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

Nowaytomakealiving.net is named after a mis­hear­ing of the Dolly Par­ton song 9 to 5, one of a small num­ber of songs about office work. 9 to 5 is the theme song to the 1980 film, where Dolly Par­ton, Lily Tom­lin and Jane Fonda seek revenge on a sex­ist boss who har­asses them and steals their…

Most bus drivers oper­ate as though their job is to drive from Andover to Guise­ley via Bar­row, Chelms­ford, Don­caster, Exeter and Faver­sham. It is the jour­ney of the bus that mat­ters – whether it is on time and what the traffic is like. The jour­ney of the pas­sen­ger doesn’t mat­ter so much, except to the…

Taken from the Intro­duc­tion to Ming Jue: Pho­to­graphs of Long­bridge and Nanjing (Stu­art Whipps, 2008, Walsall: New Art Gal­lery) Pho­to­graphy by Stu­art Whipps [http://www.stuartwhipps.com/] One of the main con­cerns soci­olo­gists had in the 1960s and 1970s was how indus­trial work­ers coped with the bor­ing mono­tony of their routine jobs, but iron­ic­ally within two dec­ades attention…

The nurse tells the recep­tion­ist there’s no toner left in the pho­to­copier. The recep­tion­ist asks admin who says she doesn’t know, she’ll ask Michelle, but she knows that Carol’s good with the pho­to­copier. The recep­tion­ist calls Michelle, but Michelle’s not there until the after­noon and the recep­tion­ist is due to leave at 12.30, so the…

This pro­ject ana­lyses the social organ­isa­tion of work on a build­ing site and the dif­fer­ent forms of labour that go into the refur­bish­ment of a build­ing. It explores the ways in which the build­ing space is con­cep­tu­al­ised and lived by those who work on the pro­ject – build­ers, archi­tects and engin­eers – and the ways…

Watch it and love it. As a story about gangs, drugs, inequal­ity and social/institutional and legis­lat­ive fail­ure to pro­tect poor com­munit­ies, The Wire is astound­ing telly. In por­tray­ing the inter­con­nec­tions between the struc­tures of power and the power­less – and show­ing how these are not always embed­ded in formal insti­tu­tions – it comments