Work, Sleep, Repeat
Work, Sleep, Repeat is an ethnography of German management consultants. They are among the most influential economic actors in highly diversified economies, yet their daily work activities remain widely unknown. The book grapples with the question of how best to describe contemporary work regimes in which nothing tangible is produced, and suggests that consultants engage in “abstract labour”.
The book won the 2015 APLA student paper prize and the LSE Monographs Bloomsbury First Book Competition. It also informed the BBC Radio 4 show “The Age of Consultancy”.
You can buy the book on Amazon or read the book's introduction here [PDF]
Reviews & Media Impact:
"With his powers of observation and his mastery of the research literature on technocratic elites, Stein has written an original and witty book that goes beyond its immediate subject matter to reflect on the nature of all work removed from obvious sources of economic value creation." Jonathan Benthall, Times Literary Supplement [Full review]
“For those who are interested in what consultancy is about and in what consultants do and how they think about it, Work, sleep, repeat is an excellent place to start.” James Carrier, The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute.
“How is it that management consultancy continues to insert itself into more and more processes and industries? For Stein, it is precisely the production of profitable uncertainty, crafting authoritative ambiguities such that only the consultants’ work can lead to the desired outcome.” Juan del Nido, Society for the Anthropology of Work 15/12/2021
Insights from the book featured extensively in Richard Brooks’ BBC Radio 4 show “The Age of Consultancy” 02/09/2019
The book was used for background interviews with Vox Journalist Julia Belloz on the role of management consultants in healthcare 04/10/2019