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Apr. 7 | MAASA Joint Conference—April, 2011
Joint conference on material culture, April 7-11, 2011, UW-Madison
Resources: Abstracts of American Studies Dissertations
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Halprin, Jeffrey A. "Getting Back to Work: The Revaluation of Work in American Literature and Social Theory, 1950-1985," Boston University, April 1987.
American social theory and literary images of work in the l950s were marked by despair. Both social theorists and novelists depicted an industrialized, hierarchical, bureaucratic society that left no room for individual development or gratification in the workplace. But the social movements of the 1960s encouraged the idea that social life could be responsive to the individual’s needs and ideas. The literature and social theory which followed asserted both the centrality of work to an individual’s experience and the possibility of meaningful work. This study examines the evolution of the cultural changes which led to an increasing optimism about the possibility of satisfying both individual and social needs in the workplace.
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