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6 - Workers Inquiry and the Experience of Work

Using Ethnographic Accounts of the Gig Economy

from Part II - Digital Platforms and the New World of Work

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 December 2020

By
Jamie Woodcock
Edited by
Jeremy Aroles ,
François-Xavier de Vaujany  and
Karen Dale
Jeremy Aroles
Affiliation:
Durham University
François-Xavier de Vaujany
Affiliation:
Université Paris-Dauphine
Karen Dale
Affiliation:
Lancaster University
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Summary

The chapter considers how research that puts the workers' perspective at the forefront can be placed within a critical dialogue with the researcher. While there have been accounts of resistance taking place across Europe in delivery platforms, these have tended to take a broader analytical lens, rather than focusing on the specific practices being experimented with. In this chapter, the author presents a reflection on the experiences of joint writing with workers in the gig economy. This involves analysing attempts to use methods of co-research inspired by the workers-inquiry method, building on previous accounts. The chapter is intended as a corrective to much of the abstract academic research on the 'gig economy'. As such it is both an empirical and methodological intervention – presenting an account of this work from the perspective of a worker themselves, while also arguing that it is from this perspective that the work can be not only critically analysed but also transformed.

Keywords

Gig economyexperienceco-researchresistance
Type
Chapter
Information
Experiencing the New World of Work , pp. 136 - 156
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

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