Culture of Soft Work

The Culture of Soft Work examines American writers' responses to human resource management and motivational techniques in the workplace through readings of postmodern novels and a diverse range of other canonical and popular texts.

"Nearly every page of this book taught me something new. In a series of nuanced readings, Hicks demonstrates the unexpected resonances of human relations management theory, and its progeny in the self-actualization and corporate culture movements, for a range of post-World War II books and films. Hicks joins Jameson, Harvey, and Haraway as an indispensable analyst of the relationship between postmodernism and contemporary capitalism." - Andrew Hoberek, Associate Professor of English, University of Missouri-Columbia and the author of The Twilight Of The Middle Class "Hicks has produced an excellent literature-based scrutiny of the new managerial narrative and the consequent loss of the social imagination of work. Hers is an astute understanding of the chimera of workplace autonomy and its literary expression in a post industrial and post union world." - Laura Hapke, author of Labor's Text "Hicks has written an indispensable book . . .Equally at home in management theory and gender studies, she shows that literature and film can offer powerful insight into recent management strategies that seek to control the workplace by controlling the affective lives of workers." - James F. Knapp, author of Literary Modernism and the Transformation of Work "What is perhaps most innovative and suggestive about Hicks The Culture of Soft Work lies in its argument for the prevalence of representations of work in fiction and film of the latter decades of the twentieth century but in a form other than traditional working-class literature." - Magali Cornier Michael, Professor and Chair, Department of English, Duquesne University and author of New Visions of Community in Contemporary American Fiction

Heather J. Hicks is Associate Professor and Director of Graduate Studies in the Department of English at Villanova University, USA.