Does it ever feel like you have no free time? You come home after work and instead of finding a space of rest and relaxation, you’re confronted by a pile of new tasks to complete – cooking, cleaning, looking after the kids, and so on.
In this ground-breaking book, Helen Hester and Nick Srnicek lay out how unpaid work in our homes has come to take up an ever-increasing portion of our lives – how the vacuum of free time has been taken up by vacuuming. Examining the history of the home over the past century – from running water to white goods to smart homes – they show how repeated efforts to reduce the burden of this work have faced a variety of barriers, challenges, and reversals.
Charting the trajectory of our domestic spaces over the past century, Hester and Srnicek consider new possibilities for the future, uncovering the abandoned ideas of anti-housework visionaries and sketching out a path towards real free time for all, where everyone is at liberty to pursue their passions, or do nothing at all. It will require rethinking our living arrangements, our expectations and our cities.
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Creators
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Publisher
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Release date
July 18, 2023 -
Formats
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Kindle Book
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OverDrive Read
- ISBN: 9781786633095
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EPUB ebook
- ISBN: 9781786633095
- File size: 673 KB
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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Publisher's Weekly
May 22, 2023
Film scholar Hester (Xenofeminism) and economist Srnicek (Platform Capitalism) examine the history of domestic work over the past century and propose that changes in how housework is managed could restore free choice in how to use one’s time. Focusing on five Northern European countries and the U.S., the authors contend that technological progress—from washtubs to washing machines, for example—only creates more work, not more free time. Offering an alternative model, they highlight traditions of shared duties in communes of the past, such as Russia’s post-Czarist “new form of daily life—or novyi byt,” a type of collective living with shared laundries, kitchens, and childcare facilities—and the American “landdyke,” a lesbian separatist community committed to moving beyond a gendered division of labor. Arguing against “the needless repetition of domestic work” across many small households, the authors point to the increased efficiency and reduction of total work required from participants in communal care arrangements. Though lay readers may find the academic prose tough going, this is an incisive critique of the status quo and an earnest appeal to rethink why people work and how they spend their time.
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Formats
- Kindle Book
- OverDrive Read
- EPUB ebook
subjects
Languages
- English
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