Melissa recently interviewed anthropologist Christine Jeske about her new book, The Laziness Myth: Narratives of Work and the Good Life in South Africa (Cornell, 2020). Christine’s extensive fieldwork in South Africa is the basis for this wide-ranging conversation on the nature of vocation, the structural barriers to vocational fulfillment in both South Africa and the United States, and Christine’s reflections on how Christians should reimagine the “good life” in the twenty-first century. 

Christine Jeske is an Associate Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Wheaton College (Wheaton, IL) and author of several books. She is also an alumnus of UW-Madison.

This conversation originally aired as an Upper House live event titled “When Work Doesn’t Work: Grappling with Vocation and the ‘Good Life'” and can be viewed in its entirety here.

The UpWords Podcast is produced by Upper House. Music is by Micah Behr, audio engineering by Andy Johnson, graphic design by Madeline Ramsey.