Gentrified Labour

What counts as ‘good’ work under contemporary Western capitalism? As the traditional promise of identity and status by middle-class occupations becomes increasingly difficult to sustain, many workers turn to manual work in search of meaning. The book argues that this represents a mechanism of middle-class reproduction, through which working-class practices and aesthetics are selectively appropriated and transformed by middle-class workers. To describe this transformation, it introduces the concept of gentrified labour, which captures how manual occupations are culturally 'resignified' and workers negotiate tensions between autonomy, recognition and economic insecurity in the pursuit of meaningful work.