Erin A. Cech's Books

The Trouble with Passion

How Searching for Fulfillment at Work Fosters Inequality

By: Erin Cech

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The Trouble with Passion

How Searching for Fulfillment at Work Fosters Inequality

By: Erin Cech

Probing the ominous side of career advice to "follow your passion," this data-driven study explains how the passion principle fails us and perpetuates inequality by class, gender, and race; and it suggests how we can reconfigure our relationships to paid work. "Follow your passion" is a popular mantra for career decision-making in the United States. Passion-seeking seems like a promising path for avoiding the potential drudgery of a life of paid work, but this "passion principle"—seductive as it is—does not universally translate. The Trouble with Passion reveals the significant downside of the passion principle: the concept helps culturally legitimize and reproduce an exploited, overworked white-collar labor force and broadly serves to reinforce class, race, and gender segregation and inequality. Grounding her investigation in the paradoxical tensions between capitalism's demand for ideal workers and our cultural expectations for self-expression, sociologist Erin A. Cech draws on interviews that follow students from college into the workforce, surveys of US workers, and experimental data to explain why the passion principle is such an attractive, if deceptive, career decision-making mantra, particularly for the college educated. Passion-seeking presumes middle-class safety nets and springboards and penalizes first-generation and working-class young adults who seek passion without them. The ripple effects of this mantra undermine the promise of college as a tool for social and economic mobility. The passion principle also feeds into a culture of overwork, encouraging white-collar workers to tolerate precarious employment and gladly sacrifice time, money, and leisure for work they are passionate about. And potential employers covet, but won't compensate, passion among job applicants. This book asks, What does it take to center passion in career decisions? Who gets ahead and who gets left behind by passion-seeking? The Trouble with Passion calls for citizens, educators, college administrators, and industry leaders to reconsider how we think about good jobs and, by extension, good lives.

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Page Count

341

Publisher

Univ of California Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0520972694

ISBN 13

9780520972698

Misconceiving Merit

Paradoxes of Excellence and Devotion in Academic Science and Engineering

By: Mary Blair-Loy,Erin A. Cech

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Misconceiving Merit

Paradoxes of Excellence and Devotion in Academic Science and Engineering

By: Mary Blair-Loy,Erin A. Cech

Misperceiving merit, excellence, and devotion in academic STEM -- The cultural construction of merit in academic STEM -- The work devotion schema and its consequences -- Mismeasuring merit : the schema of scientific excellence as a yardstick of merit -- Defending the schema of scientific excellence, defending inequality -- The moralization of merit : consequences for scientists and science.

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Page Count

259

Publisher

University of Chicago Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0226820157

ISBN 13

9780226820156

The Trouble with Passion

How Searching for Fulfillment at Work Fosters Inequality

By: Erin Cech

Write a review Read reviews Take a Quiz Solve Book Puzzle

The Trouble with Passion

How Searching for Fulfillment at Work Fosters Inequality

By: Erin Cech

Average ratings

N/A

Write a review

Solve jigsaw puzzle

Age

Page Count

341

Publisher

Univ of California Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0520972694

ISBN 13

9780520972698

Book's by Erin A. Cech

The Trouble with Passion

The Trouble with Passion

Misconceiving Merit

Misconceiving Merit

The Trouble with Passion

The Trouble with Passion

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