The Passion Paradigm: Professional Adherence to and Consequences of the Ideology of “Do What You Love”

Abstract

If changes to the material structures of work have ushered us into a “new economy,” cultural scholars assume that there must also be changes to ideological structures of work. Extant scholarship on precarious professionals and on the role of emotions in 21st‐century work find that passion may be an important cultural component of white‐collar work in the new economy. Using data from engineers, nurses, and graphic designers who work in either less precarious or more precarious contexts, this paper contributes the first emic definition of work passion as the experiences of attraction, enjoyment, motivation, and perseverance. Because I find overwhelming adherence and conceptual consistency among professionals in my sample, I argue that the pursuit of work passion constitutes a coherent ideology of work, which I call the passion paradigm. I argue that the passion paradigm is compatible with and protects structures of work in the new economy because its logic of hyper individualism motivates workers to work hard and work well as a practice of self‐care, shifting the locus of critique further away from institutions and more toward the self. Adherence to and institutionalization of the passion paradigm may have myriad consequences, opening up broad areas of future research.

“It’s Not Like Chasing Chanel:” Spending Time, Investing in the Self, and Pandemic Epiphanies

“…Later, greater stability and acclimation to pandemic conditions enabled respondents to increasingly perceive time as an investment in personal growth, yielding commitments to seek better and more fulfilling work. This shift from instrumental rationality to contemplative self-improvement in participants’ understandings of time is primarily expressed through the adoption of a prevailing “passion principle” ( Cech, 2021 ) or “work passion” ideology ( DePalma, 2021 ) that inspired major career changes in pursuit of self-affirming work.…”

“…Two major cultural frames that have shaped worker experiences of precarity include the ideology of “work passion” ( DePalma, 2021 ) or the “passion principle” ( Cech, 2021 ), and conceptions of the “enterprising self” ( Vallas & Christin, 2018 ). Widespread among precarious professionals and university students aspiring to work in cultural industries, the perception of work as a means to attain personal fulfillment has typically been cast as a contributing factor to the “self-precarisation” of young knowledge workers ( Simola, 2021 ).…”

“…Devotion to personally fulfilling work can even function as a “commitment device” that leads these workers to forgo more stable jobs for fear these opportunities might weaken or change their passions ( Adler, 2021 ). However, DePalma (2021 , pp. 155–156) has recently suggested that scholars devote more attention to studying how this “work passion” ideology might also motivate workers to seek out higher-paying jobs with better working conditions.…”

"Shirobako":The Representation of Passion and Creative Labor in Japanese Animation Industry

“…Passion is a known mantra for building a successful career in the creative sector. This factor has been analyzed from various perspectives in the form of individual experience, including enjoyment, job satisfaction, self-expression and the underlying implications (McRobbie, 2016;Hope & Richards, 2015;Long & Baber, 2015, DePalma, 2021 Relatively, other aspects comprised motivation for women in creative fields (Harvey & Sepherd, 2017;Duffy, 2017) as well as energy and commitment in collaborative production (Condry, 2013;Hill, 2015). Hope & Richards (2015) described enjoyment and passion as crucial cultural elements, where employees tend to invest abundant energy and time, with high exploitation possibilities.…”

“…Also, passion serves as an essential motivating factor in songwriting career development and quality music production (Long & Barber, 2015). Based on the experiences of nurses, engineers and graphic designers, passion is known to constitute a work ideology or paradigm that motivates workers as a practice of self-care in the new economy (DePalma, 2021).…”