The social construction of workaholism as a representational naturalization

Abstract Workaholism, a term borrowed from the language around alcoholism, first appeared in academic writing in the late 1960s. This article addresses the following questions: How has the concept of workaholism evolved in scientific literature and in society? How do people who identify as workaholics represent and communicate work addiction, and how do they identify it as their lived reality? Drawing on the concept of naturalization as a process of social representation, we argue that workaholism has been constituted as