The Importance of Work in an Age of Uncertainty

The Eroding Work Experience in America

David L. Blustein

Describes the psychological experience of working during the current era of precarious and unstable working conditions
Provides compelling evidence that the nature of work in the U.S. is eroding with powerful psychological and social consequences
Includes in-depth interviews with a wide range of people who describe their experiences with depth and passion
Concludes with recommendations on how to reduce the erosion of work, focusing on how individuals and systems can change the trend toward precarious and indecent work conditions

The Importance of Work in an Age of Uncertainty

The Eroding Work Experience in America

David L. Blustein

Description

Work plays an essential role in how we engage with the world, reflecting our desire to be productive, creative, and connected to others. By exploring the inner experiences of people at work, people seeking work, and people transitioning in and out of work, this book provides a rich and complex picture of the contemporary work experience. Drawing from extensive interviews with working people across the US, as well as insights from psychological research on work and careers, the book provides compelling evidence that the nature of work in the US is eroding-- and with powerful psychological and social consequences.

From this conclusion, the book also illustrates the rationale and roadmap for a renewed agenda toward full employment and toward fair and dignified jobs for all who want to work. The emotional insights complement the conclusions of the best science and policy analyses on working, culminating in a powerful call for policies that attend to the real lives of individuals in 21st century America. By weaving these various sources together, Blustein delineates a conception of working that conveys its complexity, richness, and capacity for both joy and despair.

The Importance of Work in an Age of Uncertainty

The Eroding Work Experience in America

David L. Blustein

1. Being alive: Work as a central role in life
2. Being able to survive and thrive
3. Being with others
4. Being part of something bigger than ourselves
5. Being motivated: Being the best we can be
6. Being able to care
7. Being able to work without oppression and harassment
8. Being without work
9. Being able to work with dignity and opportunity: A human birthright

The Importance of Work in an Age of Uncertainty

The Eroding Work Experience in America

David L. Blustein

Author Information

David L. Blustein is Professor in the Department of Counseling, Developmental, and Educational Psychology at the Lynch School of Education at Boston College. He has published over 120 journal articles and book chapters on the psychology of working, career development, work-based transitions, the exploration process, the interface between work and mental health, and the future of work. He is the author of The Psychology of Working: A New Perspective for Career Development, Counseling, and Public Policy and the editor of the Oxford Handbook of the Psychology of Working. Professor Blustein is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association, the National Career Development Association, and the American Educational Research Association, and he is the recipient of the John Holland Award for Outstanding Achievement in Personality and Career Research, the Extended Research Award by the American Counseling Association, and an Eminent Career Award from the National Career Development Association. In addition to his academic, scholarly, and public policy work, he also has served as a practicing counseling psychologist, providing psychotherapy and work-based counseling to adults and late adolescents.

The Importance of Work in an Age of Uncertainty

The Eroding Work Experience in America

David L. Blustein

Reviews and Awards

"This is an excellent book, and I am not aware of anything similar. Blustein's emphasis is on the eroding experience of work. He manages to do this while maintaining the dignity of his participants and argues for individual, community, national and global actions that can improve work." -- Fiona Christie, Fellow of NICEC and researcher at the Decent Work and Productivity Research Centre, Manchester Metropolitan University

"Advances the field with rich qualitative experiences that reflect well-researched psychological phenomenon regarding employment and workplace dynamics. This book is highly accessible and will interest academics and the general public alike." -- Choice

"In keeping with the effort to mourn and revive the American Dream, the book unfolds as a narrative of promise, fall, and redemption. The book is part qualitative study, part literature review, part memoir, and part manifesto. Blustein does well in attempting to weave the personal, the professional, and the political in the ''psychological view'' that he repeatedly claims to take." -- Administrative Science Quarterly

"Offering suggestions from the personal to a more macro level, Blustein's The Importance of Work illuminates a most ambitious, progressive pathway forward with his familiar bold intelligence and compassion. It may well signal the dawn of a new age of work. Thanks to David Blustein, hope awaits in those first few steps ahead." -- Career Convergence

"Builds on [Blustein's] impressive scholarship, but admirably manages to wear its erudition lightly: it is a book from the heart, a labour of love, constituting nothing less than a manifesto in favour of decent work -- a goal that is as important as it is increasingly out of the grasp of many in America, and elsewhere." -- British Journal of Guidance and Counseling

"David Blustein's book on working combines the life stories of people with the centrality of work and its psychological underpinnings in a way that will move the field of vocational psychology forward. This book puts everyday working people and those who need to work front and center in the psychological study of working and in public policy. This book challenged my mind and touched my heart." -- Rosie Phillips Davis, Professor, Counseling and Educational Psychology and Research, University of Memphis

"A masterful book that gives compelling human voice and scientific clarity to the powers of work in contemporary human life." -- Ruth Kanfer, Professor of Psychology and Director of the Work Science Center, Georgia Institute of Technology

"So much of the discussion of the future of work is about machines; David Blustein prefers to focus on humans. This book is the valuable and essential missing piece in a critically important contemporary debate, focusing not on what we do for work, but on what work does for us." -- Anne-Marie Slaughter, Bert G. Kerstetter '66 University Professor Emerita of Politics and International Affairs, Princeton University and CEO, New America