Introduction

In advanced industrialised societies, work occupies a peculiarly ambivalent position — simultaneously valued for providing the means for self- realisation and disvalued for being burdensome and compulsory. Shcrshow (2005) describes work as consisting of a ‘double necessity’, whereby ‘we see ourselves both as working to live and as living to work’ (ibid: 13, original emphasis). On the one hand, work is a source of expressive human action, one of ‘the hopes of civilisation’ (Morris, 1993 [1890]), fulfilled in a correctly ordered society which enables all persons to do decent, humane and dignified work. On the other hand, work is an experience of oppressive degradation, which must be minimised, if not eliminated, since the worker deprived of worthwhile activities ‘generally becomes as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human creature to become’ (Smith, 1999 [17761), resulting in him or her becoming ‘a crippled monstrosity’ (Marx, 1978 [1867]). We can be in no doubt that our survival and our ability to flourish depend upon our being able to work together to produce the material and social goods which satisfy individual and collective human needs. But acknowledging that work is unavoidable for most people leaves us with limited resources for investigating whether work is simply what is necessary to sustain life, or whether it can add to the experience of a full and meaningful human existence.