An Ethnodrama on Work-Related Learning in Precarious Jobs

Abstract

This article is based on a research project on the lived experiences of precarious workers in Toronto, Canada. Using interviews with women in part-time, contract, and temporary jobs in three sectors (telemarketing, retail, and garment), the project explores the ways in which racial hierarchies structure jobs as well as forms of resistance that women exercise at work. The authors find that racialized processes stereotype workers and their skill sets, organize their work, determine their access to and exclusion from certain types of jobs, and impose cultural rules that classify and essentialize them in terms of race, language, and ethnicity. In this article, the authors use ethnodrama to represent their findings from this research project. Ethnodrama is a form that is well suited for this work because it allows us to bring the data to life through an embodied performance.

Presenting and representing others: towards an ethics of engagement

“…Douglas, 2012) or reducing racism (e.g. Sangha et al, 2012). Second, there is the internal ethical practice of working with a range of media to reflect complex subject matter more fully than conventional presentation techniques enable (e.g.…”

“…As well as plays being written for performance by academic audiences, plays have also been written to be performed to academic audiences (Sangha, Slade, Mirchandani, Maitra, & Shan, 2012), to be read rather than performed (Berbary, 2011) and to be performed for both academic and non-academic audiences (Jenkins, 2015). Berbary (2011) fictionalised her data into a screenplay to allow her to attend to an ethical priority for her: protecting the identity of individual participants within their community.…”

“…Berbary (2011) fictionalised her data into a screenplay to allow her to attend to an ethical priority for her: protecting the identity of individual participants within their community. Sangha et al (2012) by contrast used ethnodrama to provoke academic audiences in new ways. Ethnodrama is the conversion of (usually ethnographic) research data into dramatic form, often with the intention of publicising social justice and provoking social action.…”

“…An already established playwright, Jenkins' play, The Spirit of Detroit, allowed her to present her works to multiple audiences, in multiple settings including the University of Michigan and the Charles C Wright Museum of African American History. Like Watson (2011), Sangha et al (2012) and Berbary (2011), Jenkins noted positive responses from her audiencebut unlike them she also highlighted that audience responses were not only positive, noting that individual audience members have different reactions to the same performance, ranging from enjoyment to disagreement or wanting to correct errors (Jenkins, 2014, p. 154; see also Mendeloff, 2015;Rice & Rice, 2015;Smith, 2015).…”

“…The significant compromise of researchers such as Furman (2006), Berbary (2011), Carroll et al (2011), Watson (2011), Douglas (2012, Sangha et al (2012) and Jenkins (2015), is in relation to what Bakan (1996) calls literal truth. Forms such as poems, plays, song and dance all entail sacrificing literal truth for what the authors hope is, to borrow Bakan's language, a real truth: an evocation of being there, an opportunity t o step inside the lives of others for a moment, to feel as well as think your way into other worlds.…”