New Books in Sociology

Helen Hester and Nick Srnicek, "After Work: A History of the Home and the Fight for Free Time" (Verso, 2023)

Sep 6, 2023

Dr. Helen Hester and Dr. Nick Srnicek discuss their book "After Work: A History of the Home and the Fight for Free Time." They explore how unpaid work in our homes has taken over our lives, the failure of technology to reduce domestic labor, the gendered inequalities in free time, and the dominance of the nuclear family. They also share principles for guiding action and discuss their ongoing projects.

48:02

Episode guests

Helen Hester

Nick Srnicek

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Episode notes

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Quick takeaways

Unpaid work at home has increasingly consumed our free time, hindering leisure and relaxation.

Domestic technologies have failed to reduce domestic labor significantly due to Cohen's paradox and other factors.

Deep dives

The rise of the nuclear family and the dominance of the single-family home

The podcast explores how the nuclear family became the dominant model and how the physical space of the home influences work at home. It discusses the concept of domestic realism and its impact on our living spaces.

Introduction

3min

The Role of Technology in Reducing Domestic Labor

17min

Gendered Inequalities in Free Time: Quantity and Quality

3min

The Dominance of the Nuclear Family

14min

Principles for Guiding Action and Thinking about Utopia

7min

Current and Upcoming Projects

2min

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 After Work: A History of the Home and the Fight for Free Time (Verso, 2023), Dr. Helen Hester and Dr. 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, Dr. Hester and Dr. 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.

This interview was conducted by Dr. Miranda Melcher whose doctoral work focused on post-conflict military integration, understanding treaty negotiation and implementation in civil war contexts, with qualitative analysis of the Angolan and Mozambican civil wars.

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