What do human beings do when they work, how is work organized, and what are its economic, social, political, biographical, and ecological effects? We cannot answer these questions without drawing on the numerous categories that we use to describe work, such as “skilled” or “unskilled” work, “domestic work” or “wage labor,” “gig work” or “platform work.” But where do these categories come from, what are their histories, how do they differ between countries, and how are they evolving? Shifting Categories of Work asks these questions, illuminating the many ways our societies categorize work.

Table of Contents

Introduction
Lisa Herzog and Bénédicte Zimmermann

Part 1: (Un)organized Work

1. Subordinate Work: How Does the Law Categorize Modern Labor Relationships?
Linxin He

2. Corporate Work: A Category That Has Lost Its Managerial Foundations?
Blanche Segrestin

3. Remote Work: From Employee Telework to Self-Employed Home-Based Work?
Frédérique Letourneux and Gabrielle Schütz

4. Platform Work: New Workers, New Rights?
Sophie Bernard and Josépha Dirringer

5. Teamwork: From Self-Managed to Lean and Agile Teams
Martin Krzywdzinski and Maximilian Greb

6. Democratized Work: Concepts and Practices
Roberto Frega and Martin Kuhlmann

Part 2: (In)visible Work

7. Free Versus Unfree Labor: Challenging Their Boundaries
Léa Renard and Theresa Wobbe

8. Informal Work: A Relational Category
Nicola Schalkowski and Marianne Braig

9. Migrants’ Work: An Anthropological Perspective From West Africa
Isaie Dougnon

10. Domestic Work: The Invention of a Gendered Relationship
Michel Lallement

11. Unpaid Work: Expansion and Mobilization of a Feminist Category
Maud Simonet

12. Emotional Labor: Concept and Practical Categorizations in Light of COVID Critical Care Nursing
Robert McMurray, Nicki Credland, Martyn Griffin, Peter Hamilton, Oonagh HarnessandKimberly Jamie

Part 3: (In)valuable Work

13. Dirty Work: Physical, Social and Moral Taint
Natalia Slutskaya and Annilee M. Game

14. Efficient Work: Exploring Algorithmic Approaches to Categorization
Sasha Disko, Bruce Kogut, Hanyu Li and Jennifer Zhang

15. Skilled and Unskilled Work: From Theoretical Concepts to Social Practices
Philipp Grollmann and Michael Tiemann

16. Entrepreneurship: Moral Categorizations Across Three Countries
Constance Perrin-Joly and Laure de Verdalle

17. Essential Work: A Category in the Making?
Lisa Herzog, Katrin Sold and Bénédicte Zimmermann

18. Sustainable Work: Foundations and Challenges of a Contested Category
Maja Hoffmann