Academic Staff

PhD (London)

I am funded by a European Research Council Advanced Investigator Grant for three years (April 2010 – March 2013) to undertake a programme of research on ‘Consumption work and societal divisions of labour’. The research team will be based at Essex and comprise four post-doctoral researchers in addition to myself.

Abstract

Contemporary global developments in work and employment are transforming labour and reshaping relations between workers, creating new webs of interconnection across the world. The objective of this research programme is radical renewal of the foundational concept of ‘the division of labour’, by situating traditional understandings of the technical allocation of tasks within an expanded theoretical framework. Two additional dimensions of differentiation and interdependency of work activities are proposed, namely across socio-economic modes (market, non-market, etc.) and across the economic processes of production, distribution, exchange, and preparation for consumption. The approach will be developed by researching the new terrain of ‘consumption work’: all work undertaken by consumers necessary for the purchase, use, re-use and disposal of consumption goods. The research will investigate how the work of consumers is shaped by its articulation with that of providers, and vice versa. Three contrasting empirical probes are chosen for the questions each raises about consumption work and its increasing socio-economic importance: domestic broadband installation, food preparation and household recycling of waste. Analysis will centre for each on the varying nature of the interface and interaction between consumption work and systems of provision in five comparator countries (UK, Sweden, France, Taiwan, South Korea) selected for their contrasting welfare regimes. The research programme is global, comparative and historical, aiming at reconceptualisation of the division of labour through substantive empirical research and integrative theoretical analysis. It will advance comprehension of ongoing socio-economic change and establish consumption work as a field of enquiry.

For more details and the Synopsis see  http://cresi.essex.ac.uk/projects/divlab/

 Rie Debabrata - No Time To Play: Social, Economic and Legal Dimensions of Child Labour in India.

Chin-ju Lin - Different Kinds of Women: Articulating Patriarchy in Transforming Taiwanese New Middle Class Families (1900-1999).

Lynne Pettinger - Branded Stores, Branded Workers: Selling and Service in Fashion Retail.

Rebecca Taylor - Rethinking Voluntary Work: Configuration of Class, Gender and Career. 

Shih-chih Wang- Transforming the Gendered Organisation of Labour: Factory Women and Industrialisation in Taiwan, 1960-2000.

Valentina Cuzzocrea - Flexi-jobs or flexi-lives? A study of professionals' early career-paths in Italy and the UK.

Yuqin Huang- Transforming the gendered organisation of labour and leisure: lives of three generations of rural women in  an inland Chinese village, 1926-2006.

Rie is now working at the United Nations Development Programme, specialising in trafficking. 

Chin-Ju has a lectureship in Gender Studies at Kaohsiung Medical University, Taiwan.

Rebecca is a Research Officer at the Policy Studies Institute in London.

Lynne is now  a Lecturer here in the Department at Essex .

Valentina has a post-doc fellowship in the University of Cagliari.

Yuqin started a 5 year post-doc at the Max Planck Institute in Gottingen in summer 2009.

The following people are continuing their research:

Daniel Figueroa -  Socio economic aspects of internet diffusion in 3 Latin American countries.

I welcome enquiries from prospective research students in the broad fields of economic sociology, cultural economy, work and gender, and migrant labour- especially from those with interests (international, comparative or historical) in food preparation, care work, changing occupations and the time/space dimensions of employment change.