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The Trouble with Passion
How Searching for Fulfillment at Work Fosters Inequality
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Check link for latest rating. ( 72 ratings, 12 reviews)
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The Trouble with Passion
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Book Hero Magic created this recommendation. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! IS THIS YOUR NEXT READ?
This book is ideal for educators, career counsellors, social science scholars, policymakers, and anyone interested in the intersections of work, inequality, and career guidance.
Book Hero Magic formatted this description to make it easier to read. While it's new and
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Description
Probing the ominous side of career advice to "follow your passion," this data-driven study explains how the passion principle fails us and perpetuates inequality by class, gender, and race; and it suggests how we can reconfigure our relationships to paid work.
"Follow your passion" is a popular mantra for career decision-making in the United States. Passion-seeking seems like a promising path for avoiding the potential drudgery of a life of paid work, but this "passion principle"—seductive as it is—does not universally translate. The Trouble with Passion reveals the significant downside of the passion principle: the concept helps culturally legitimise and reproduce an exploited, overworked white-collar labour force and broadly serves to reinforce class, race, and gender segregation and inequality.
Grounding her investigation in the paradoxical tensions between capitalism's demand for ideal workers and our cultural expectations for self-expression, sociologist Erin A. Cech draws on interviews that follow students from college into the workforce, surveys of US workers, and experimental data to explain why the passion principle is such an attractive, if deceptive, career decision-making mantra, particularly for the college educated. Passion-seeking presumes middle-class safety nets and springboards and penalises first-generation and working-class young adults who seek passion without them. The ripple effects of this mantra undermine the promise of college as a tool for social and economic mobility. The passion principle also feeds into a culture of overwork, encouraging white-collar workers to tolerate precarious employment and gladly sacrifice time, money, and leisure for work they are passionate about. And potential employers covet, but won't compensate, passion among job applicants.
This book asks, What does it take to centre passion in career decisions? Who gets ahead and who gets left behind by passion-seeking? The Trouble with Passion calls for citizens, educators, college administrators, and industry leaders to reconsider how we think about good jobs and, by extension, good lives.
Book Hero Magic summarised reviews for this book. While it's new and still learning, it may not be perfect - your feedback is welcome! HOW HAS THIS BEEN REVIEWED?
Praised by Administrative Science Quarterly as particularly relevant for those contemplating career changes during the COVID-19 pandemic, this book provides valuable insights for educators, career counsellors, hiring managers, organisation leaders, policymakers, and social science scholars interested in careers and inequality. College & Research Libraries recommends it for readers seeking new perspectives on career choices, labour, and passion.
Book Details
INFORMATION
ISBN: 9780520303232
Publisher: University of California Press
Format: Paperback / softback
Date Published: 09 November 2021
Country: United States
Imprint: University of California Press
Illustration: 20 graphs, 1 photograph, 4 tables
Audience: Professional and scholarly
DIMENSIONS
Spine width: 25.0mm
Width: 152.0mm
Height: 229.0mm
Weight: 454g
Pages: 344
About the Author
Erin A. Cech is Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of Michigan. Her research investigates how seemingly benign and taken-for-granted cultural beliefs reproduce workforce inequalities.
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