Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in this book. The book explores the interaction of 'labour' and 'love' in modern society, the curious ways in which these separate modes of being in the world interrelate, how they create gender and are themselves created by it. It discusses the research paradigm known as the 'quality of working life' tradition, an internationally founded effort to create a scientific framework for promoting the democratization of the work place. The book also explores the 'grammar' of cultural maintenance is concomitant with the enquiry into the prerequisites of change. It provides an attempt to elicit what is embedded in the more or less 'undisturbed' configuration of gender. The book analyses the instances of 'disturbance' and experimentation with the sexual division of labour in the family, and the focus on change is more explicit.