The Romantic Workplace: How Coworking Spaces Drive Post-Digital Consumption

Society and culture are increasingly marked by post-digital developments where the normalization of digital connectivity is challenged both through critical resistance, e.g., digital disconnection practices, and in commercial discourses on, e.g., “digital wellbeing” and “digital detox.” This article seeks to understand such post-digital trends in working life through the lens of romantic ideals. In modern history, the Romantic ethic implied an escape into the beautiful, the genuine, and the sublime. While constituting a counter-force to functionalism, it also shaped the evolution of modern consumerism through the embracing of novelty and imagination. Here, the analytical focus is on coworking spaces (CWS), a form of digitally reliant workspaces where mobile workers can rent a desk or an office for a limited period of time and where disconnection and non-digital features are promoted as ingredients of “good work.” Previous research shows that many CWS, while promoted as consumable destinations, function as anchoring places and environments for gaining a sense of presence and peace under digitally networked conditions. The current analysis extends these arguments through a case study of a CWS in an early-gentrifying part of Oslo, Norway. Based on ethnographic observations and interviews, the article shows how four romantic tropes—novelty, authenticity, creativity, and harmony—saturate spatial production as well as the mindsets of coworkers. It is concluded that CWS form part of a neo-romantic movement that includes a plethora of related post-digital phenomena, together constituting a counter-culture within capitalist consumer society.