“Thrown away like a banana leaf”: precarity of labour and precarity of place for Tamil migrant construction workers in Singapore

Despite labouring for three decades in Singapore, and being connected to the existing Tamil diasporic community there, Tamil migrant construction workers have been left out of state rhetoric and face economic marginalisation and social exclusion. In this article we draw on rich ethnographic data on their everyday experiences of working construction and living in Singapore, and we espouse the distinctive qualities and mission of ethnographically-informed methodologies to enact change in this space. The methods include in-depth interviews with 11 Tamil labourers, and the subsequent use of worker photo diaries, known as auto-photography, with a total 108 photographs taken. All the participants either worked construction, were on medical leave, or were seeking compensation after workplace injury. The analysis of the interview data develops themes around precarity and discrimination on construction sites (precarity of work), and the exclusory social practices experienced by workers in their offsite world (precarity of place). Following the goals of decolonised research, our innovative methods have enabled Tamil construction workers to present their lives through their own lens. By involving migrant construction workers, we identify new sites of inquiry and knowledge in examining the inequalities and injustices they face

Refiguring global construction challenges through ethnography

There has been a burgeoning growth in the use of ethnographic methods in construction management research in recent years, which to a certain extent has been pulled together through our own efforts (see Pink et al, 2013). Yet, arguably the intellectual framework of inquiry has been set too narrowly until now, with the ethnographic endeavour in CMR concerned with “how these methods embrace the construction issues facing construction researchers... to enable the construction industry to effectively function in the future” (Phelps and Horman, 2010, italics added). While recent work, particularly that developed by the editors of this special issue and their colleagues, has started to make new advances in construction industry research through ethnographic practice and theory, we call for further work to consolidate this field of research. We believe there is much merit in this for two reasons. First to raise the profile of ethnographic approaches in the construction industry research context. Indeed this will enable construction researchers to better confront the research challenges they already face. However it will do more than this, in that ethnographic research also tends to open up the field of research further, to surface new questions and issues, and to demonstrate that the answer to the question originally posed might be neither what nor where originally assumed. Second, ethnographic research undertaken in the construction industry has the potential to bring significant theoretical, methodological and empirical insights to the fore that have bearings on debates and challenges that are being approached in other fields of substantive study or disciplinary discussion. For example as existing work has shown, the processes through which worker safety is often viewed and regulated in the construction industry have much in common with the ways that universities govern research ethics (Pink 2017, Akama et al 2018), or the ways that construction workers engage with digital video-based materials can inform us about wider questions relating to digital pedagogy (Pink et al 2016). The fact is that the construction industry is part of society, and if we do not view it as such, and understand the people who work in it, and the materials that flow through it as pertaining to these wider worlds of things and processes, then we stand little chance of comprehending its dynamics. Ethnographic research, when appropriately delivered, we argue offers the key to these understandings

‘This Building Is Never Complete’: studying adaptations of a library building over time

Moving beyond the concept of buildings as fixed physical objects, Patel and Tutt draw on a rich empirical study of the adaptations and refurbishments of a 50-year old library building. An innovative methodology is developed, through utilising visual data from archives, undertaking ethnographic fieldwork and curating an exhibition, to help trace the changes in the library building over time. Patel and Tutt build an ontology of the library in which different versions of the library are relationally and multiply enacted. They push for empirical visions and theoretical frameworks of research that look beyond notions of the fixity of the buildings and infrastructure, towards acknowledging their flexibility and heterogeneous nature over time; ‘building’ as always in the making

Change management in practice: an ethnographic study of changes to contract requirements on a hospital project

Changes to client requirements are inevitable during construction. Industry discourse is concerned with minimizing and controlling changes. However, accounts of practices involved in making changes are rare. In response to calls for more research into working practices, an ethnographic study of a live hospital project was undertaken to explore how changes are made. A vignette of a meeting exploring the investigation of changes illustrates the issues. This represents an example from the ethnographic fieldwork, which produced many observations. There was a strong emphasis on using change management procedures contained within the contract to investigate changes, even when it was known that the change was not required. For the practitioners, this was a way of demonstrating best practice, transparent and accountable decision-making regarding changes. Hence, concerns for following procedures sometimes overshadowed considerations about whether or not a change was required to improve the functionality of the building. However, the procedures acted as boundary objects between the communities of practice involved on the project by coordinating the work of managing changes. Insights suggest how contract procedures facilitate and impede the making of changes, which can inform policy guidance and contract drafting

Bottom-up and middle-out approaches to electronic patient information systems: a focus on healthcare pathways

Background A study is reported that examines the use of electronic health record (EHR) systems in two UK local health communities.Objective These systems were developed locally and the aim of the study was to explore how well they were supporting the coordination of care along healthcare pathways that cross the organisational boundaries between the agencies delivering health care.Results The paper presents the findings for two healthcare pathways; the Stroke Pathway and a pathway for the care of the frail elderly in their own homes. All the pathways examined involved multiple agencies and many locally tailored EHR systems are in use to aid the coordination of care. However, the ability to share electronic patient information along the pathways was patchy. The development of systems that enabled effective sharing of information was characterised by sociotechnical system development, i.e. associating the technical development with process changes and organisational changes, with local development teams that drew on all the relevant agencies in the local health community and on evolutionary development, as experience grew of the benefits that EHR systems could deliver.Conclusions The study concludes that whilst there may be a role for a national IT strategy, for example, to set standards for systems procurement that facilitate data interchange, most systems development work needs to be done at a ‘middle-out’ level in the local health community, where joint planning between healthcare agencies can occur, and at the local healthcare pathway level where systems can be matched to specific needs for information sharing

`Tactical' living: a situated study of teenagers' negotiations around and interactions with living room media

This paper examines everyday living room interactions in which teenage household members conduct `tactical' play in order to temporarily gain access to, and disrupt, the dominant, domestic codes of living room media. The practices of individuals are interpreted, through Michel de Certeau's language of `tactics', as struggles or a series of opportunistic actions which can often reforge these codes of living, precisely because the house `rules' are not fixed or deterministic in practice. In these tactical performances of self, the use of media is enmeshed in a host of situated and symbolic action, reaffirming how media and face-to-face interactions are multiply and closely entwined in everyday living room life. This video ethnographic work examines such instances of teenagers appealing to `house' rules and demonstrating domestic helpfulness in order to gain access to media, and the tethering of media to objects through the routine practice of `markers' and `stalls'

Where the interaction is: collisions of the situated and mediated in living room interactions

This article presents three ethnographic tales of interactions with living room media to help recreate the experience of significant moments in time, of affective encounters at the interface in which there is a collision or confusion of situated and virtual worlds. It draws on a year-long video ethnography of the practice and performance of everyday interactions with living room media. By studying situated activity and the lived practice of (new) media, rather than taking an exclusive focus on the virtual as a detached space, this ethnographic work demonstrates how the situated and mediated clash, or are crafted into complex emotional encounters during everyday living room life

Making yourself at home with media : a video ethnography of interactions with media in the living room

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‘Tactical’ living: a situated study of teenagers’ negotiations around and interactions with living room media

This paper examines everyday living room interactions in which teenage household members conduct ‘tactical’ play in order to temporarily gain access to, and disrupt, the dominant, domestic codes of living room media. The practices of individuals are interpreted, through Michel de Certeau’s language of ‘tactics’, as struggles or a series of opportunistic actions which can often reforge these codes of living, precisely because the house ‘rules’ are not fixed or deterministic in practice. In these tactical performances of self, the use of media is enmeshed in a host of situated and symbolic action, reaffirming how media and face-to-face interactions are multiply and closely entwined in everyday living room life. This video ethnographic work examines such instances of teenagers appealing to ‘house’ rules and demonstrating domestic helpfulness in order to gain access to media, and the tethering of media to objects through the routine practice of ‘markers’ and ‘stalls’.