After Workism

Pre-pandemic accounts of “workism” critiqued Americans’ quasi-religious devotion towards their jobs as sources of meaning and community. In the early 2020s, however, Gen Z and millennial employees have improvised vocational postures counter to such workist tendencies. After interviewing 47 rising professionals about their workplace communication, I track their practices of attunement, silence, and detachment in response to workist beliefs. Borrowing from a loose-knit tradition of religious radicalism, I describe these practices as performing vocational pietism. Like historic pietists who have critiqued mainstream Christianity for being lifeless, rising professionals have adopted a critical posture towards workist orthodoxy. This article analyzes how vocational pietism is communicatively performed and concludes by evaluating its prospects in the future of work

Christianity · Mainstream · Performativity · Pietism · Vocational education · Media, Religion, Digital Communication · Religious Studies and Spiritual Practices · Theological Perspectives and Practices