed as a means to build resilience and mend disappointments with our experiences of work. Tracking the rise of passion in nineteenth-century management to trends like gamification, coworking, and unemployment insurance, Hong demonstrates how passion can emerge in instances that would not typically be understood as passionate. Gamification numbs crippling boredom by keeping call center workers in an unthinking, suspensive state, pursuing even the most banal tasks in hope of career advancement. Coworking spaces marketed toward freelancers combat loneliness and disconnection at the precise moment when middle-class sureties are profoundly threatened. Ultimately, Hong argues, the ideal of passionate work sustains a condition of cruel optimism in which passion is offered as the solution for the injustices of contemporary capitalism.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781478022831
Publisher:	Duke University Press
Publication date:	04/04/2022
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	248
File size:	9 MB

About the Author

Renyi Hong is Assistant Professor of Communications and New Media at the National University of Singapore.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments  vii
Introduction. Passionate Work and the Good Life  1
1. From Happiness to Passion  23
2. Jobless, Undamaged, Resilient  53
3. The Compassionate Imagination  88
4. Urban Preserves  121
Conclusion. Passion in the Last Instance  160
Notes  175
Bibliography 203
Index

What People are Saying About This

The Problem with Work: Feminism, Marxism, Antiwork Politics, and Postwork Imaginaries - Kathi Weeks

“Renyi Hong takes an inventive and impressively expansive approach to his subject. This deeply original book offers a number of innovative, timely, and compelling arguments—including Hong’s major claim that the discourse of passionate work functions as a prescription for managing our disappointment with work and surviving precarity. An energizing book to read and think with.”

Editorial Reviews

"The unionization efforts of Starbuck baristas, warehouse workers with Amazon, drivers with Uber, higher education workers in the University of California system, and now undergraduate resident assistants at places like Barnard all testify to a massive reevaluation of what work is for us and, perhaps more important, what it ought to be. We are fortunate, therefore, to have Renyi Hong’s Passionate Work to guide us through the thickets of this new world of work."

International Journal of Communication - Thomas A. Discenna

This interesting, deeply thoughtful, and erudite book addresses a key issue of our time, making a substantial contribution to conversations on the roles of emotions, affect, and related phenomena in modern political economies, particularly in the West. By bringing passionate work to the discussion, Renyi Hong captures something that operates at many levels, from management literature to self-help and gamification movements to office design. Passionate Work is a book by a truly curious and committed intellect.

The Net Effect: Romanticism, Capitalism, and the Internet - Thomas Streeter

In today’s context, where wealth is increasingly concentrated in the hands of the few, and where inequalities between the top and bottom are growing not only within industries but also across regions of the world, Passionate Work offers a distinct contribution to scholarship by highlighting how our affective states are manipulated to keep us contented both at work and in work.”
 

Lateral - Kuansong Victor Zhuang

"A vivid portrait of the changing expectations and emotions of contemporary work. Highly recommended. Advanced undergraduates through faculty."

Choice - J. Bekken

"Renyi Hong's book adds a valuable perspective to this ongoing discourse on 'passion,' especially as
unprecedented market conditions prompt a revaluation of the very purpose of work. . . . Hong's work is insightful for management, sociology, and cultural studies students, offering a nuanced understanding of workers in capitalism beyond their labour characteristics and into affective dimensions."

Economic and Political Weekly - Samseer Mambra

"Much of Passionate Work is so satisfying to read because it confirms and names a tension that feels deeply true."

Public Books - Iana Robitaille

"This book is a valuable contribution to studies of capitalism, labour relations, emotions and affect, management, and alternatives to capitalism. The broad range of occupations that it draws from reflects the affective structure of passion that runs across classes, occupations, and employment status. Passionate Work convincingly argues that in the absence of a realistic promise of a decent life, the association of passion with work has become an integral part of capitalist reproduction."

British Journal of Industrial Relations - Birgan Gokmenoglu