The development of sociological knowledge during a pandemic: A look at work-life nexus research


Momo Tanaka, University of Toronto

Work-life nexus research has shifted over time in response to the evolving cultural and historical norms of work and life, and the COVID-19 pandemic certainly had the disruptive potential to change the momentum of sociological research. Through an extensive literature review of sociological publications on the relationship between work and life during the pandemic, this project endeavoured to answer several questions: What key concerns were addressed in the literature? What questions or populations were unaddressed? What does the research published by sociologists in response to the pandemic reveal about the discipline’s orientations and biases? This review revealed several patterns in the development of research methodologies and topics throughout the pandemic. The number of autoethnographies published during the early pandemic was notably high. This was likely partly due to the constraints on in-person interactions restricting many researchers’ access to research participants. Therefore, many articles made use of the only data easily available at the time: the author’s personal experiences. For this reason, the interests of academics were highlighted in the work-life nexus research. This is reflected in the predominance of themes relating to remote teaching, academic parenthood, and negotiating academic responsibilities with family and care obligations. The predominance of autoethnographies decreased over time as social distancing constraints were lifted and survey data had been collected and analyzed. The topics covered in these articles echoed the foci of the autoethnographies, revealing concerns about remote work, pandemic parenthood, creating and negotiating boundaries within the home, as well as division of labour and structural inequalities exacerbated by the pandemic. In terms of the key investigative questions outlined above, the most remarkable finding of this review was the dominance of academic voices (educated, upper-middle class, largely white). This is likely due to methodological difficulties of research at the beginning of the pandemic and has wide implications for perspectives highlighted in the research produced. For instance, the literature was noticeably occupied by gender as an investigative frame in research on the work-life nexus. Of course, it is undeniable that gender within the household is a topic that sociology has been invested in for many ages, and the pandemic was an unexpected opportunity to investigate the nature and bounds of gendered expectations in families. While the pandemic expanded the work-life nexus scholarship greatly in understanding gender in the household, there are other focal identities that were of less focus, such as race or class. We also likely missed out on other significant populations that may not be part of the “typical” conception of the working population—for example, young/emerging adults, low-wage frontline workers, people engaged in criminalized or stigmatized work, and new immigrants. Knowledge is a product of the questions, methods, and assumptions contained in research that came before, and thus this review seeks to engage critically in the questions, methods, and assumptions contained in the pandemic literature within the sociology of the work-life nexus. Without critical reflection on the process of knowledge creation and the knowledge that is created, any discipline risks reproducing its own biases and overlooking alternate interpretations of reality. 

This paper will be presented at the following session: