Provocation Paper

Inwardness: The rise of meaningful work

Inwardness: The rise of meaningful work

Provocation Series Volume 4 Number 2

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Overell, Stephen 

April 2008

The paper argues that while thinkers and writers have long wondered at the value of work to human beings beyond providing a living, the notion of 'meaningful work' is a relatively new phenomenon that would have made little sense to our forbears of a couple of centuries ago. Meaningful work rests on the rise of individualism and identity as pressing concerns for large numbers of people. It speaks of huge and perhaps excessive expectations of working life - the historically unusual sense that fulfilment occurs, or should occur, in the everyday, ordinary business of going to work.