An Introduction to the Handbook for the Future of Work

Abstract

The Handbook for the Future of Work offers a comprehensive and critical analysis of a series of key debates concerning the changing nature of work and employment. The temporal focus is primarily on the last twenty years, and arguments about technology, automation and capitalist transformation, as the economic landscape shifts and new work practices and relations are established. The book is timely insofar as it intertwines the radical promises, threats and implications of this rapidly changing landscape with more formal/mainstream narratives and discussions of work and employment. In this sense it addresses a growing interdisciplinary interest by distinctively going beyond a narrow focus on the role of technology that dominates too much of the conversation on the future of work, opening out to broader debates about the character of capitalism at a time of crisis, conflict and contestation over alternatives. No single volume currently provides a detailed insight into the different domains in which the challenges – and opportunities – of technological advancement in the workplace have been considered, nor the way this multifaceted and dynamic process of economic transformation calls into question the centrality that work continues to play in our social and political imaginaries. The Handbook for the Future of Work accordingly serves as a crucial resource for navigating the complexities of this new intellectual terrain. This introductory chapter sets out the book’s thematic coverage by outlining its substantive content, including detailing how writing about the ‘future of work’ has quickly become a vitally important component of contemporary political and economic critique both inside and outside of the academy.