Work Is a Four Letter Word
Seriously...8 Jan 2016

Work Is a Four Letter Word

Many of us have grown up with the belief that a strong work ethic is a positive thing, and that by contrast idle hands are the devil's playthings. According to Professor Andrew Hussey, that argument makes very little sense. Starting off with a line from the Cilla Black song 'Work is a Four Letter Word' he offers a powerful counter-argument by navigating the ideas of, among others, Bertrand Russell, John Ruskin and the Situationists in France, whose graffiti slogan 'Ne Travaillez Jamais' - never work - still appears regularly on Parisian streets. Hussey argues that the corporate culture in particular, born out of mid-20th Century America and built upon ideologies of work developed during the industrial revolution and on through to the development of the assembly line, can have a hugely corrosive impact on people's lives. The programme features the voices of workers from the 1930s through to the present day, describing working life in call centres where even a trip to the toilet is timed by management. Hussey doesn't however suggest that we all take to the sofa to watch TV and eat crisps, though; instead he argues that by taking control of the work we do and the way we do it, work can actually become a positive force in our lives, once stripped of what he regards as the caustic power of modern managerialism.

Avsnitt(484)

On a Knife Edge

On a Knife Edge

This hospital based youth violence work is taking place in the four London major trauma centres and Producer Sue Mitchell was given exclusive access to follow what happens. The charity, Redthread, now...

20 Jan 201731min

Exonerated

Exonerated

John Toal meets former death-row inmates Sunny Jacobs and Peter Pringle at the retreat they have set up in rural Ireland to offer restorative treatment to other victims of wrongful conviction in order...

13 Jan 201730min

Hiraeth

Hiraeth

Poet Mab Jones explores the concept of 'Hiraeth' in the poetry of Wales and further afieldHiraeth, a central theme of Welsh language poetry and song, is a feeling of something lost, a long time ago, w...

9 Dec 201631min

The Green Book

The Green Book

In the Jim Crow era of racial segregation, travelling in the United States was fraught with difficulties if you were black. At best it was inconvenient, as white-owned businesses refused to serve Afri...

6 Dec 201638min

Bursting the Social Network Bubble

Bursting the Social Network Bubble

Bobby Friction has started to realise that his day-to-day online activities are not only being monitored but in some senses manipulated. How often he interacts with specific friends, pages or sites sc...

2 Dec 201630min

GCHQ: Minority Report

GCHQ: Minority Report

The domestic challenge facing Britain's biggest secret intelligence service. What's stopping members of the ethnic minorities from playing a key part in Britain's spy network: discrimination, loyalty ...

29 Nov 201640min

Being Bored: The Importance of Doing Nothing

Being Bored: The Importance of Doing Nothing

Is boredom under threat? There are more TV channels than we can count, Smartphones keep us engaged around the clock, and the constant white noise of social media coerces us to always 'interact'. In fa...

22 Nov 201658min

Searching for Tobias

Searching for Tobias

In 2008 Chloe Hadjimatheou was covering Barack Obama's first election campaign when she came across a 15 year old black boy in a Mississippi trailer park. Back then the young Tobias was full of potent...

4 Nov 201630min

Populärt inom Samhälle & Kultur

podme-dokumentar
gynning-berg
aftonbladet-krim
en-mork-historia
p3-dokumentar
svenska-fall
blenda-2
mardromsgasten
creepypodden-med-jack-werner
killradet
flashback-forever
skaringer-nessvold
hor-har
kod-katastrof
rss-nemo-moter-en-van
rattsfallen
p3-historia
historiska-brott
larm-vi-minns
rss-sanning-konsekvens