Photography informs research on train gangs

A researcher at Edge Hill University is using innovative photography to capture workers operating the almost extinct steam railway and coal mining practices abroad.

Dr Terry Wallace, Reader in Organisational Analysis, is using visual images to research these endangered industries in China and Bosnia.

His project, Working on the Train Gang: Visualising Communities, Experiences and Expectations for the Railway Workers in the Coal Mining Industries of China and Bosnia-Herzegovina, is using this experimental technique to inform future research on these workplace experiences.

Dr Wallace explained: "I've done extensive research on this issue but I've always found the translation part to be the most difficult aspect because of the language and cultural barriers between the research subject and the investigator. I felt that using visual images would give me a better understanding in investigating the contexts and environments that structure the workplace experiences of railway workers operating steam locomotives in the coal mining industries of Bosnia and China."

This research is part of a wider study looking at the development, growth and demise of ‘good work' across various industrial sectors in the global economy. Dr Wallace has visited various parts of China to observe crew loading coal, shunting engines, preparing locomotive for duty and also for the next shift. He has looked at interactions with other track and signaling crew, and also the workers with their local communities.

He said: "By spending time immersed in the environments of railway workers, eating and drinking with them and discussing non-verbally with them issues relating to their experiences of work and their workplace, I feel that camera and video footage will give a completely different perspective. Also, use of photographic evidence of these people as they go about their everyday business is a means of preserving, in some form, a way of life that is under threat from modernisation.

"Although photographic evidence can never intervene to resolve dilemmas in the interview process, it does offer alternative or complementary narrative interpretations of the field in recording social actors in their environments. I'm attempting to enter the mindset of these people and see the world as they do; the problem with traditional research methods is that, in asking the questions, it almost determines the findings. I don't want to impose my ideas on this project, I want to let the pictures tell the story.

Findings from the project will be used to contribute to a number of journals and articles and also highlights Edge Hill Business School's developing research culture.

Dr Wallace added: "I will use this data to add to my knowledge of the political, social, cultural, economic and workplace environments that support the growth of rewarding, less-alienating work for the blue-collar worker. I'm also hoping that my experience gained through working in quite difficult conditions can help inform my teaching and benefit students."