My academic research focuses primarily on work and economic democracy, presenting normative and strategic arguments in favor of democratizing various elements of our contemporary economy. As such, a majority of my work attends to questions of workplace democracy, the democratization of investment, the meaning of work and play, labor justice, and the democratization of other core economic institutions. Broadly speaking, I am interested in (a) critiques of capitalist relations as sites of domination and alienation and (b) the creative imagining of post-capitalist alternatives. Most recently, I have written about these questions in relation to digital labor and post-work.

 

In response to the domination and alienation in capitalist work, I am exploring the importance and value of play. While the concept of play is often associated with childhood, play can give us many of the personal and social goods that we get from non-alienated work including skill development, social recognition, community, and meaning-making. Therefore play ought to be asserted as one the key components of a post-capitalist vision of the good life.

 

I am also interested in prefigurative politics, or the creation of desired future social relations and economic alternatives in the here-and-now. In essence, prefigurative politics is about "building the new world in the shell of the old". Prefiguration requires us to also think about political resistance both in terms of our normative commitments enacted in our resistance as well as strategies for building successful, just alternatives. Most recently, this has resulted in my work on economic democracy, its relation to the future of work and play in the face of developing technologies, and what economic and political preconditions are needed to ameliorate unjust economic inequalities related to the implementation and ownership of those technologies.

 

Finally, I am interested in how absurdism, joy, and playfulness are important for thinking about the search for meaning in our lives.