Consumerism, Work-life balance

Thinking Allowed

BBC

Society & Culture, Science

4.4 • 997 Ratings

🗓️ 3 February 2016

⏱️ 28 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Consumerism: a history of our modern, material world and the endless quest for more 'things'. Laurie Taylor talks to Frank Trentmann, Professor of History at Birkbeck College, University of London and author of a study which examines how the purchase of goods became the defining feature of contemporary life. They're joined by Rachel Bowlby, Professor of Modern English Literature at University College London.

Also, the middle class bias in work/life balance research. Tracey Warren, Professor of Sociology at the University of Nottingham, suggests that working class experience of precarity complicates the debate.

Producer: Jayne Egerton.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This is a Thinking Aloud Podcast from the BBC and for more details in our terms of use and much,
0:06.2	much more about thinking aloud. Go to our website at BBC.co.uk.
0:11.6	Hello, it's a familiar refrain. I'm so sorry, Laurie, but I'm going to be late in the
0:17.8	office this morning because Adam cut his head open falling off the school climbing frame.
0:22.4	Or, I'm desperately sorry about this, Laurie, but I'm going to have to dash off straight after the program because it's Zoe's recorder concert.
0:30.0	Now, although there were occasions when I crassly entertained hopes that Adam and Zoe might be seen off by the latest outbreak of chicken box or conjunctivitis or inexplicable vomiting, I slowly came to recognize that work-life balance was a hugely serious issue for so
0:46.8	many working parents, an issue that went on to become something of a hot media topic.
0:51.3	Here, for example, from Women's hour back in 2013 is Tess Ross who was
0:56.1	then controller of film for setting out her vision of a properly balanced life.
1:00.9	I think I've been myself at home and at work completely so that if I had a baby on my lap and I was in a
1:07.8	film edit I could be I wouldn't have to suddenly change personality or
1:11.5	behavior I don't see any reason why it shouldn't be
1:14.6	possible to expect people to have the breadth of life, to be mothers, to be parents, to go back
1:20.6	to work, to choose to take time off, to do things part time for a while, to take a view,
1:24.8	to read books, to imagine, to dream. These are things that matter.
1:28.8	Yes, Ross. But my time of growing sympathy for people trying to balance work and home duties have led us to
1:34.6	ignore the manner in which problems of balance might be encountered in working class lives.
1:39.2	Well, I've now got a chance to remedy such deficiency because I'm joined by the author of a new
1:43.5	British Journal of Sociology article entitled Work Life Balance In Balance,
1:48.5	The Dominance of the Middle Class and the neglect of the working class.
1:53.1	And she's the author, that is Tracy Warren, who's professor of Sociology at the University of Nottingham.
1:58.7	It is true, isn't it?
	...

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