Geographies of night work

Abstract

Night work is an area in which transformational changes are occurring, many identified by geographers, but in which the role of night itself – the ‘nocturnality’ of night work – has often been overlooked. This article looks at how geographical research into work and interdisciplinary research from night studies could inform one another, arguing that a focus on the nocturnality of night work can generate wider insights into existing social and economic geographical research into labour. Importantly, the challenges brought by the nocturnality of night work make its study valuable for understanding social justice under contemporary capitalism.

Thinking night studies through a southern European perspective

“…Second, forerunner and early SWE researchers approached night‐themed research delving into the specificities characterising their local nightscapes and nightlife cultures, relativising the primacy of NTE studies in non‐English‐speaking traditions. Third, the geographical nightscape may expand the range of the hybrid lines of research exploring the negative transformations of urban nights focusing on the nocturnality (Shaw, 2022) of the co‐production process of the local urban night. Fourth, overlapping research interests and recurring transnational collaborations among SWE night scholars hint at the possibility of identifying an overall SWE perspective investigating the transformations of local nightscapes considering the impacts of global phenomena—namely, tourism and migration—in the broader geographical context of the Mediterranean.…”

“…Second, forerunner and early SWE researchers approached night-themed research delving into the specificities characterising their local nightscapes and nightlife cultures, relativising the primacy of NTE studies in non-English-speaking traditions. Third, the geographical nightscape may expand the range of the hybrid lines of research exploring the negative transformations of urban nights focusing on the nocturnality (Shaw, 2022) of the co-production process of the local urban night. To conclude, this review broadens its scope and suggests considering further applications of the connective concept in relation to diverse situated perspectives, for a reason that is twofold.…”

“…Broadly speaking, the research underpinning the review may be classified as situated investigations of relevant features of local night space-times. Unpacking this definition, the geographical understanding of local night space-times as situated phenomena emerges as the common ground between research streams, considering the 'definitional problem' affecting studies of the night (Shaw, 2022). That is, there is no shared definition of the 'geographical night' acceptable across different disciplines (Tambassi, 2022).…”

“…It outlines a genealogy that revolves largely around research output published in English and builds on the three-wave framework provided by Hadfield (2015). Moreover, it aims to juxtapose the evolution of the research stream dedicated to the night-time economy (NTE) with other key areas of interest and relevant themes identified in complementary or independent categorisations that have sought to systematise night studies (Seijas & Gelders, 2021;Shaw, 2014Shaw, , 2022van Liempt et al, 2015).…”

“…Second, Shaw's (2014) contribution explicitly pointed out night studies as an ‘area of research has been too quick to equate the urban night with the night‐time alcohol and leisure industry (“the NTE”)’ (p. 87). This claim builds on the critical analysis of interdependencies between neoliberal policies and the co‐production processes of local urban nights and on the recognition of emerging research that has evolved as intertwined and co‐constitutive subfields of contemporary night studies, such as night im/mobilities (Farina et al., 2022; Skelton, 2013; Smeds et al., 2020), geographies of darkness (Dunn, 2016, 2022; Edensor, 2013, 2015), the roles and functions of artificial lightning in the urban night (Edensor, 2012; Rahm et al., 2021; van Rijswijk & Haans, 2018), the geographies of night work (Shaw, 2022) and speculations regarding the institutionalisation of an independent science subsuming night studies (Acuto, 2019; Kyba et al., 2020; Nofre, 2020; Shaw, 2018).…”