Small work pleasures and two types of well-being

Abstract

Does wage labor contribute to well-being beyond providing an income? Well-being can be understood in eudaimonic terms as the happiness derived from a socially valued life or in hedonic terms as the experience of pleasure. The eudaimonic–hedonic divide is replicated in competing progressive visions of the place of work in a good life. Laborist theories stress the centrality of paid work for a meaningful life. By contrast, for post-work theories, pleasure is important for well-being, and work is generally not expected to be pleasurable. Surprisingly, many of the participants in my study of diverse US job seekers described one or more of the jobs they had held as “fun.” Fun connotes enjoyment without deeper meaning, a hedonic rather than eudaimonic account of nonfinancial work rewards. What made a job fun were small work pleasures: enjoyment of the tasks and feeling competent at them, enjoyment of the physical work environment, or enjoyment of social relations on the job. These small pleasures could be found in both standard and nonstandard, precarious jobs. This study indicates the need for a labor politics that improves hedonic well-being on the job. It also expands an “anthropology of the good” to include ordinary enjoyment.