Smooth Sailing or Rowing Against the Current: Why We Work and Why It Matters
You’re working… in the field in Mesopotamia. Dirt, hear, tenth hour of farmwork… You turn around to call your son to help… Factory… The sound of metal hitting metal, tens of workers like you along the conveyor belt… You look at what you’re assembling… A script… Cold wind blows under the wooden doors of the monastery… You have to complete the script page today… Your fingers hurt… Pen on paper… Hoe… Pickaxe… Sword…
The alarm goes off again. It is Monday morning. Hitting “snooze” twice has not made it go away. With some serious effort, you just manage to get out from under your blanket and assume a sitting position. You rub your eyes, trying to accept that you are awake against the judgement of your own body. Once again, you ask yourself the great rhetorical question: “Why do I do this…?”
Except… It feels different this time. It should be rhetorical – it always has been – and yet, it is not. It feels worth pondering on. Perhaps it is this very peculiar realisation that makes you forget about the allure of staying in bed, as you get up to begin your day, the question refusing to leave your mind.
In our times, the majority of people on the planet spend around half of their awake time on work or getting to it (Lucassen, 2021/2023). It is clearly an important part of our lives and, whether we like it or not, a significant aspect of who we are. Given this figure, and knowing how difficult Monday mornings can be, it also appears that it can be quite difficult to avoid. Why? The answer seems fairly simple – it is the main source of income.
The idea that work is something negative that is undertaken to earn money lies at the foundation of labour economics, and modern macroeconomics more broadly (Altman, 2001; Lopes, 2011), but it is not a novel idea in Western thought – seeing it in negative light can be traced back to thinkers such as St Augustine or even Aristotle (Harris, 2020, pp. 137-138). The economic models, therefore, treat our decisions about working as a trade-off between two goods: income, which leads to our happiness through consumption, and leisure (Altman, 2001). They can both shed light on how work is perceived and conceptualised.
The theoretical focus on consumption as the main, or sole, source of happiness derived from work seems to imply that we are consumers more than we are workers (González-Chapela, 2007; Lopes, 2011). Whether we agree with this statement or not might be a personal matter, but it is hard not to see the logic – it is very likely that most of us would indeed mention money as their biggest motivation for work. Is it, however, actually as simple? Over time, it became clear both in the empirical and theoretical research that it is, in fact, more complicated (Lopes, 2011). For example, there is evidence that the question of what exactly drives people to work needs to be analysed in specific cultural and historical contexts (Graeber, 2001; Harris, 2020). Additionally, a systematic review of the Universal Basic Income (UBI) policy in the global context has not found negative effects of unconditional money transfers on the general labour force (Paz-Báñez et al., 2020). Lastly, writings in the feminist tradition draw our attention to the fact that such a conception of work skips over the extremely important unpaid work undertaken within the household (Daniels, 1987; Okin, 1989). All these factors and much more have led to various adaptations to the models, ranging from relatively minor, measurable changes to bigger changes in perspective (Lopes, 2011).
Focus on the second of the goods, leisure, carries a curious and important implication – work itself is not in the limelight for analysis of our labour decisions. Free time and the related goods become the objects of study in the context of the work decision (Aguiar et al., 2020; Roberts, 2011), and the work itself receives arguably too little attention (Lopes, 2011). Work is not a uniform concept that we simply avoid – it has a complex and multi-dimensional relationship with health outcomes, with poor-quality, stressful, and repetitive work (e.g. “precarious work” (Kalleberg, 2009)) sometimes having a worse impact on health than unemployment (Marmot, 2010).
Indeed, very similar observations were made by one of the earliest critics of capitalism, Karl Marx. He developed a concept of ‘alienation’ of workers from the products of their labour, and from each other, for example , due to the increasing division of labour and automation. This would lead to them considering their work a meaningless and unpleasant activity pursued for an ulterior motive – earning money and engaging in consumption (Marx, 2007).
A village in the Andes, southern Bolivia. You should be asleep, but you’re listening to your mother talk about the neighbours who moved to the city. Your mom can’t understand it, and neither can you. They won’t be able to contribute to the village together with everyone else anymore. They will get food from somewhere else. It’ll be like before the rising of God, about which the elders told you, before the dawning Sun, before people were graced with the materials to enable work. Back before the age of the Christians, when people didn’t need to work at all (Harris, 2020). Why would the neighbours give up what makes them live? You have a feeling that your mom will keep wondering about the same thing long after you fall asleep.
The tram you are taking to the office is full of people, like every Monday morning. Each person is lost in their thoughts or in their phones, being taken somewhere to begin yet another week. Many look like one would expect a person to look after the weekend ends. And yet… some of the faces you see are positive. Some strides – energetic. Some looks – hopeful and determined. These are not just the faces of people being forced to work for income. There must be something else.
Indeed, the search for that “something else” has been ongoing in economics, anthropology, sociology, history, and other fields (Lopes, 2011; Lucassen, 2021/2023). It has been shown that workers transform their work as much as possible into personally- and socially-rewarding actions. The economic models were developed with additions of altruism (Rotemberg, 1994), preferences for cooperation (Rob & Zemsky, 2002), fairness (Akerlof & Yellen, 1990), and identity (Akerlof & Kranton, 2005). Lopes (2011) argues that social interactions give rise to “goods” that cannot be captured by any standard model. Indeed, many of these additional motivators were found empirically. The Marmot review (2010) found that the “Loss of work results in the loss of a core role which is linked with one’s sense of identity, as well as the loss of rewards, social participation and support.” (p. 69). In many indigenous communities, such as the Aymara people in the Andes, there is no general term for work – it is strictly perceived through the lens of its type, as well as for whom and why it is undertaken (Harris, 2020). Perhaps it is not surprising, as most people rated satisfaction in work as more important for happiness than their level of income (Lane, 1992).
Northern Great Plains of North America, 16th century. A Blackfoot tribe. It’s cold, as you’re hiding with other tribe members behind the rocks, waiting for the bison to get near. Your feet are getting numb with every passing minute, but you wouldn’t like to be anywhere else. Everyone around you is ready, and when the moment is right, you will all jump out to scare the bison into the enclosure. One person alone couldn’t do that. It is still difficult as a group, but you’ve been doing that together for years. It’s almost like a ritual. (Lucassen, 2021/2023)
Ancient Egypt, the dusk of the third millennium BC. You begin engraving. “I know the secret of hieroglyphs, the composition of the ceremonial… I am a craftsman who excels at his art and is at the forefront of knowledge” (Romer, 2017). As the sun is slowly setting, bringing some relief from the heat, you continue engraving, confident in your abilities and proud of them. This has been a good day.
You are five minutes away from the office. It is quite a pleasant walk – the sun is out for the first time in several days, and it is slowly drying the concrete that is still wet after the recent showers. Everybody you see is on their way somewhere, there is not much random commotion. The world goes on. It will go on regardless. Pondering the nature of work made the commute go by much quicker, but in the end… does it really matter?
Yes. It does. For two main reasons:
Firstly, how work is conceptualised impacts the policy, which in turn impacts us all. Amartya Sen famously put forward the ‘capabilities framework’, arguing for a view of human life as a set of “doings and beings”, which are once again not captured by the standard models at the basis of numerous policies (Sen, 1990). Focusing on the capabilities of human beings to function and live as they wish implies a broader view of well-being than wealth, and a broader view of work than income. Based on such assumptions, Dean (2007) came to the conclusion that certain labour market policies prioritising moving people off welfare and into work are morally unacceptable. Other policies, such as UBI, gain a strong normative argument for their implementation. While these decisions are extremely complex and such a single factor should not make one’s mind on them, it is an important factor nonetheless, and one that can be, and often is, omitted.
Secondly, most of us are, were, or will be workers. We largely make up the very environment that is so crucial for our health outcomes, social interactions, feeling of being needed, identity and where we spend half our conscious lives. We shape it and we transform it. Even if far from policy-making positions, some responsibility falls on each of us to make it work for everyone involved .
You expect to remember another relevant part of your dream, but this time it is only you, slowly approaching your destination. It makes sense. Nobody in ages past had quite the information people in our times do. It is only up to us what we do with it.
The thought does not leave you as you enter the office on this Monday morning.
References:
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Piotr Górecki is a student of Economics, with a minor in Political Science, at Trinity College Dublin. He was the Editor of the Student Economic Review, a student-led journal at his university. He is most interested in public economics and social policy. In his free time, Piotr enjoys reading, playing chess, and hiking, among other things.
Madelene Nitzsche is a Cultural and Social Anthropology student at the University of Amsterdam with a background in communication studies, interior design, graphic design, and photography. Her experience growing up in Western and non-Western environments has influenced her interest in culture, art, urbanisation, and psychology. Opposing viewpoints, emotion, and contrast are a focus in her artistic work and it is also what drives her interest in the ethnographic approach. She is currently experimenting with multimedia artwork and poetry and perception of reality. Her vision is to integrate art and culture with ecology and community to improve societal relations and the relation to the self. You can follow her process @24yutori.