Guided by the common belief that passionate workers can better resist setbacks to their careers and find fulfilment in their lives, passion has been deployed over the last century to drive sustainable work practices and build resilient workers. In "Passionate Work," Renyi Hong questions these assumptions, arguing that passionate work reproduces rather than resolves failures in systems of work. Bringing together economic history, happiness economics, management discourse, and self-help, Hong demonstrates that the states of apathy related to unemployment is constructed in relation to passion.

Hong is assistant professor in Department of Communications and New Media at the National University of Singapore. He is interested in labor and its relationships with affect, technology and capitalism. His first monograph, "Passionate Work" explores the uses of passion as a means of generating a milieu of endurance for those left out of the good life. His works can be found in Social Text, New Media & Society, European Journal of Cultural Studies, among others.