From a 'job for life' to a 'gig' economy: Rethinking work, time and economic life

Abstract: This project aims to investigate the 'new economy' through an analysis of precarity and increasing automation within the labour market. The project will examine the impact of the temporalities of the new economy on social interaction and the social structure of working life. The final purpose of the project is to evaluate the usefulness of twentieth-century sociology of work concepts in explaining contemporary work with an aim to demonstrate their continued applicability. The proposed methodology is mixed, and includes an interrogation of current quantitative and qualitative secondary data about the experience of contemporary work; a large auto/ethnography that will involve the researcher working within one or more aspects of the 'gig' economy which will be recorded in a multi-facet research diary (logbook and audio-visual/sensory mobile approaches); and finally a number of semi-structured interviews with workers of the new economy. This project will contribute to our understanding of the contemporary labour market through outlining the social implications of and working in a 'gig' economy and through the testing the traditional conceptual and methodological tools to see to what extent they can grasp these new forms of work.