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

I recently went to the work­shop of a double bass maker and repairer. My friend was tak­ing his battered bass there to see what parts might be glued and oth­er­wise made to hold together again. ‘Can’t you clean it up whilst you’re at it?’ I asked naively, attend­ing to the fin­ish rather than the sound.…

I toured the dental lab at the Uni­ver­sity of Essex’s Southend cam­pus, and this set of ‘prac­tice teeth’ caught my eye.

Before stu­dents are allowed to touch a patient, they get a set of false teeth caked in fake plaque to hone their scrap­ing tech­nique on. I thought that the hard part would be deal­ing with the…

Visual Soci­ology
Inter­na­tional Visual Soci­ology Asso­ci­ation: http://www.visualsociology.org/
Brit­ish Soci­olo­gical Asso­ci­ation Visual Soci­ology Study Group: http://www.visualsociology.org.uk/
Visual Soci­ology, A Field Guide: http://visualsociology.wordpress.com/
Soci­olo­gical Images: http://sociologicalimages.blogspot.com/search/label/work

Nik Rose’s con­cep­tu­al­isa­tion of the late mod­ern self as being com­pelled to engage in the act­ive gov­ernance of the soul has been pro­voc­at­ive for those who study inter­me­di­ary work. Inter­n­al­ising norms of self-exploitation, to work harder, longer, faster, to let work dom­in­ate ‘the social’ 

What to wear? This is a fun­da­mental ques­tion of piano-tuning. As a piano tuner you will be in other people’s beau­ti­ful homes, walk­ing across their white car­pets, work­ing in their immacu­late liv­ing rooms or stud­ies. They expect you to be smart, but, on occa­sion, you need to rum­mage about in the filthi­est of instru­ments to…

I just wanted to notice the import­ance for work of some­thing as small and taken for gran­ted as walk­ing. I thought about it when I saw the ret­ro­spect­ive on Richard Long at Tate Bri­tain. Richard Long works through walk­ing. Early pieces include his walk in an ‘unspoiled’ meadow to cre­ate a line.

 
Glue and sil­icon, paint and var­nish, grout and wood-filler. Traces on his clothes. The trousers espe­cially tell the story of my friend’s most recent jobs. There was that shower to fix urgently in Hack­ney one night last week, and the bath­room to sort out after a would-be plumber with too many tools and too few…

Sweep­ing the M1, 1959
I find this photo com­pel­ling. The M1, high­point of Mod­ern Bri­tain, and the road­sweeper, with brush in hand. We have never been modern. 

It is 1973 and I am stand­ing in Ilford Sta­tion on a Sunday after­noon where the track used to be. I’m work­ing as a navvy and accord­ing to my payslip I am a plate-layer. We’ve been here nearly twelve hours already and the job is nowhere near fin­ished — we need to get the new…