Confronting the 'Work Society': New Conceptual Tools for Social Work

The paper explores social work and work by using a theoretical optic neglected within the profession's academic literature—the Italian Marxist autonomist tradition. Key conceptual categories associated with the autonomists are discussed including the social factory, precariousness, the refusal of work and immaterial labour. It is maintained that a critical engagement with these interrelated concepts may help us think more deeply and politically about three dimensions: the changing content of the work; practitioners' focus, to differing degrees dependent on the national setting, on the work ‘readiness’ of clients; the ideologically pervasive work ethic within, what is termed, a ‘work society’.