| Chapter 1: | Introduction |
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talk about and experience their work are formed by broader societal conceptions of work and citizenship. In turn, their individual discourses constitute and reinforce these existing societal notions. Implicit in these assertions is the conception of workers as active agents who draw on available discourses to portray their experiences. Finally, this book offers an account of the social production of (ill) health in that I theorise how health and ill health can be produced via the interaction of individual-level discourses and the broader sociopolitical contexts.
Structure of the Book
Chapter 2 presents a review and analyses of contingent work and of the literature on contingent work and health. Contingent work is not a new phenomenon; rather, it has been manifested differently in different time periods and is shaped by factors such as historical conditions and labour market developments (Vosko, 2006). I begin by situating contingent forms of work in a historical context, paying particular attention to their twentieth-century manifestation. I then contextualise the study by showing how the structural contingencies associated with global capitalism have given rise to insecure forms of work, which have led to concerns about their health effects. I also locate the study by suggesting that the links between contingent work and health are poorly understood, and I attribute this critical gap to the inadequacy of methodological (deductive/quantitative) approaches and to theoretical incongruities, both of which can be identified in the existing literature on contingent work and health. I propose that an inductive/qualitative approach that examines workers’ experience might shed light on the relationship between contingent work and health.