Work in Utopia

Contact: Dr Sam Clark, [email protected]

Time: 9.15am-5.30pm

Ideals aren’t enough: we need realistic assessments of possibilities and immediate tactics too. But ideals are necessary, because without them we can’t evaluate possibilities or form goals for our tactics. This one-day workshop at Lancaster University will consider ideals for work (what we do to make a living): what work would or will or should be in utopia. Should there be any work, or is it a curse from which we should free ourselves? How should work be distributed? How should appealing, autonomous, high-status work, or menial, grim, low status work, be distributed? How should our working lives be organised - in hierarchies, democracies, by individual contract? What is the ideal of craftsmanship worth? What is the right relationship between work and education? between work and self-development? between work and play? between work at home and work outside it? Speakers will consider representations of utopian work, real-world prefiguring of utopian work, normative argument about the goods and evils of work, and the uses of utopianism for thinking about these issues.