The Trouble with Passion: How Searching for Fulfillment at Work Fosters Inequality by Erin A. Cech – Book Panel

Probing the ominous side of career advice to “follow your passion,” this data-driven study explains how the passion principle fails us and perpetuates inequality by class, gender, and race; and it suggests how we can reconfigure our relationships to paid work.

Grounding her investigation in the paradoxical tensions between capitalism’s demand for ideal workers and our cultural expectations for self-expression, sociologist Erin A. Cech draws on interviews that follow students from college into the workforce, surveys of US workers, and experimental data to explain why the passion principle is such an attractive, if deceptive, career decision-making mantra, particularly for the college educated.

This event is part of IRWG’s Gender: New Works, New Questions series, which spotlights new books by our faculty. This event will be presented in-person and include a raffle for in-person attendees to win a free copy of the book!

If you plan to join via Zoom, please register: https://myumi.ch/Gkrbb

Panelists:
Erin Cech, Associate Professor, Departments of Sociology and Mechanical Engineering (by courtesy), University of Michigan

Megan Killian, Assistant Professor, Orthopaedic Surgery, University of Michigan

Harmony Reppond, Associate Professor of Social Psychology, University of Michigan-Dearborn