Conclusion: Arbeit Macht Frei (Work Will Set You Free)

In Chapter 2 we introduced a number of ideas/concepts from Ulrich Beck’s Brave New World of Work. A principal concern at that point was Beck’s contention that the labour markets of the overdeveloped West are being transformed in the movement from what he identifies as the work society to the risk society. In the work society the promise of salvation, meaning and purpose was to be realized in relatively stable labour markets that were rendered governable alongside forms of social insurance, welfare and regulation. A risk society, however, is characterized by forms and understandings of uncertainty, precariousness and risk that locate responsibilities for identifying and managing risk with individuals — largely, as we have suggested, via the development of entrepreneurial forms of selfhood. In this brief final chapter we want to consider a number of the paradoxes and tensions that emerge when earthly salvation is to be found in vocation.