Name Benjamin Hunnicutt | ||
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Books Kellogg's Six‑hour Day, Work Without End: Aba, Free Time: The Forgotten | ||
Does a 40 Hour Work Week Make Sense?
Benjamin Kline Hunnicutt is the professor of Leisure Studies at the University of Iowa.
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Career
Hunnicutt's major focus is upon the question of work, chiefly in terms of the length of time that we spend pursuing it, and its relationship with our leisure time. He has explored the history of movements for reduced working hours and shorter working days as well as working weeks.
His work contrasts current working patterns, including long hours culture and a culture of 'overwork', with some of the utopian visions of reduced working time envisaged during the productivity leaps during the early twentieth century (or earlier, such as in the ideas of the theologian Jonathan Edwards in the religious 'First Great Awakening' of the 18th century who foresaw labour-saving devices providing more space for religious worship). He has documented the movements behind such ideas as the institutionalised 40-hour week or, more radically, the 4-hour working day.