Masters Thesis

Playing for hire: discourse, knowledge, and strategies of cabdriving in San Francisco

This study, based on participant observation and ethnographic interviews, investigates the discourse of San Francisco cabdrivers concerning their occupation as a body of knowledges and strategies. This discourse is not treated as translucent in itself, but must be approached in terms of the interactional and occupational power relations which drivers experience in the course of their work. In particular this study focuses on the interplay of power and interpretive strategies in taxicab radio dispatch; this is contextualized historically and with reference to other ways in which drivers “play” cabdriving. The phrase “playing for hire” is intended to capture the contradictory nature of an occupation which combines liberating aspects such as mobility and freedom of interaction with drudgery, danger, and monetary calculation.

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