Research

The central aim of my research is to understand how people think about their work. My inquiry into this topic stems from a personal belief that how we imagine work is consequential to how society is structured. As one scholar put it: “nothing is more central to the reconstitution of community and civil society than rethinking work, which consumes so much of our daylight hours, confers income and status, and shapes life-chances in so many ways” (Ackers, 2002: 15). I am particularly interested in uncovering meaning-making processes that occur within individuals and groups. Toward this end, I often employ ethnographic and interview methods in my research, paying close attention to the words people use to describe their work and placing their subjective experience in the foreground.