Refusal and Beyond: Between "Non-Working Lives" and Everyday Reorganization of Labor after Withdrawal from Work

If the “future of work” has become a central question in the discipline, what do sociologists learn by looking at “non-work”? Recent literature on “anti-work” trends ask whether changing relations to work translate into actual resignation and durable refusal of labor. Other studies explore the underlying motivations of the “Great Resignation”. Little is known, however, of the post-resignation everyday of those who quit deliberately, across lines of gender, age, and class. Inspired by our research on narratives and practices of “non-work” which sit uneasily between refusal and reorganization of labor in the Chinese context, from relocation to rural co-living spaces to withdrawing into the domestic sphere, this panel seeks to bring together qualitative studies conducted in different regions of the world, to ask whether and how the reclaimed present may become a site for experimenting with new ways of living. We wish to advance existing debates in “post-work” scholarship regarding the transformative dimension of the refusal of work. Critiques contend that “withdrawing” may not enable structural transformations as one's reclaimed freedom relies on the unfreedom of those who remain productive. Yet, this perspective may be complicated through carefully contextualized studies, as small-scale change is produced through material and affective engagements in the everyday, and forms of labor may be re-organized. We thus invite papers addressing the modes of sociality and spatiality of post-resignation lives, as well as new regimes of valuation and "teleoaffectivities" that may arise out of detaching from work as a central value to human life.