Work Pray Code: When Work Becomes Religion in Silicon Valley
(eBook)

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    [year] => 2022
    [artist] => Carolyn Chen
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    [titleId] => 15910218
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    [language] => ENGLISH
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    [title] => Work Pray Code
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    [synopsis] => Carolyn Chen, a sociologist, is professor of ethnic studies at the University of California, Berkeley. She is the author of Getting Saved in America (Princeton) and the coeditor of Sustaining Faith Traditions. She lives in Kensington, California. Website carolynchen.org 
	How tech giants are reshaping spirituality to serve their religion of peak productivity

Silicon Valley is known for its lavish perks, intense work culture, and spiritual gurus. Work Pray Code explores how tech companies are bringing religion into the workplace in ways that are replacing traditional places of worship, blurring the line between work and religion and transforming the very nature of spiritual experience in modern life.

Over the past forty years, highly skilled workers have been devoting more time and energy to their jobs than ever before. They are also leaving churches, synagogues, and temples in droves-but they have not abandoned religion. Carolyn Chen spent more than five years in Silicon Valley, conducting a wealth of in-depth interviews and gaining unprecedented access to the best and brightest of the tech world. The result is a penetrating account of how work now satisfies workers' needs for belonging, identity, purpose, and transcendence that religion once met. Chen argues that tech firms are offering spiritual care such as Buddhist-inspired mindfulness practices to make their employees more productive, but that our religious traditions, communities, and public sphere are paying the price.

We all want our jobs to be meaningful and fulfilling. Work Pray Code reveals what can happen when work becomes religion, and when the workplace becomes the institution that shapes our souls. "Work Pray Code presents an extraordinarily fine-grained map of the traffic between religion and profit-seeking among Silicon Valley's elite."---Fred Turner, Los Angeles Review of Books "A must-read for anyone interested in the rise of mindfulness in corporate culture, and anyone concerned with how Silicon Valley culture might be shaping and distorting modern ideas of the workplace and community-writ-large."---Ravi Chandra, Psychology Today "Fascinating. . . . Work Pray Code is at its best when Chen contextualizes the findings of her research within broader historical and sociological concepts, such as corporate maternalism, the constant productivity push, and reduced civic engagement. . . . her findings should interest (and perhaps alarm) anyone who cares about the health and growth of the American church."---Dorcas Cheng-Tozun, Christianity Today "A rich ethnography of Silicon Valley's elite. . . . Compelling stories. . . . While Work Pray Code centers on the corporate mindfulness initiatives for elite tech workers, Chen also takes moments to explore the impacts of these programs on larger issues."---J. A. English-Lueck, Science "Work Pray Code offers a rare sociological interrogation of the socio-political forces that direct citizens toward the ends of workplaces while diverting their attention from the ends of a shared public life or democratic practice."---Andrew Lynn, The Hedgehog Review "A meticulous, absorbing ethnography of Silicon Valley workplaces. . . . Through Chen's sharply focused sociological lens, [the quirks and perks of Silicon Valley work culture] inform a bigger story: about the human search for meaning and security in a world where a handful of companies and people wield so much power over what matters and who wins."---Margaret O'Mara, Foreign Affairs "[Chen's] questions are eminently important ones."---Bonnie Nadzam, Lion's Roar "Chen reminds us that work is a fickle god, one that loves us only conditionally. She calls us back to genuine worship, to communities that care about us beyond what we can produce."---Jonathan Tran, Christian Century "Anyone who cares about the future of work needs to read this book."---Bob Trube, Bob on Books "A stellar socio-anthropological study of the secular monasteries that dominate our cultur
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    [subtitle] => When Work Becomes Religion in Silicon Valley
    [publisher] => Princeton University Press
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