Fenomen pracy
The phenomenon of work

Author(s): Jan Grad, Wiesław Banach, Jacek Sójka, Maria Małgorzata Baranowska, Paweł Siek, Hanna Suchocka, Szczepan Cofta, Daria Springer, Anna Fitzgerald, Maria Nowosadko, Renata Woźniak, Agnieszka Neumann-Podczaska, Ewa Baum, Aleksandra Walkowska, Anna Mackiewicz, Sławomir Michalak, wiesław Bryl, Anna Grzegorczyk, Małgorzata Okupnik, Agata Rybińska, Małgorzata Grzywacz, Violetta Julkowska, Małgorzata Krakowiak
Subject(s): Anthropology, Philosophy, Social Sciences, Sociology, Theology and Religion, Cultural Anthropology / Ethnology, Culture and social structure , Sociology of Culture
Published by: Wydawnictwo Naukowe Uniwersytetu Adama Mickiewicza
Keywords: work; business ethics; pandemic; medicine; philosophy
Summary/Abstract: Work is a fundamental human activity and an element that forms our biographies. It has accompanied humans since the dawn of history, and those who performed it accumulated its results and were able to pass on from generation to generation the knowledge of living, functioning in a particular group, and playing selected social roles. Human labour is also a topic of interest not only to economists but also to philosophers, anthropologists, theologians or cultural scientists. The authors' decision to make it a subject of scientific reflections once again is justified by two phenomena occurring in the modern world. The first is the demoralization of work, the loss of dignity, meaning, and the ethos of work, which, combined with its increasing expansion, the pressure to be productive, and the annexation of more areas of human life, leads to an epidemic of work burnout, depression, and a sense of existential emptiness. The second phenomenon is the experience of the COVID-19 pandemic. For some, this was a time of confinement at home, in a remote mode; for others, it meant downsizing, and, in fact, for everyone, being uprooted from a familiar reality and confronted with new challenges. Changes in familiar, working conditions, accustomed and "naturalized", make it possible to look at them with more attention and a critical eye, and to raise new questions about the nature, conditions and meaning of work. The book is yet another result of scientific cooperation between the Edith Stein Research Center and the Department of Social Sciences at Poznań University of Medical Sciences and Poznań University Clinical Hospital within the framework of a project of transdisciplinary reflections on the essential phenomena of human existence and "building bridges" between the humanities and social sciences, and the medical sciences.

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