Public Scholars at
Hanover College
Inquiries
Volume Two, Number One - Fall 2001
The Meaning of Work
In the aftermath of the events of September 11th, one of the thoughts expressed again and again was that America "needed to get back to work." Work is clearly at the center of our lives. As an educator, I am in constant conversation with students who are trying to figure out what they are going to do with their lives. For many of them, that means they are trying to figure out what kind of job they might want or be able to get. Others are putting the question in broader terms and asking what kind of career they want to build. But both formulations of the question worry me. Experts who analyze work-place trends in America continue to tell us that the next generation of American workers will be facitag a rapidly and constantly changing economy. As a result, American workers can expect to face the need to change jobs or careers several times in their lifetimes. What kind of effect will that have on individuals who have constructed their identity-their sense of self-worth-entirely upon their jobs or careers? As a remedy, I have tried to encourage students to identify and develop a sense of their work in life that is at least somewhat independent of the job that they might hold - a sense of a mission in life, and a life's work, that is theirs no matter who employs them.
In March of 2001 the Center for Free Inquiry hosted a symposium entitled "Job, Career, or Vocation: Defining Work for the 21st Century." As is our custom, we brought together four individuals who were pursuing the question of work in America from very different perspectives. The participants included: Karen Bearden, the President of the Louisville-based Bearden Group, a human resources consulting firm; Richard Judy, the Hudson Institute's chief demographic analyst and co-author of Workforce 2020, Hudson's re-visitation of its groundbreaking study conducted for the U. S. Department of Labor; Al Gini, Graduate Professor at the Institute of Industrial Relations at Loyola University Chicago, and author of My Job My Self: Work and the Creation of the Modem Person; and Mike Duffy, member of the Theological Studies Department and Director of the Lilly Vocation Project at Hanover College, a project dedicated to the theological exploration of vocation.
In this issue, we share with you two essays based on contributions to the symposium. First, in the essay entitled "My Job My Self," Al Gini explores the centrality of work in the lives of Americans from a secular perspective. Second, in "Constructing a Theology of Vocation," Mike Duffy examines the possibility of encouraging future generations of Americans to cultivate a sense of vocation in their lives - not in the sense of technical training, but in the older sense of finding and heeding God's "calling."
Jeffrey Brautigam
Jeffrey Brautigam is the Director of the Center for Free Inquiry at Hanover College, where he also teaches modern European history and the history of science.