Justice in the Workplace:

A Normative Political Theory of Workplace Control

Dear APT Members:

The Association for Political Theory continues experimenting with developing some of our regular pre-conference programming into additional virtual sessions throughout the year. We hope this will enable more people to participate in the life of APT and to stay connected between conferences.

We are excited to confirm our 2024 summer Virtual First Book Manuscript Workshop on June 17 from 9am-12pm EST.  Register for the Zoom meeting information at this link.  All members are welcome to attend!  If you are not a current APT member, you can sign up at this link.

Manuscript Abstract:

This book examines how the internal life in contemporary workplaces might foster or undermine democratic values. It is an interdisciplinary work that combines normative political philosophy with empirical management and sociological studies of workplace control. The book analyzes three major forms of workplace control: emotion (Chapters 2-3), time (Chapters 4-5), and knowledge (Chapters 6-7). For each form of workplace control, I analyze the empirical details of how this control works in reality, and then analyze the empirical evidence concerning the positive and negative personal, social, and political consequences of such control. Building on the empirical analysis of workplace control, I ask why some forms of workplace control should be regarded as normatively problematic by engaging with the contemporary debates around distributive justice and democratic theory. Chapter 8 of the book addresses the question of what personal and social goods a lower degree of workplace control can foster and whether the democratization of the workplace can lead to a lower degree of workplace control. Ultimately, the book aims to present a coherent, comprehensive, and empirically solid picture of what modern forms of workplace control are and how they undermine important values of a free and fair democratic society.

Participants:

• Chi Kwok (Lingnan University), Author
• Elizabeth Anderson (University of Michigan), Commentator
• Nien-hê Hsieh (Harvard University), Commentator
• Joseph Heath (University of Toronto), Commentator
• Emily Nacol (University of Toronto), Moderator