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

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…

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…

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…

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

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…

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…

In these pho­tos taken by Mar­tin Argles for the Guard­ian, we see Gor­don Brown and his team pre­par­ing to leave Down­ing Street. These pho­tos interest me for what they show about the spaces and exper­i­ence of work. In the first pho­to­graph, there are three mem­bers of staff huddled round one phone.

Nowayto­makealiv­ing is col­lect­ively intrigued by today’s appoint­ment of Iain Duncan Smith as Work and Pen­sions Sec­ret­ary in the bodge-job coali­tion which now runs Bri­tain. Formerly leader of the Con­ser­vat­ive party, and some­time nov­el­ist (his book, The Devil’s Tune is cur­rently 212,689 on Amazon best­seller list), the ‘quiet man’ is a pro­voc­at­ive choice for the concerned…

For Boltanski and Chi­apello (2007), capitalism’s exist­ence and evol­u­tion requires that its work­force under­stand and accede to its demands. For a cap­it­al­ist sys­tem to oper­ate there must be a ‘spirit’ that achieves the incul­ca­tion of norms (e.g. a norm of a work ethic). They argue that the norms through which the work­force are incor­por­ated change…