Working Bodies: Interactive Service Employment and Workplace Identities (IJURR Studies in Urban and Social Change Book Series) - Softcover

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Linda McDowell is Professor of Human Geography and Director of the Graduate School of Geography at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of St. John's College, where she is also Director of the Research Centre.  Widely published, McDowell's books include Capital Culture: Gender at Work in the City (1997), Redundant Masculinities? Employment Change and White Working Class Youth (2003) and Hard Labour (2005).

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Working Bodies examines the theoretical underpinnings and empirical nature of the noticeable shift to interactive and embodied forms of work in service economies. Introductory chapters explore the transformation of labour markets in advanced industrial economies, the arguments for and against a radical shift in the nature of employment, the growth of inequality and assess the growing significance of the body/work relationship. Later chapters consist of a series of mainly UK-based case studies of interactive and embodied servicing work - from childcare and sex work to boxing, nursing and low paid jobs in hospitality.

Combining geographical and sociological theories with empirical research, the author explores the interconnections between class, ethnicity, gender in the construction of workplace identities, as well as the spatial division of labor in the 'servicing' economy. Informed by the latest scholarship, Working Bodies is an fascinating exploration of the growing significance of low-paid and often casualised forms of employment in the twenty-first century economy, challenging the insistence on new forms of knowledge work in conventional accounts of labour market transformations.

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Working Bodies examines the theoretical underpinnings and empirical nature of the noticeable shift to interactive and embodied forms of work in service economies. Introductory chapters explore the transformation of labour markets in advanced industrial economies, the arguments for and against a radical shift in the nature of employment, the growth of inequality and assess the growing significance of the body/work relationship. Later chapters consist of a series of mainly UK-based case studies of interactive and embodied servicing work - from childcare and sex work to boxing, nursing and low paid jobs in hospitality.

Combining geographical and sociological theories with empirical research, the author explores the interconnections between class, ethnicity, gender in the construction of workplace identities, as well as the spatial division of labor in the 'servicing' economy. Informed by the latest scholarship, Working Bodies is an fascinating exploration of the growing significance of low-paid and often casualised forms of employment in the twenty-first century economy, challenging the insistence on new forms of knowledge work in conventional accounts of labour market transformations.