Working

Work is an essential element of daily life for people all over the world. Most people are structurally dependent upon wages or salaries (earned by themselves, by partners, family members, or friends) to purchase food and clothing, pay bills, and pay for housing. Yet, what work means, the norms and attachments that surround work, who can work in which kinds of jobs, and how work is practiced, are highly variable. Work is implicated in political and economic structures such as the state and capitalism, and in power relations that are classed, gendered, and racialized. This chapter introduces to the concepts of work and working in cultural geography. It shows how culture is central to working through theories of affect, emotion, and embodiment, and through theories of social difference. This chapter applies these theories through four case studies that show what cultural-economic geographers bring to research on work and working.