No Way To Make A Living is a sociological space about work, generating discussion and exchange on what work, paid or unpaid, is like in today’s world

The open­ing scene of Con­flu­ence (Akram Khan and Nitin Sawney, Sadlers Wells 2010) is a story about hav­ing your pass­port taken away for check­ing. The bor­der guards watch you, their eyes con­tain the power of the state. You watch your pass­port leave the room, you hope it reappears. Akram Khan and Nitin Sawney, the dan­cer and the musi­cian, are in per­fect uni­son of words and ges­tures as they per­form this. Although it’s Khan’s story, the tan­dem present­a­tion by Sawney means it could be anyone’s. The eyes have power, they con­tain con­trol, says Khan. 

Here’s the trailer, though you can’t hear the exchange about passports. 

At the UK bor­der there are signs remark­ing on (not apo­lo­gising for) the delays in passing through bor­der con­trol. These signs invite you, the good cit­izen, to cel­eb­rate the stricter checks for block­ing incomers, they nor­m­al­ise and insti­tutiton­al­ise your fear of the other. The eyes of the bor­der guard needn’t worry you, red pass­port holder, you’re allowed through. But they’re sharp eyes, non­ethe­less and you might still flinch at the gaze of power. 

So when the bor­der guard is star­ing down the queue, not at the per­son in front of her, you won­der what, who she’s look­ing for. But she’s got soft eyes, that’s unex­pec­ted. She’s look­ing for the cry­ing baby, and stands up to go and bring the baby’s fam­ily to the front of the queue. There’s a moment of care in amongst the regime of control. 

I won­der if jobs that are made up of look­ing are tedi­ous because they require repet­it­ive glances at bland faces, or excit­ing because there is always some­thing to see – someone new. I won­der also what it’s like to look for the shock, the unex­pec­ted, the wrong, the absent, the abnor­mal. It’s a dif­fi­cult men­tal pro­cess, I guess. And I won­der also at the pleas­ures of power. 

This sign has been on the door of my local chip shop for 9 months now:

I sus­pect it wont be reopen­ing any time soon. Nowayto­makealiv­ing is tak­ing a break too, we’ll be back in August. 

You can find all sorts of jobs at Job­centre Plus, the stat­utory agency that helps the unem­ployed back into work: it’s the place to look if you fancy a work­ing as a driver, check-out assist­ant, nanny or adult model. Yes, that does say adult model. You could also find work as a ‘web­cam per­former’. “Duties include per­form­ing to a web cam for cli­ents or cus­tom­ers fantas­ies” and require the per­former to be nude (http://jobseekers.direct.gov.uk/ search term ‘web­cam per­former’ accessed 6th July 2010). 

It seems com­mer­cial sex in a striptease cul­ture (McNair, 2002) is main­stream. The lib­er­al­isa­tion of sexual beha­viour reflects a par­tic­u­lar con­cep­tu­al­isa­tion of mod­ern sub­jectiv­ity as indi­vidu­al­ised and com­mod­i­fied (Liv­ing­ston, 1998). This per­spect­ive acts as a power­ful moral pull in favour of the nor­m­al­isa­tion of the right to a range of sexual beha­viours that might formerly have lain in the domain of the abject. This lib­er­al­isa­tion, even a com­pul­sion to speak of sex, retains a hint edge of moral taint, though. In the case of com­mer­cial sex, from the every­day erotic labour of bar staff (Boyle, 2007) to mar­ket exchange of sexual inter­course, there is a ten­sion between tol­er­ance and taint. On one hand is a power­ful drive towards tol­er­at­ing or accept­ing sexual prac­tices where those who engage are seen as mak­ing legit­im­ate choices as agents in mod­ern soci­ety. On the other are argu­ments that such prac­tices are invari­ably degrad­ing and inap­pro­pri­ate, either because sex – like other intimacies – ought not be mar­ket­ised, or because those selling sex can­not make a ‘free’ choice to self-exploit (Barry, 1995). And even those who feel empowered by a (post­fem­in­ist) right to speak and act as a sexual sub­ject are, for McRob­bie, being inter­pel­lated into a dom­in­ated sub­ject pos­i­tion (McRob­bie, 2009).

What sort of work is this web­cam per­form­ing? Well, such Live Sex Acts (Chap­kis, 1997) might be ways in which work­ers can max­im­ise the returns from what Hakim calls ‘erotic cap­ital’ (2010): sex appeal, charm, social skills and all-round phwoar­ness. Pros­ti­tu­tion, clas­sic­ally under­stood is not advert­ised by Job­Centre plus. It is mor­ally out­side the pale as it involves the trans­gres­sion of cor­por­eal bound­ar­ies. The web­cam per­former, how­ever, though their cor­por­eal­ity is cent­ral, seems to escape this out­sider­dom. They and the cus­tomer (the web­cam wanker) are engaged in a cyborg real­ity of sex work. Sight and sound are the senses that mat­ter, not touch and smell and taste. The body is seen and heard; con­sumed like a tv pro­gramme, not con­sumed like a cake. 

© Cam­mie Touloui, from Lusty Ladies series 

The ad says that the job involves “expli­cit sexual dia­logue which may cause embar­rass­ment to some people”. This interests me: the nud­ity is present in a mat­ter of fact way, it’s the talk that is prob­lem­atic and may pro­voke an emo­tional response. In the exhib­i­tion at Tate Mod­ern Exposed: Voyeur­ism, Sur­veil­lance and the Cam­era there are sev­eral pho­to­graphs that explore dimen­sions of the sex industry. Susan Meiselas’s pic­tures of strip­pers and Cam­mie Toloui’s remind us that there is noth­ing pass­ive, noth­ing safe, noth­ing dis­em­bod­ied about ‘just looking’. 

Ref­er­ences

1. Barry, K. (1995) The Pros­ti­tu­tion of Sexu­al­ity. New York: New York Uni­ver­sity Press.
2. Boyle, K. (2007) ‘The mobil­isa­tion of sexu­al­ity: an eth­no­graphy of the sexu­al­ised labour pro­cess in the style bar industry.’ Paper presen­ted to the 25th Inter­na­tional Labour Pro­cess Conference.
3. Chap­kis, W. (1997) Live Sex Acts: Women Per­form­ing Erotic Labour Routledge. 
4. Hakim, C. (2010) ‘Erotic Cap­ital’ European Soci­olo­gical Review doi:10.1093/esr/jcq014 . 
5. Liv­ing­ston, J. (1998) Mod­ern sub­jectiv­ity and con­sumer cul­ture, in Strasser, S., McGov­ern, C. & Judt, M. Get­ting and Spend­ing: European and Amer­ican Con­sumer Soci­et­ies in the 20th Cen­tury: 413–430. Cam­bridge: Cam­bridge Uni­ver­sity Press.
6. McNair, N (2002) Striptease Cul­ture: Sex, Media, and the Demo­crat­iz­a­tion of Desire. Lon­don: Routledge.
7. McRob­bie, A. (2009) The After­math of Fem­in­ism Sage.
   

In Bri­tain, Chan­cel­lor George Osborne has just presen­ted his first budget, announ­cing 25% cuts to most gov­ern­ment depart­ments. Last week, pro­posed gov­ern­ment invest­ment in leis­ure, social ser­vices and man­u­fac­tur­ing was removed. A visitor’s centre at Stone­henge, a health­care centre in Leeds, and fin­an­cial sup­port for the Forge­mas­ters plant in Shef­field were some of a num­ber of pro­jects knocked on the head in the quest to reduce the budget defi­cit. I read a lot of com­ment­ary about the coali­tion government’s fail­ure to sup­port pro­duc­tion and the north­ern (post)-industrial lands, none more mov­ing than this piece by Ian McMil­lan (hey, I’m from York­shire. Just say­ing the phrase ‘brass band’ can bring tears to my eyes). 

Enorm­ous reduc­tions in pub­lic sec­tor spend­ing pro­duce unem­ploy­ment. (more…)

There are a num­ber of excel­lent col­lec­tions of pho­to­graphs and other visual sources avail­able online which depict the world of work in the United States dur­ing the 1930s. Click­ing on phrases that appear in green will take you to the rel­ev­ant site. 

The Pho­to­graphic Unit of the Farm Secur­ity Admin­is­tra­tion / Office of War Inform­a­tion took thou­sands of pho­to­graphs dur­ing the dec­ade from 1935 – 1945. They reflec­ted all aspects of Amer­ican life in the period, not just work, (more…)

One of my favour­ite flickr groups is ‘Taxis of the world from inside’. I like the glimpses of the city in these shots, and the con­fu­sion between the out­side spaces and the mobile indoors of the car. The car in the city rep­res­ents a super­mod­ern­ity (Augé, 2009), a non-place, neither pub­lic, nor private, fluid without being free. (more…)

Two signs pho­to­graphed in a depart­ment store that’s about to close.

taken with cam­era phone

To the left, big, bold let­ters and col­ours: the store is clos­ing down and everything must go, “step right up, bar­gains galore”. Thrill at 20% off a new kettle. Take home a pot­tery owl, only £42.99 (down from £59.00). It’s an excit­ing chance, you con­sumer mon­key. Be seduced by these prices. 

taken with cam­era phone

The second is a dif­fer­ent appear­ance of emo­tion in cap­it­al­ism; this is not the cap­it­al­ism of the roman­ti­cised com­mod­ity exchange dis­cussed above (Illouz, 1997), nor quite the cold intim­acy of man­aged emo­tion in cap­it­al­ism (Illouz, 2007). It’s the organ­isa­tion appeal­ing to sen­ti­ment, to empathy, to feel­ing and not sen­sa­tion. (more…)

Early in the film of Blake Morrison’s mem­oir And When Did You Last See Your Father (dir Anand Tucker, 2007), Blake (Colin Firth) accepts an award for his poetry (it might be that the defin­i­tion of ‘real’ work is that it’s the sort of activ­ity you’d never attend an award cere­mony to mark). 

At the risk of get­ting sen­ti­mental, I’d like to say thank-you to my wife, Kathy. Not only for all her sup­port
and encour­age­ment, but because she asked me to men­tion her.

My dad always used to say, and I’m sure he’ll say it again before the night’s out,

“Being a writer, in par­tic­u­lar a poet, is all well and good. But it’s no way to make a living.”

Of course, as in most other things, he’s abso­lutely right.

Rou­tin­isa­tion is usu­ally seen as deskilling, as ali­en­at­ing, as the oppos­ite of cre­ativ­ity (Braver­man, 1998; Leidner, 1993). Aus­trin and West (2005) sug­gest that the rou­tin­isa­tion of how casino staff manip­u­late cards acts as mech­an­ism for sur­veil­lance. Stand­ard­ising and con­trolling how staff hold their thumb and fin­gers lim­its the chances for them to cheat.

Routines are sup­posed to feel demean­ing, to des­troy our ima­gin­a­tions. I like routine, per­haps because whatever routines I have are not imposed by any­one else. In Ways of the Hand David Sud­now (1993) reflects on learn­ing to play jazz piano. The routine of prac­tice gives him a baseline from which being cre­at­ive becomes pos­sible. His fin­gers learn where they need to be to make cer­tain chord shapes, and that means they know where they need to go next to make cer­tain sounds. Unpre­dict­ab­il­ity — new sounds — relies on this know­ing. It’s a pro­cess that becomes un-thought, and once it is un-thought, Sud­now says cre­ativ­ity is possible.

Nick Dunn is a freel­ance shoe designer.He draws shoe after shoe after shoe, tiny vari­ations, maybe 50 at a time.Then he takes a few of the best and refines them. It’s someone else’s job to build a pro­to­type, to make them real. There is joy in see­ing the pro­to­type, sure, espe­cially as the trainer moves from the page into three-dimensionality, (more…)

One of the most effect­ive and real­istic depic­tions of manual work in cinema is found in a scene in the avant-garde film Pravda (1970) by Jean-Luc God­ard (offi­cially by the Groupe Dziga Vertov), well-described in Monaco (1976). This is a short piece about the events in May 1968 in what was then Czechoslov­akia. Whereas most people in Bri­tain and the USA saw the upris­ing as gal­lant little Czechs mak­ing a bid for free­dom from the Soviet Empire, God­ard took a more crit­ical line, as did the French Com­mun­ist Party. For them, the upris­ing was a bour­geois human­ist one based on pro­mot­ing the illus­ory indi­vidual freedoms of cap­it­al­ism. A stern marx­ist (Maoist in places) com­ment­ary makes up the soundtrack while the cam­era shows a clandes­tine series of scenes of life in Czechoslov­akia. God­ard him­self later dis­missed the piece as ‘Len­in­ist garbage’. (more…)