Confronting the 'Work Society': New conceptual tools for social work

The paper explores social work and work by using a theoretical optic neglected within the profession's academic literature - the Italian Marxist autonomist tradition. Key conceptual categories associated with the autonomists are discussed including the social factory, precariousness, the refusal of work and immaterial labour. It is maintained that a critical engagement with these interrelated concepts may help us think more deeply and politically about three dimensions: the changing content of the work; practitioners' focus, to differing degrees dependent on the national setting, on the work 'readiness' of clients; the ideologically pervasive work ethic within, what is termed, a 'work society'.