1869, Ep. 150 with Claudia Strauss, author of What Work Means

7:01PM Jun 18, 2024

Speakers:

Jonathan Hall

Claudia Strauss

Keywords:

work

ethic

interviewees

occupations

people

americans

talk

interesting

claudia

obsessive

interviewed

country

workers

puritan work ethic

job

calvinists

woman

great recession

means

differences

Welcome to 1869, The Cornell University Press Podcast. I'm Jonathan Hall. In this episode, we speak with Claudia Strauss, author of the new book What Work Means: Beyond the Puritan Work Ethic. Claudia Strauss is professor of cultural anthropology at Pitzer College. She is the author of Making Sense of Public Opinion, and coauthor of A Cognitive Theory of Cultural Meaning. We spoke to Claudia about her research on Americans attitudes towards work, what she found were the two most prevalent views that Americans have about their work lives. And why despite dire warnings in the media, Americans still want to work in the post COVID employment landscape. Hello, Claudia, welcome to the podcast.

Hey, thank you, Jonathan. Happy to be here.

Well, it's I'm excited to talk to you about your new book, What Work Means: Beyond the Puritan Work Ethic, partly because work is a hot topic since COVID. I mean, it's obviously been an interesting topic regardless. But since COVID, work issues have been coming to the forefront in the media, working from home, returning to the office quiet, quitting the great resignation, these are all terms that we now know. And the American workplace has changed pretty dramatically. But there's always been a central premise about work. That's obviously changing as well. But there's been a core and that's what your book focuses on. But let's let's get some background of the book, what what caused you to write the book? How did it come to be?

You know, there's a story I'd like to tell, and then there's the truth. Could I start with the story, I'd like to tell your Okay, so the story I'd like to tell is that when I started this topic in 2011, I could look into the future and see that it was going to become a hot topic, I could first see that, you know, there would be what these advances in machine learning, and then the big 10 pandemic would happen and working from home. You know, I saw that back in 2011. Because if I could say, I saw that, you know, everybody would be after me for my ability to predict the future. But it's not the truth. Okay. So the truth is, I've been interested in this topic for a long time, back in the 1980s, I interviewed workers at a chemical factory that was closing in my town. And we talked about many things. But one of the things we ended up talking a lot about was how they felt about their jobs, how they felt about working. And then I started this project in 2011. This was shortly after the Great Recession, which was the worst recession in this country since the Great Depression. And a lot of people were out of work so sadly, for my interviewees, but it fit my research interests to talk to people about the meaning of work for them. And when you're out of work, you have a little time to think about that, you know, when you're busy working, you're not going to step back and think philosophically as much about the meaning of work in your life. But when you're out of work for in the case of my interviewees months, sometimes years, then it, they have a lot of time to reflect on what it means to them. So I caught them in a very reflective moment. And I also want to say where I'm coming from in my fields, and my specialty, which is psychological anthropology. So what psychological anthropologists do, what we care about, is how culture shapes people's thoughts, feelings, what's important to them in life. And where I come from in that is saying culture, but women culture is very complicated. culture isn't one thing, culture has mixed messages. How do ordinary people take all these mixed messages and make something meaningful for themselves? So I like to talk to people. In this case, I talked to people from a range of occupations, my research back in the 1980s, at the chemical factory, it was all white men, that's who worked at the chemical factory. The workplace now is much more diverse. So I really wanted people from different occupations, different races, different ethnicities, and women, you know, women and men I had about equal numbers of women and men. I talked to, you know, so the occupations, I went to job fairs, I went to career counseling sessions, employment support groups, got people who are teachers who are warehouse workers, administrative assistants, hairdressers, managers, corporate managers, quite a range. Anyway, that's that's the true backstory.

Okay, excellent. Excellent. Well, you talked about during the Great Recession, there was a lot of reflection, and that's what's happened during COVID When people were out of work. But the reflection as we were mentioning earlier, about what work means has been an obsession. For a long time in America, that Americans are driven by work. And one of the fundamental books that really put this on the map was Max Weber's book, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. This created this conventional wisdom that Americans were driven by the strict Protestant work ethic. But your research and your insights show that that his insights were much more nuanced than conventional wisdom has the conventional wisdom says Americans are incredibly workaholics obsessive without work. And that that is just the American way. That's just the way things are. Your research found a different picture. Tell us what you found?

Yeah. Yeah. And I'm really glad you asked about that. Because I think this, the conventional wisdom is wrong. And not only is it wrong, I think it's harmful. So I think it's really important to dispel it. All right, I want to start with the, what people usually take from vapor, let's start with what his main point was, and then I'll go to what I found, and then I'll go to the nuance and vapor but but his main point was kind of interesting. He said that with modernity, there came this fundamental shift in ideas about work. And he said, the traditional idea about work was you work to live, and you work as long and as hard as you need to, to get what you need to sustain yourself, and then you stop. And then he said, there came this interesting shift, where work became an engine itself, you weren't just working to live, you were living to work. And furthermore, it became people's main source of identity, their main interest, their main sore point of self esteem. And that's why they would just keep working and working with that stop. And even you feel guilty if you're not being productive all the time. So became a very laden with all these moral meanings. It wasn't just a practical means to make a living. Okay, so and he felt it particularly applied in America, he felt more so than other places, he felt it was a modern, a widespread modern ethos. But he thought it had particularly become the dominant ethos in the United States. He saw it as peculiar as irrational. He was German, you know, this was kind of ethnocentric. He thought Germans had it better than Americans in this way. And what's interesting is that that book, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism was published at the beginning of the 20th century. But now more than 100 years later, you got commentators coming back to it and saying, Yes, he had it right. That is who Americans are, whether they agree, or whether they liked that work ethic or not, you get people from both sides saying he was right. And that's how Americans should be and other people saying he was right. And it's terrible and irrational, and we've got to change it. But I found something different. And the way one of the questions I asked my interviewees that really brought this out, was when I asked them is work central to your identity, because remember, Weber's said, that was one of the key things that shifted, now work became central to people's identity. So Jonathan, I want to ask you, would you say work is central your work is central to your identity?

Well you know, that's, that's a good question. Is it central? I don't, I don't think it is. It's what I do. But I have so many other things that I'm interested in. So this is just an aside, but I had some friends that went to Ireland for a couple of years. And instead of in America, you get asked, What's your name? And then what do you do in Ireland, at least where they were? They said, What's your name? What instrument do you play?

Oh, wow, that's great. I love that.

Let's not talk about work, let's talk about what you're really interested in. But for them, it was music.

So the people I talked to when I asked them this question, what I got a lot of was, well, I'm a good worker, but it's not central to my identity. I'm a conscientious worker, but I'm not a workaholic. So And furthermore, the way they've so which is kind of what you're saying, but they added this twist to it of the way they were talking about it was as if, wow, it would be it would not be a good thing to make work central to your identity. I had one of my interviewees who is a very devout Christian. And she said, Well, I can't say that I put I have to put God first and everything. I can't put work ahead of God. And somebody else said family, you know, my family, of course comes first. You know, so the way they talked about it was, well, it wouldn't be a good thing to put work first. You shouldn't. And so the way they talked about it was not just no it's not but of course not. And that makes me realize there isn't just one work ethic in this country. There are two, and I call one of them the living to work ethic. That's your obsessive, you know, you can't stop working work day and night is you feel guilty if you're not working. But I quote this other one, the diligent nine to five work ethic, because they believe in being productive. They believe of being good workers, as probably you do, too, you know, I'm sure you feel like you're going to do your best when you're doing your job. But then you want boundaries on it, you want, you don't want it to take over your life, you have other interests, other things are important. So what I found there are really these two work ethics in the United States. And I think this really matters because if you kind of go with that conventional wisdom, that Americans are obsessive workaholics, then we don't need to protect people's vacation time or overtime. The United States is the only wealthy country in the world that does not mandate paid vacation time or paid holidays. So then you get another one of these trendy words, quiet vacationing, where people have to take their vacation time on the sly and without telling their employers. When that's right, people should be entitled to time off, they should be entitled to be able to protect their free time. And then, you know, do their best just during their working hours. Now, the nuance in vapor. What's interesting is that vapor actually talks about two Protestant work ethics. He traces all of this back to Protestant theology, the Protestant Reformation. And not everybody agrees with him about this. But his argument was that you've got the Calvinists who were the obsessives, they're the Puritans were Calvinists. They're the ones who believe that idle hands are the devil's workshop. And you just have to labor constantly for God's glory on Earth. And to prove to yourself, you're one of the elect, who will be saved. But they're also Lutherans. And Martin Luther felt his idea was, you should work well in your station in life, fulfill your obligations. But that doesn't mean working all the time. That just means fulfill your obligations. And so favorite, just talk about Lutherans as well as Protestants. But he doesn't he kind of then drops this other Protestant work ethic Vabre talks about this alternative Lutheran work ethic, but it's nobody picks up on that. And he says, Oh, well, that's that pledge to Germany doesn't like the United States. It's this other one does Calvinist work ethic that took over? And so he everybody, that's the conventional wisdom, everybody takes from vapor is about the obsessive Calvinists work ethic, not the more relaxed Lutheran work ethic.

Interesting. Well, you touched on an interesting point as well, in that, first, we're talking also Calvinists and Lutherans, these are generally applied to white middle class or upper class Americans. And obviously, our country is much more wider variety of people's religions. You name it, we're a multicultural nation. So in your interviews, what what variations Did you see between diverse groups of Americans? Yeah.

And I just want to say, by the way, I prefer the term, a productivist work ethic over Protestant work ethic, for this very reason. Because it doesn't just apply to Protestants. And Weber didn't think it just applied to Protestabts, he thought that's where it started. So we're productive as work ethic. So I yeah, I have the same question. As you I wondered, that was why I deliberately recruited a very diverse group of interviewees. I hired a Spanish speaking research assistant to interviewed immigrants from Latin America. And I also interviewed immigrants from East Asia and Latin America, as well as diverse, black, white, Asian, Latino people born in this country, and women about equal numbers of women and men. What was interesting is actually what people shared more than how they differed. So I did not find any difference at all, in these two types of work ethics, they diligent nine to five versus the living to work. There is a bit of a difference in terms of what kinds of jobs you can work at constantly. Some jobs you can't you know, if you're a retail associate, or you work in a warehouse, it's hard to do that and you're after hours. You can't take that home, quite in the same way I can take my workout. But in terms of attitudes and approaches to work, I didn't see racial or ethnic or cultural, you know, country of origin differences in that or gender differences in that nor did I see any differences in everybody shared the value that adults should be self supporting. There were no big ethnic differences in that or gender differences in that were things became where I did see some trends and some differences was when people were at work, who do you turn to? And keep in mind now this is in this very stagnant economy of following the Great Recession, the recession was over. But employers were still not hiring. Unemployment rates were well over 10%. And on long term, unemployment was unprecedented. So there had since the late 1940s, when the Bureau of Labor Statistics started keeping track of long term unemployment. There had never been a period where people were out of work. For as long as during the Great Recession, it was almost getting to three quarters of a year as an average of people being out of work. And people were running out savings. They were exhausting their unemployment benefits they had they had been extended, but even so people were exhausting unemployment benefits. And so you have to live, you have to turn to somebody and who do you turn to. And that's where I started seeing some interesting differences. Because one thing you would think about is turning to the government getting food stamps, or getting some kind of support like that. They immigrants, among my interviewees tended to just resist getting any kind of what are called means tested benefits, that's benefits designated for people of low income. It's like food stamps. They just said no, one woman said, I came to this country to be useful, I didn't come to take the that's not what they wanted to do. And it's some of my native born interviewees. Also it because some of these benefits have been stigmatized, resisted for quite a while, even when they were getting quite desperate and had no other source of support. But eventually, they did apply for food stamps, and they said, Oh my gosh, that was a lifesaver. I am so glad I did that. But that was one interesting difference. Another interesting difference was in families, right? You know, who do you in your family. The mainstream American pattern is parents give the kids grown children, even in their 30s 40s Do not give to their parents. Whereas my immigrants from Latin America and Asia were both more likely to give to their parents. And, you know, somewhat more likely to expect help from their grown children. And then I could also talk about gender. I don't know if we have time, gender? Sure. Okay, so this was kind of interesting, because I found a sort of mix of old and new gender roles. If you look at heterosexual couples, what I found is we've kind of gone from an expectation of male, you know, male primary breadwinners to dual income households, okay, that's sort of more of the norm. And, and then the way this played out among my interviewees is that if somebody was the primary breadwinner, either the sole breadwinner, or brought in most of the income, and it could be a man or a woman, and that heterosexual couple, their partner tended to be really loving and supportive while they were out of work, which is not the pattern that previous researchers had found. And I kind of hypothesize that this might be that if dual income households are the norm, then if you're carrying the load yourself, your partner is really grateful, and tends to be very supportive, even when you're going through a hard time. Whereas in the households where there were two breadwinners, and even two income earners, even if their contributions weren't exactly the same, it seemed as if, if one of them was out of the work work, the other one seemed to be saying, I'm doing my part, you've got to do your part. And they tended to be less supportive. But there still is a little bit of this kind of relationship strain was still greater for men than for out of work than for women at work. So that was a little bit of the traditional element that was still there.

Interesting. Interesting. Wow. So you Research found, even though there were those differences you found overall, though, that they shared, the similarities were bigger than the differences. Yeah,

overall, my sample Yeah, yeah. And, you know, I think this is important. I don't want anybody sort of quietly thinking, Oh, has there been some change in Americans work ethic because we're more diverse. Back in the 1980s, when I was talking to those white factory workers, their predominant work ethic, I would say, was the diligent nine to five work ethic. And some of them weren't even that diligent for what they do they, it was not the living to work ethic. And that was one of my big findings back in the 1980s. With these white factory workers, I don't think this is anything new. Interesting.

And what would you it's hard to quantify these things. But if you could, out of a percentage, what would you say is the split between the obsessive living to work folks? And the diligent nine to fivers?

Yeah, I should go back and count that. It was definitely more diligent nine to five than obsessives. And what was really interesting was that a lot of my interviewees who said that before when they had been working, said, Oh, it was all work. You know, one person said, if I made a pie chart, 90% of it would have been work. While they were out of work, they really said, Oh, I came to a realization that was not healthy. And they changed their work values. And I checked in with some of them later and said, Hey, now that you're working again, are you back to your old patterns? Or and one woman said, No, I've really changed. I've really changed my values. And another woman said the same thing. You know, I used to bring work home with me, I don't do that anymore. So I think there are these alternative vote, discourses. Now, one thing that is new, I think, in this society is our ideas about wellness, work life balance, right? And parenting is very intensive nowadays, that becomes a strong value for young couples. Right. And you feel that's where a lot of your time should be going. So yeah, I think the Dylan definitely diligent nine to five was much more common than the living to work. And even a large share of those who had lived to work said that that wasn't so good.

So you also, that's, that's fascinating. But you also have, which I think is really interesting. You have an entire chapter devoted to good enough occupations and fun jobs. Which doesn't sound you know, it's fun. It's not necessarily I'm obsessed with it. But it's, you know, it's good enough. Tell us more about this.

Yeah, yeah. Oh, this was such a surprise. You know, that's why I love doing research, you know, things come up that surprise you that you had not expected. So the way this would come up is I would ask everybody at the beginning, I've met with each person at least twice. But at the beginning of the first interview, I just asked them to give me a life history, including a work history. So they'd be kind of going through their jobs that they had helped. And then after they describe their job, a lot of them said, that was really fun. So a guy who was an IT recruiter said, Oh, it's just a thrill, it was so much fun. Or a woman said, I loved working in that dress shop, it was really fun. One of my favorite examples of this is a woman who was administrative assistant, and she had this task of taking all the personnel files, and taking some information from it and putting it into an Excel spreadsheet. So she was taking information from one kind of file, putting it into an Excel spreadsheet. And she said, that was so complicated, and I could just sit at my desk all day and do that, that was just fun. You know, and I was thinking to myself, That's not my idea of a good time. But she wasn't being sarcastic, you know, she was being serious, you know, that. And I, you've really hit the nail about this, which is if you call your job fun, that's not the same as saying it's deeply meaningful that you, you know, you're devoting your life to this, that you're obsessive about it, you know, it's lighter. So much of our commentary about work is so serious, but this was kind of lighter. And I, you know, it's the kinds of things people would talk about. So, you know, like liking the tasks, like wrangling Excel spreadsheets, enjoying that, liking their workplace, you know, one man who worked in a warehouse as a shipping and receiving clerk at a candy warehouse, and he said, You know, it's nice and cool, and it smells like chocolate. You know? He said it was so pleasant to come into work. The biggest thing was coworkers nice, you know, pleasant joking around with co workers or just chatting with them. That's something that people really enjoyed. And I, in the kinds of occupations in that, I kind of categorize our approaches to choosing a field of work choosing an occupation. You know, we talk about finding your calling or passion, finding something you love, right, that's one approach. Another approach is work is work, it's just a job, take anything. Or another approach would be look for a career path where you can advance. But I found this other approach here that I would call the good enough occupation, which is, I don't love it. It's not a passion. It's not what I set out to do in life. But for a lot of my interviewees, they kind of stumbled into something that they enjoyed. It wasn't, they didn't feel they were doing harm in the world, they didn't necessarily feel, you know, it was the most important thing to be doing. But, you know, they enjoyed it. And that's what I call a good enough occupation, that if I was giving advice to graduates, now, I would say, look for you don't have to find work you love, you don't have to find a passion for a good enough occupation. Good

advice. It's good advice. Going down a different road, when we were talking in the beginning about how work has been a popular topic in the news, and one of the things was this whole idea of quiet quitting, or the great resignation. And in some political quarters, there's this overall sense that Americans don't want to work anymore. You know, you just can't find anyone to work. What are you? What is your response to these types of statements? Yeah,

yeah. I'm really glad you raised that. In fact, just last night, I was meeting with a group of people, and I told them I, you know, I was doing this interview the next day about work. And one woman said, Well, I, you know, what do you think about this idea that people just don't want to work anymore? I said, Oh, my gosh, I hate that. Okay. The fact of the matter is, we don't have a lack of work motivic a motivation, we we have a shrinking labor force. This is a long term trends. If you it's been very dramatic over the last 15 years. So back in 2009, there were six people looking for work for every job opening. By the time you get to 2019, this is before the pandemic, this has nothing to do with COVID. By the time you get to 2019, it's less than one person looking for work for every job opening. And their long term demographic reasons for this declining birth rate, baby boomers like me retiring. And then there were political decisions like to restrict immigration during the Trump years, right. So we had fewer immigrants coming in. So these are some of the reasons why we don't have enough workers. Now really, when people say people don't want to work anymore. What this really means is people don't want to work. If you have a choice, which people do right now, you don't want to work at a low paid crummy job, you'd rather work a job that pays better and has better working conditions. And so now that people, job seekers have a little bit more choice, yes, your it is harder to fill those jobs that are less well paid, or less interesting, don't have a career path to them. That is true. Now, the quiet quitting thing really bugs me. Because what just in case nobody's familiar with this term, what it means is just doing the bare minimum, you're not actually resigning your job, but you're sure they're embodied, but not in spirit, you know, you're just doing the bare minimum to keep your job. But there's no evidence for this. If you look at the supposed evidence for this. It's based on very shaky questionable statistics about worker engagement. And it's based on people saying things like, I'm not going to answer emails after hours, or that meetings that mandatory All right, I'm not going to it. That's just what I call a delay. It could be just a diligent nine to five work ethic. They could be very productive, motivated employees, but they just want healthy boundaries on their work time.

That's interesting. That makes sense. That makes sense, then, I guess the surprise is or the reason why we're getting these statements that Americans don't want to work anymore, is based on the assumption that everyone every American is an obsessive workaholic tendencies that they have not seen. They're not realized that there is this diligent nine to fiver and so didn't even see that that is another option.

I'm so glad you said that. Yes, I think one just you know, if you assume that the only kind of work ethic is this obsessive work ethic, than if you see somebody guarding their free time you think they've no work ethic at all.

This is I love this book. And I encourage anyone who's interested in work to get this book, this new book from Claudio Strauss. What Work Means: Beyond the Puritan Work Ethic. It was fascinating and fun to talk with you. And I'm sure we could talk for several hours more, but we're giving people a teaser, so they will want to learn more by reading the book. So thank you again for taking the time to come on to the podcast, Claudia.

Oh thank you, Jonathan. I really enjoyed it.

It was a pleasure. That was Claudia Stross, author of the new book What Work Means: Beyond the Puritan Work Ethic. You can purchase Claudia's new book as an affordable paperback at our website, Cornell press.cornell.edu and use the promo code 09POD to save 30% off. If you live in the UK, use the discount code CSANNOUNCE and visit the website combined. academic.co.uk Thank you for listening to 1869 the Cornell University Press podcast