University of Bristol Workshop on the Governance and Politics of Work

The Faculty of Social Sciences and Law hosted a one-day workshop on the governance and politics of work on 17th January 2018.  This was formatted as an interdisciplinary conversation between the thirty participants from the Schools of Sociology, Law, Management and Geography.  The aim of the day was to foster insights, connections and knowledge to develop an innovative research agenda on work.

Prior to the workshop a paper, The Future of Workers, Work and Governance: developing a research agenda, co-authored by senior and junior academics from Sociology, Law and Management was circulated.  This took as its starting point the insight that the divisions between different types of work and between work and labour is socially and legally constructed, shaping and shaped by prevailing social relations including, but not limited to, class, race and gender relations.

Participants were asked to write two pages, either responding to the paper, or outlining their research on work and why it was relevant to the conversation.  This elicited a range of pieces.  These were grouped into four themes: bodies/people/workers; continuity and change; institutions/regulation/organising; mobilities and temporalities.  During the workshop, one session was held on each theme.

The conversation was exciting and wide ranging.  Insights included:

• the centrality of the problem of commodification and property to understand what is understood as exchanged when a person 'works';
• the disjuncture between legal and social ideas of work;
• the discourse of work - what we call 'work' in the gig economy and how we define good/decent jobs; 
• the role of different agents in the shaping of the social and economic relations of production, such as consumers, lawyers and management consultants;
• the failure of the law to keep up with technological and social change, and the problem of its location in an individualised rather than collective paradigm;
• the recurrance of moral panics over work and the importance of recognising continuity and lessons from the past;
• the importance of thinking about who is and who is not considered a worker - and the political and economic issues this raises in particular with reference to agriculture and domestic and care work;
• looking at technological change and work from a more sociological perspective allows us to envisage different ways of relating to technology; 
• the challenges posed to politics and law by changing mobilities and temporalities of work.

In the following months, short pieces on these and other insights will be written up in a WorkFutures blog to be hosted by Bristol University Press.

Following the workshop, the Faculty Research Group on the Politics of Work was launched.  We look forward to continuing our exciting conversations!