Bicycle Messengers Employment and Ethnography

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Back to the ‘old school’: bicycle messengers, employment and

ethnography
Benjamin Fincham
Qualitative Research 2006; 6; 187
DOI: 10.1177/1468794106062709
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Q
A RT I C L E 187
Back to the ‘old school’: bicycle

messengers, employment and
ethnography
R
Qualitative Research
Copyright © 2006
SAGE Publications
(London,
Thousand Oaks, CA
and New Delhi)
vol. 6(2) 187–205.
B E N JA M I N F I N C H A M
Cardiff University
A B S T R A C T This article examines issues that arose from a mixed

method study of bicycle messengers in the UK that included an
ethnographic phase of research in which the researcher worked as a
bicycle messenger for pay. The question of dangerous research
settings and the subsequent advantages and disadvantages to the
research process are discussed in relation to other recent
ethnographies. The article then discusses the differences between
styles of ethnography that involve danger, with particular reference
to Lyng’s idea of ‘edgework’, arguing that distinctions between types
of ethnography may not be useful. Finally, having discussed these
recent ethnographic developments, the article suggests that there
ought to be an increase in work-based ethnographies in the Chicago
School tradition of Howard Becker and Donald Roy, among others.
KEYWORDS: bicycle messengers, danger, edgework, employment,

ethnography
Introduction
In this article, I present material relating to a mixed method study of bicycle
messengers in the UK conducted between 2001 and 2004. As part of the study,
I conducted an ethnography, working as a paid employee in one medium-sized
UK city, Cardiff, and one large UK city, London. The issues arising from this
ethnography are discussed in relation to other recent ethnographic research.
After introducing the research arena, the article will cover three areas. First,
I present a critical discussion of the methodological implications of conduct-
ing research in a work setting where the danger of injury to both the research
participants and the researcher are a consideration. Second, the differences
between styles of ethnography that involve danger will be examined with
DOI: 10.1177/1468794106062709

188 Qualitative Research 6(2)
particular reference to Stephen Lyng’s (1990) ‘edgework’ method. Finally,

having discussed recent ethnographic pre-occupations, the article will ask
whether there ought to be an increase in work-based ethnographies in the
Chicago School tradition of Howard Becker (1951, 1963) and Donald Roy
(1952, 1953), among others.
Howard and me
In September 1951, Howard Becker published a paper in the American Journal
of Sociology entitled ‘The Professional Dance Musician and his Audience’. In
it, he presented results from an 18-month participant observation-based
ethnography he had conducted, studying jazz musicians in Chicago. Being a
pianist, and having been on the jazz scene for a short while, Becker had little
trouble gaining access to members of the Chicago jazz fraternity, playing
shows, socializing with other musicians and interviewing them. My own route
into my chosen research field was similar. I had worked as a bicycle messenger
for a number of years in Cardiff prior to conducting a sociological examina-
tion of the work and workers; as with Becker this included an 18-month
participant ethnography. As a result of my familiarity with the research
setting, I had little difficulty gaining access to people and situations, particu-
larly in Cardiff, as I was to all intents and purposes an ‘insider’. However, the
research was not confined to Cardiff, and I found that during the London phase
of the study my position in the community was much more ambiguous. Cycle
messengering is not simply a form of employment for those involved. The
communities of messengers that I encountered during the study strongly
identified with a sub-culture attached to messengering and, as with Becker’s
jazz musicians, could be suspicious of people from outside their particular sub-
culture.
The work of a cycle messenger

The work of a bicycle messenger is, on the face of it, relatively simple. The job
involves picking up packages, parcels or letters from one place and delivering
them to another. Bicycles are used as they are often the quickest way of navi-
gating traffic-congested city centres. The way in which the location of individ-
ual deliveries, or ‘drops’ as they are known, are communicated to the riders is
via two-way radio, pager or, increasingly, mobile telephone. Most firms operat-
ing bicycle messengers have a central control location, normally an office,
where a ‘controller’ takes orders over the telephone from businesses or indi-
viduals who need something delivered. The controller will then distribute the
jobs to messengers on the road over the radio, pager or mobile phone. The
larger the number of messengers working for a firm, the more organized
the controller needs to be. The location of each rider has to be known by the
controller in order to distribute jobs sensibly. For example, if a rider is in the

Fincham: Back to the ‘old school’ 189
east of a city and a job comes in ‘picking up’ in the east and ‘dropping’ in the
north, the controller needs to know that the rider will be able to ‘cover’ this job
and then be able to receive a consecutive job ‘picking up’ in the north and
taking it elsewhere. This process will be happening for several riders at the
same time. The skill of the controller is to make sure that the whole city can
be covered at all times and that all the riders are busy at all times. Generally,
this means that riders will be kept apart, as there is no point in having two
riders covering the same area. For this reason, messengering can be quite a
lonely job as colleagues may only meet up a couple of times a day. After a while,
messengers become closely familiar with the city that they work in, creating a
mental map of the quickest routes for cycling. Most messengers are paid on a
commission-based, per-job basis. Because of this, messengers make most
money if they are carrying a number of packages at once and dropping them
off en route to other pick-ups. This is known as a ‘run’. The process of riding
to and from city centre or suburban offices, picking up and dropping off
packages is essentially the job of cycle couriers.
Bicycle messengering in London and Cardiff

The choice of London and Cardiff as research sites was to contrast bicycle
messengering in cities of differing scale – Cardiff being what might be
described as a ‘medium’-sized city, London being a ‘large’ city.
Cardiff is a city of 300,000 inhabitants that covers an area of 54 square
miles. The city is covered by Cardiff ’s sole cycle courier operator, Hermes1
messengers. The daily mileage rates of messengers working in Cardiff was
among the highest of any city that I encountered in the course of surveying
messengers throughout Europe. There are two related reasons for this. Hermes
is the sole operator in the city but does not make enough money to keep more
than five people on the road at any one time. Also, there is a large proportion of
the Hermes client base located in the suburbs, and there is not the density of
businesses operating in the centre of the city as in London. Therefore, a limited
number of messengers must cover a large area to sustain Hermes’ income.
London is a city of approximately seven million inhabitants that covers an
area of 579 square miles. However, there are very few cycle messenger oper-
ators that service Greater London and the suburbs. The majority of the work
takes place in and around central London and the business quarter – the
‘square mile’. With a working population of 300,000, the density of busi-
nesses in the ‘square mile’ is great. This means that Central London can
sustain an estimated population of between 600 and 1000 bicycle messengers
at any given time (International Federation of Bicycle Messenger Associations,
2004). The result of such density is that the average mileage of London
messengers is considerably lower than that of Cardiff couriers. Another conse-
quence of this density of activity in central London is that levels of motorized
traffic are much heavier.

Despite the difference in the two cities, I found that the communities of cycle
messengers in each shared many common features. A strong theme that
emerged throughout the research was the feeling of exclusivity of the bicycle
messenger communities in both Cardiff and London. The dangerous working
environment and the subsequent cultural expressions that arose from those
working as bicycle messengers made them a marginal population in several
ways. In terms of the labour market, cycle messengers are at the periphery. It
is a low-paid, dangerous, physically demanding occupation where practically
all are employed on an individual sub-contracted basis. Many couriers engage
in activities that would be considered ‘deviant’ in sociological literature. There
is a fair amount of recreational drug use and a level of self-organization remi-
niscent of Becker’s jazz musicians, where the ‘outsiders’ are those not part of
this exclusive community, and the community itself is made up of people
outside the normative value systems of ‘conventional’ society.
As will be explained further, the choice of an ethnographic approach to
study bicycle messengers was, to a large extent, determined by the research
area. As Adler and Adler (1995: 16–7) point out, ethnography has been used
to examine the themes of employment and ‘deviance’ in particular. While
messengering is a form of ‘legitimate’ employment, it also fits descriptions of
‘deviant’ sub-cultures. As I have implied, there are similarities between the
cycle messengers in my study and the jazz musicians in Becker’s. Further to
this, there are also similarities between the messengers and Becker’s subse-
quent research subjects, marijuana users (Becker, 1963: 41–78). Becker
(1963: 8) describes ‘deviance’ as relativistic and involving ‘the infraction of
some agreed-upon rule’. It is generally agreed that the sorts of risk-taking
engaged in by bicycle messengers is abnormal, but that this is an entirely rela-
tivistic position of a meta-cultural hegemony versus sub-culture. It is in this
sense that messengers’ risk-taking is ‘deviant’. The routine breaking of rules
governing roads and the representation of messengers as living ‘on the edge’
– both in terms of employment and lifestyle – fits with the descriptions of
‘deviant’ sub-cultures from Hebdige’s punks (Hebdige, 1979) to Hodkinson’s
goths (Hodkinson, 2002).
Although I am uncomfortable with the words ‘deviance’ and ‘deviants’ to
describe behaviours, individuals or communities which are not popularly
understood within particular ‘normalized’ frames of reference, the ethno-
graphic approach is a tried and tested method for exploring such behaviours,
individuals or communities. In Outsiders, Becker (1963) outlines his opinion
of how best to study groups of people behaving in ways described in sociologi-
cal and psychological literature as ‘deviant’. He suggests that students should
spend time observing people ‘in their natural habitat as they go about their
ordinary activities’ (Becker, 1963: 170). He goes on to highlight the possible
impacts on researchers making such observations, explaining that they may
have to keep ‘unusual hours’ and ‘penetrate what are for him [sic] unknown
and possibly dangerous areas of the society’ (1963: 170). Becker also points

out that the process of gaining trust with informants can be time-consuming,
and may involve a degree of moral or ethical compromise on the part of the
researcher (1963: 170–1).
My study involved working as a paid employee, allowing for a close perspec-
tive on what it is to be a cycle messenger. As will now be discussed, there are
certain advantages and disadvantages to undertaking a study from this
perspective, especially with regard to the relationship between the researcher
and the researched, in particular in gaining access, gaining credibility, estab-
lishing trust and risk of injury.
Methodological considerations
( 1 ) AC C E S S
In terms of access, a participant methodology is recognized as an effective
research tool. From this entry point, the other aspects of a mixed methodol-
ogy can be more readily employed. The likelihood of interviews being granted
or surveys being completed are increased if the informants feel as though they
are talking to another ‘insider’ with whom they have an affinity. The import-
ance of relationships is highlighted by Vail:
My entry into the tattoo world came when a heavily tattooed friend gave me the
name of a tattoo artist in San Francisco. Through this contact I met my primary
artist who introduced me to several other artists, many of whom subsequently
worked on me. At the time, I thought of these relationships as nothing more than
strong friendships with a very special group of people on the cutting edge of an
art form that was beginning to swing towards social acceptance. These relation-
ships later served as my entry points into my study of the social world surround-
ing fine-art tattooing. (2001: 707)
The process described by Vail is very close to my own, where established

relationships I had with the courier world in Cardiff, and my status as a former
messenger in London, served as entry points and allowed for ‘snowballing’ in
collecting interview data and access to employment. There was a large differ-
ence in my status in the messenger communities of Cardiff and London. In
Cardiff I was part of ‘the old school’, in London I was completely unknown.
My established friendships in Cardiff gave unhindered access to messengering
and messengers, whereas in London I had no established relationships. As a
result, I had to get contacts opportunistically. After calling at several messen-
ger firms offices and explaining what I was doing, I had a couple of telephone
numbers of people who might talk to me. I started to go to a pub popular with
London messengers, and it was in here that contacts were made:
The Friday night at the Earl of Lancaster – or the courier pub as it is known locally
– was more successful than I could have hoped. I arrived at 5pm to meet a woman
called Slejta who’s number I had been given by Wyatt Earp. By 5.30 couriers
started arriving but there was no sign of anyone looking for me. I decided to start
to hand out surveys. I felt very self-conscious, it was as if I was trying to sell people

something. They had just finished work and then some stranger is hassling them
to fill in a questionnaire. The first person I stopped was Chippy Keith. To my
surprise he came and sat by me to fill it in, and then he called his friend over to do
the same. Suddenly there’s three being filled in – so I asked Chippy Keith for an
interview. He replied that next Tuesday in the pub at 4.30 would be good for him.
After they went I asked the next person through the door – incidentally I sat myself
right by the entrance to the pub to catch people as they came in. This was
Catwoman. She sat down with a weary disinterest and started to fill in the ques-
tionnaire. She was sort of reticent when I asked questions, I think because she
was properly thinking about the answers. Suddenly she looked up and said I
should go outside and dish some out to the dozen or so people sat about outside –
then she offered to do it. I went out and started handing the survey out. Everyone
was really positive. I went and sat down again and Catwoman invited another
couple of messengers to the table. (Field diary, 11.05.2003)
There are two things to be noted from this extract. The first is the opportunity
one of my other research methods – a survey questionnaire – gave me to open
conversations with people. The second is that I remained in contact with the
people whom I met on this first evening in the Earl of Lancaster throughout
the fieldwork and beyond. The field diary charts my growing confidence in the
community in London:
I then interviewed Slejta and Disco, who managed during the course of the inter-
view to get completely wasted. I still feel very much outside of the community here
. . . maybe the community is much bigger and more coherent in London . . .
there’s a real hard edge to the people I’m meeting here. (Field diary, 15.05.2003)
This feeling dissipated over the course of the fieldwork:

The interviews are slowly coming together. I think as I have got friendly with
people and they have come to trust me, maybe, it definitely gets easier. I had under-
estimated the amount to which this research relies on trust and possibly friend-
ship networks – the community in London is very tight and actually quite
exclusive . . . I have definitely found that people’s attitude to me changes when
they know that I have been a messenger myself. In fact I think that I would have
really struggled if I hadn’t made that known. (Field diary, 31.05.2003)
The final point made in this extract is interesting as it raises the question of
how the ethnography would have gone if I had not previously been a messen-
ger. At the beginning of this article I compared my introduction to the study
of cycle messengers with Becker’s experience of studying jazz musicians in
Chicago. Both Becker and I were at a distinct advantage, in terms of access, of
having a level of prior knowledge of the research arenas we were entering.
However, this prior knowledge is not essential for ethnography, it just means
that studies will differ. The main point of the latter quote from the field diary
is that the community in London ‘is very tight’. If I had been more of an
‘outsider’ in their eyes, I would still have reached the same conclusion. My
willingness to work as a messenger actually performed much the same task as
informing people that I used to be a messenger – it legitimized my enquiry.

Working as a messenger while studying messengering also gave access to

emotional responses to working in an environment where participants
get hurt; however, as will be discussed, this can be problematic for ethnogra-
phers.
( 2 ) ‘AU T H E N T I C I T Y ’ A N D ‘ C R E D I B I L I T Y ’
The demonstration of authenticity when studying ‘risk-taking’ activities is
often to engage in such activities yourself. Stephen Lyng provides insight into
the transition from observer to participant observer. He talks about the embry-
onic stages of a study into free-fall parachutists:
My inability to assemble the phenomenological evidence that I needed was the
starting point of the long journey to the liminal event that completed one import-
ant phase of my research project, and changed my life profoundly. More precisely,
the journey began with a specific statement from one of my subjects: when I asked
him to talk about the freefall experience, he responded, ‘If you want to know what
it’s like, then do it!’. (1998: 224)
In my fieldwork, I have found that my willingness to work as a messenger has

allowed me access to interviews and other research arenas. As has been previ-
ously mentioned, exclusive communities are difficult to gain access to. Vail
(2001: 714) corroborates my experience when he says ‘. . . to gain my inter-
viewees trust, I had to show my insider status’. It is the display of insider
knowledge that conveys an authenticity; the informant becomes confident
that they are talking to somebody who understands what they are saying and
will not misrepresent them – whether we as researchers do misrepresent such
communities is another issue, the point is that the informants are confident
that we will not.
Vail also talks about being described as being from ‘the old school ethic’
(2001: 715). This is a description that has been used by informants to describe
my relationship with them within the courier community in Cardiff. What this
actually means is difficult to pin down. An informant in Vail’s study described
it as tattooists that ‘. . . kept everything cool in a simple sense’ (2001: 715),
and the effect of being from the ‘old school’ certainly proved to have its advan-
tages as my field diary illustrates:
I was called in at 2pm for lunch. I had earned over £30 and covered about 45
miles, and was quite enjoying myself, despite beginning to feel tired. I also
suspected that I was being given some of the better jobs, especially as references
to ‘the old school’ increased throughout the day. (Field diary, 25.04.2002)
In the simplest terms, being described as ‘old school’ denotes the length of time
that a person has been a messenger, or the length of time since a person was
a messenger. In an occupation with a high turnover of participants, it takes a
relatively short amount of time to achieve a ‘veteran’ or ‘old school’ status. A
consequence of being associated with the ‘old school’ is that there is a kind of
veneration within the community associated with the description. I have not

heard it used as a pejorative within messengering. It has given me access to

people whom I might not have been able to talk to if I had been a researcher
new to the field.
( 3 ) T RU S T
A key element in the relationship between the ethnographic researcher and
their informants is trust. There is a symbiosis in the trust relationship which,
if undermined, can destroy the validity of the research and, perhaps more
importantly, undermine informants’ trust in researchers per se. Trust is obvi-
ously a key issue in determining the outcome and the quality of the final
research. Bev Skeggs quite rightly points out that:
There are clearly very large differences between the intensity of an ethnography
in which intimate relations are developed over a period of time, where numerous
conversations occur, where trust and loyalty are established, and the hit and run
approach of focus groups. (Skeggs, 1999: 218)
Levels of trust may have a lot to do with the amount of ‘inside’ knowledge the
community under scrutiny perceives the researcher to have, or to be gaining
through an ethnography. As these relationships form, there are methodologi-
cal and ethical issues that emerge. For example, the messengers whom I have
spent time with make assumptions about the level of inside knowledge I have,
but, more importantly, make assumptions about my feelings towards certain
practices, which may not be accurate. The dilemma is that, in order to
maintain access to certain people or areas, I have not felt able to be explicit
about what will be reported. An example of this became apparent early on in
my study. I had found what I perceived to be some homophobic ‘banter’
between messengers in Cardiff difficult, and in the normal course of things
would challenge such language. However, my status as a researcher, and
consequently the debt I felt that I owed for access to some of these people,
means that I am not as open with them as they are with me. In addition, I am
sure that some people would feel betrayed if they thought that their work-time
banter were to be reported. This is especially true in the reporting of homo-
phobic banter as assumptions made about people on the basis of such banter
is not often problematized outside debates around hegemonic masculinity.
Throughout the participant observation, interviews and even the distri-
bution of the questionnaire survey, there were examples of occasions where I
felt as though I had performed a deception of sorts. Although I have been
absolutely explicit about my status as a researcher and the intentions of my
study, there have been times where I have felt compromised by that role. For
the most part, that has meant behaving in a way that I have seen appropriate
for eliciting information from people. Becker warns of the danger of making
assumptions on the basis of observed situations (1996: 58), and it is for this
reason that there have been occasions where I have sought clarification from
messengers by pretending to know less than I did. Vail calls this the ‘perform-
ance’ of ‘incompetence’:

Another necessary skill in the ethnographers’ toolkit, especially when our work
involves interviewing, is convincing the people that we study that we are
somewhat ignorant of the meanings they attach to all manner of things and
events that they encounter on a daily basis. (2001: 713)
This technique provides opportunities to further question respondents on

areas where the sorts of assumptions warned against by Becker might be
made.
( 4 ) P E R S O NA L , B O D I LY R I S K
As has been noted earlier, during the participant observation I was not simply
following cyclists around the streets but engaged in the same activities as them,
paying close attention to how it actually felt to be a bicycle messenger.
While this participatory approach is attractive, there are negative impli-
cations that must be considered when undertaking such work. There are
occasions when the researcher feels as though their assessment is that the risks
involved are too great. Jamieson highlights the point that despite responsible
planning and preparation the researcher must remain ‘constantly alert to
potential risks’, evaluate risk and respond to this evaluation ‘even if this means
leaving the field’ (2000: 69). In the event of having to withdraw from the
participant area of study, there needs to be consideration of other types of
method, in case one is inoperable or turns out to be ineffective. In the case of
an ethnography of bicycle messengers, there are measures one can take to
protect against injury. For example, while messengering, I do not have to
voluntarily attempt cycling manoeuvres that will obviously put me in a position
where I might get hit by a car.
There are issues inherent in analysing data gathered in an environment that
may have challenged the researcher. Vail points out that there is sometimes a
requirement to step back from ‘intense emotions like fear, repulsion, or ecstasy’
when analysing data (Vail, 2001: 716). He suggests this stepping back process
is part of an emotional management technique, where the intensity of the
fieldwork may cloud the eventual analysis. However, there is another potential
pitfall in the reporting of potentially dangerous fieldwork situations – namely,
that the risk is exaggerated. There are two principal reasons as to why this
might happen. The first is simply misrepresenting the experience, as Holyfield
points out in her ethnography of white water rafting:
. . . many of us want only the appearance of fatefulness, thus obtaining some of
the glory with very little of the risk. (1999: 5)
Although this may well be true, I think that a second reason is more likely to
adversely affect data. When the researcher encounters possible danger, care
must be taken to properly evaluate any situation – for example, there are
instances when the researcher may be worried because they are expecting to
be worried, not because a situation is dangerous. Researchers’ interpretations
and reactions to a ‘risk’ environment may lead to misrepresentations of situ-
ations that are not actually dangerous.

However, there are good phenomenological reasons for putting yourself in

a similar position to those people whom you are researching. There is rich
material to be gained from Geertz’s ‘thick descriptions’ arising from such
encounters with risk (1975: 3–30). Several writers who deal with risk or
danger corroborate this idea that it is desirable for researchers to have an
experiential understanding of their field. Peterson argues that, despite risk and
danger having not been seen by social scientists as a ‘proactive way of being
able to frame experiences in the field’ (2000: 195), there is a central research
validation in feeling in danger:
. . . the researcher’s feelings of threat or vulnerability may indicate that they are
closer to understanding an important aspect of the field than perhaps when
things are going well. (Peterson, 2000: 195)
There are occasions, however, when the researcher must seriously evaluate
the possibility of injury with the insights that might be gained from putting
themselves in such positions. For example, I was knocked off my bike in
London during the research. I also underwent an operation on my right knee
halfway through the fieldwork, a result of wear and tear on the joint through
cycling (it should be pointed out that it is impossible to know whether I would
have needed the same operation in the future; however, the consultant
suggested that the intensity of cycling that I was doing during the fieldwork
hastened the process of deterioration). On reflection, it is difficult to know
whether the overall study was any better as a result of putting myself in situ-
ations where I would be injured.
Phenomenology and ‘edgework’

The use of myself as a subject of part of the study, in the participant observa-
tion phases, raises interesting questions about the phenomenological impli-
cations of the research. The idea of undertaking extended periods of
employment was to get an idea of how it feels to be a cycle messenger. There
is also a certain value in recognizing that data generated while unreflexively
involved in an activity may yield interesting results which can subsequently be
examined. Merleau-Ponty’s idea of perception informed from what he calls a
‘participation in the world’ (1962: 395) resonates strongly in an ethnographic
study where data are generated through the researcher using themselves as
an object of study. Examples of such data were the recordings I made of myself
working. I carried a Dictaphone around and recorded thoughts and inter-
actions during a typical working day (it should be noted that every person
whom I spoke to in the study consented to being tape-recorded). In terms of
phenomenology, much of the material relating to feelings and perceptions,
especially concerning my body and vulnerability, was captured at moments
when I was engaged in the act of cycling, or, more broadly, messengering.
These recordings are important reminders of emotional responses to, as well

as plain descriptions of, cycle messengering. For example, the following excerpt
was recorded one February evening when I was just recovering from a
‘whitey’, fatigue resulting from muscle glycogen depletion:
Cathedral Road – 4.50pm
Like last week I just had to have quite a big chocolate sugar injection. I started
getting the shakes. It’s around the same sort of time, it’s about ten to five now.
Horrible whitey feeling. Calming down now, so that’s better. Don’t think I’ve done
that many miles. I’ve done a few long jobs and it’s just starting to get dark and
starting to drizzle. (Tape transcript, 07.02.2003)
This quote captures two major considerations for messengers in the winter –
namely, tiredness and the weather, but, importantly, conveys the presence of
the researcher in the research. I am able to document certain elements of the
work of messengering from a particularly close perspective. As well as having
the phenomenon of ‘whities’ described to me in interviews, I also experienced
them myself.
Because of the nature of the work of a bicycle courier, the methodology, in
participant terms, was chosen for me. In order to be employed as a messenger
and carry out fieldwork, I was inevitably going to be performing an ethno-
graphic study with a possible component of risk of injury to myself.
Researchers such as Mark Hamm and Stephen Lyng have developed the
methodological framework for these types of studies. Both of these researchers
have undertaken ethnographic studies of what they call ‘marginal’ popu-
lations where activities are at the edges of conventional acceptability, be they
‘criminal’, ‘irresponsible’ or ‘dangerous’. They have coined the term
‘edgework’ to describe what they view as a distinct methodology. Vail summar-
izes the main characteristics of edgework according to Lyng:
Lyng’s (1990) defining statement on edgework focused on three important
characteristics. Edgework activities ‘involve a clearly observable threat to one’s
physical or mental well-being or one’s sense of an ordered existence’; they often
require specialized skills that allow the edgeworker to test his or her limits; and
they are directed at edgeworkers’ attempts to control ‘a situation most people
would regard as entirely uncontrollable’. Edgework is, in short, activity that tests
the physical, emotional and intellectual limits of the edgeworker. (Vail, 2001:
719)
Within the boundaries of this definition, the ethnography of bicycle messen-

gers could be described as edgework. With reference to the above quote, there
is a clearly observable threat to the researcher’s well-being through the risk of
traffic accidents; bicycle messengers possess specialized skills, they claim a
heightened sense of spatial awareness in traffic and, like many other risk
activity environments, a risk evaluative outlook unique to the activity (Bellaby
and Lawrenson, 2001; Natalier, 2001; Stratford, 2002). Also, as many a
cyclist will report, cycling in urban traffic is an activity most people ‘would
regard as entirely uncontrollable’. There are several instances in my field diary

where the drama associated with ‘dangerous’ activities is apparent, but there
are situations in a variety of fields that carry associated dangers or compro-
mise the researchers well-being. The danger in the reporting of data such as
my own, and those espousing a distinct methodology, as in the case of
‘edgework’, is that researchers lapse into a sort of macho rhetoric and draw
distinctions between themselves and other ethnographers. This has been an
important consideration in my own work where, as I have said, dramatic situ-
ations occurred:
I was coming through a big roundabout with entrances onto it from a flyover, and
I was going at a fair pace when I noticed that a cement lorry wasn’t slowing
coming onto the road. I really stepped on as hard as I physically could and went
across the front of the lorry, which just didn’t stop. I reckon it missed me by half
a metre. (Field diary, 09.05.2002)
During my time in London, I found that reflecting on the conditions of cycling

was unnerving. To begin with, I found the cycling quite exciting, and this was
reflected in my field diary entries:
Rush hour on Oxford Street was absolutely thrilling, but my inexperience defi-
nitely resulted in a couple of heart stopping moments. Getting wedged between
two buses going in opposite directions being the highlight. Actually that did scare
me. (Field diary, 09.05.2003)
It was during this period of the study that I was knocked from my bicycle by a
taxi on the street mentioned in the previous extract:
At the end of Oxford Street a taxi pulled to the kerb as if to stop and as I was
passing, pulled a U-turn straight into me. My left leg took the brunt of the impact
but somehow I was thrown free. I watched my bike disappear under his wheels.
He then reversed back over the front wheel. (Field diary, 20.05.2003)
The sorts of data produced by such methods in such environments can be

dramatic; however, care should be taken not to overstate the difference
between this and other ethnographic approaches. There are issues of safety
and well-being for many researchers in a variety of fields. For example,
Amanda Coffey (2002: 67–9) details examples where women researchers have
been seriously assaulted during fieldwork. There is the danger that in advocat-
ing ‘edgework’ as a unique and ‘risky’ methodology those espousing it are not
acknowledging that other research confronts similar issues. There can be a
certain amount of macho posturing adopted by those who do research involv-
ing the possibility of injury, as though there are not other types of research
that may also have dramatic consequences for a researcher. The question of
access to groups is presented in a way that makes ‘edgework’ sound distinct
from other types of ethnographic research. The credibility one gains with
informants by actually engaging in their ‘risky’ activity, it is claimed, allows
for access to these ‘marginal’ populations. However, this is a problem for any
research where the researcher might be considered an ‘outsider’ from the

group that they are studying – take, for example, Odette Parry’s work on
British naturism, John Fitz’s experiences of interviewing ‘elites’ or Letts and
Sears’ experiences of gaining access to young schoolchildren through school
administrations (Fitz and Halpin, 1995; Letts and Sears, 1999; Parry, 1998).
As has been discussed, there are issues of the authenticity and credibility of
the researcher for the researched. Further, there is the perception that the most
effective way of studying ‘marginal populations’ is to enter their world as a
participant. This is a view supported by Vail:
Clearly it is difficult to grasp, for example, what it is to become a tattoo collector,
a graffiti artist, or a [motor] biker by administering a survey. Studying marginal
populations demands achieving intimate familiarity with those populations.
(2001: 719)
Although I would broadly agree with Vail, it needs to be pointed out that it is
not the case that ‘administering a survey’ will reveal one set of results, irre-
spective of its source. A non-ethnographic study – methodologically from the
‘outside’ as it were, i.e. a survey, or interviews alone – may yield very different
responses from the informants if they imagined that the researcher had some
sort of inside knowledge or understanding of the things that they were disclos-
ing.
By immersing myself in the research setting an ‘intimate familiarity’
becomes part of my social repertoire, allowing access to particular ways of
understanding how it feels to be a bicycle messenger. In his study of the ‘night-
time’ economy, Monaghan worked as a bouncer at various clubs around the
UK. For him, the level of participation was important as a way of acknowledg-
ing the lived experience of being a bouncer. It lent a ‘presence’ to the report-
ing of his participants that he felt could not be achieved through different
methods (Monaghan, 2003: 26). Although I think it wise not to become
dogmatic about the ‘best’ way to research, the level of my own participation
in messengering has produced interesting results, especially when considered
with the data generated by the other methods. The personal relationships
formed with messengers throughout the research allowed for levels of access
which may otherwise have been difficult to achieve.
Distinction between recreational ‘risk-taking’ and ‘risk-taking’

for work
Having established that ethnography, as a research tool, lends itself to studies
of work and ‘deviance’, the distinctions between areas of risk and their impact
on methodology need to be examined. It would be useful to use similar study
arenas as my own to compare methods. There is, however, a shortfall in the
amount of recent literature on ethnographies of ‘dangerous’ occupations – as
opposed to ‘dangerous’ activities.
There is a rich tradition of ethnographies of employment. Sociologists and

anthropologists have long entered worlds of work to describe the conditions,

as they saw them, of workers in various occupations. The study of jazz
musicians by Howard Becker (1951, 1963) and the factory machine opera-
tives described by Donald Roy (1952, 1953) have been templates by which
those people interested in the experiences of work could conduct sensible and
sensitive ethnographies. In terms of work and the danger arising from certain
types of employment, there is Jack Haas’ work in the 1970s on high steel iron-
workers (2002) and Orbach’s work with tuna fishermen (1977). In the early
1980s, there are several examples of what might be described as ‘traditional’
ethnographies of forms of employment where the possibility of injury is a
component of an occupation – for example, Applebaum’s study of construc-
tion workers (1981) and Gamst’s time as a locomotive engineer (1980).
However, recently, while there have been a few non-participant observations
of work, there has been very little participant ethnographic work in the area
of employment and danger. For example, between January 1987 and October
2004, the Journal of Contemporary Ethnography published 307 articles, of
which only 36 were based on or around work settings. Further, of those 36,
only three were articles where the researcher had participated in a job with an
element of danger as a paid employee in their research area. These were Carol
Rambo Ronai’s study of table dancers (Ronai and Ellis, 1989), John Encan-
dela’s (1991) work as a delivery person for the Army Corps of Engineers and
Kinkade and Katovich’s (1997) study of pizza delivery workers in Chicago.
There have been a couple of other studies addressing such concerns, notably
Lee Monaghan’s studies of door-workers, or bouncers, and the night-time
economy (2002, 2003), but by and large ethnographers appear to have forgot-
ten the everyday impact of work and employment. It seems that most of the
participant studies that involve strong themes of risk are concerned with crime
(Ferrell, 1998), marginal communities – e.g. the homeless (Arrigo, 1998),
drug users (Jacobs, 1998) – and, recently, sensation-seeking recreational
pursuits – e.g. white water rafting (Holyfield, 1999), parachuting (Lyng,
1998), motorcycling (Lyng, 1998).
The fascination with these sorts of ‘marginal’ activities, especially
in relation to lifestyle or consumption, has developed alongside the decline in
interest in work and employment, and appears to have come from the gain in
prominence of ‘post-modern’ concerns. While it is important to examine as
many different facets of life as possible, there is a requirement for sociologists
and anthropologists to examine areas of life that are experienced by many
people, such as work and environment. Although it should be acknowledged
that cycle couriering is not a common pursuit, the fact that it is a form of
employment, and one that carries with it a burden of risk, means that asser-
tions made as a result of the study may resonate in other areas of work where
there is a component of danger. In terms of studies of dangerous activities,
there is a distinction between risk-taking for ‘kicks’ and risk-taking as a conse-
quence of work.

It is an important distinction to recognize. In the case of bicycle messenger-

ing, there is an inherent urgency involved with work as it is paid on a
commission basis. The requirement to complete as many jobs – pick ups and
drop offs – in a day is entirely mediated by pay. The more risks the courier is
prepared to take, the more they get paid. The possibility of messengers being
injured or killed, as a direct result of the requirement to take risks, is mediated
by pay.
It should be pointed out that, despite doing a paid participant observation,
the methodological implications of the risk/pay relationship for me as a
researcher were that I did not need the money I earned riding – I had a research
grant. In some sense, my experiences as a bicycle messenger were bound to be
different for someone who needed the job to pay the rent. Their incentive to
take risks was greater than it was for me, but this is an unavoidable consequence
of undertaking an ethnography of a potentially dangerous occupation.
The way in which risk of injury is framed between voluntary risk-takers and
risk at work is that the role of risk in the two communities’ lives is very differ-
ent. For example, part of the thrill of white water rafting is the veneer of risk
(Holyfield, 1999), whereas risk workers appear to suppress the acknowledge-
ment of high risk. As Monaghan says:
Such risks are not simply taken by those engaged in a calculative search for
monetary gain. Similar to boxers, doorstaff may spend little thought on the risk
of personal bodily harm given the pragmatics of their work. Additionally, their
‘self-contained web of social relations’ offers interpretative frameworks ‘that tend
to “screen out” awareness of physical danger’ [Wacquant, 1995: 85].
(Monaghan, 2003: 16)
It is apparent that there are differing implications to analysing voluntary,

recreational risk-taking and risk-taking as a consequence of work. The associ-
ation between voluntary risk-taking and Stephen Lyng’s ‘edgework’ thesis
appears to be strong (Vail, 2001: 706), but the processes of gaining access to
a ‘marginal’ social world, recording data, maintaining trust relationships,
gaining credibility and ‘performing incompetence’ (Vail, 2001: 713) all
resonate strongly as pertinent methodological issues for my own study. This is
despite the implicit involuntary nature of risk-taking as an economic necessity
at work.
Proponents of ‘edgework’ claim that ‘marginal’ communities are notori-
ously difficult to penetrate from the outside, as Vail explains:
As Demello, Irwin, Sanders, and I all have noted, the tattoo world is fairly typical
of marginal social worlds in that those who enact it are suspicious of outsiders –
especially when they come from academe. (2001: 706)
However, as was pointed out earlier, this is true for a multitude of research
settings, many of which would not be associated with ‘edgework’. The
examples highlighted previously – naturism, ‘high’ status ‘elites’ and schools
– all presented similar issues of access to the researchers as people studying

‘marginal’ communities. There are obviously questions of exclusivity when

groups are difficult to penetrate by researchers, and this may have something
to do with being ‘outside’ such groups; however, many of them would not be
considered ‘marginal’.
Conclusion
As has been demonstrated, ethnography is a worthwhile methodology for
studying certain social groups and social conditions. The immersion of a
researcher into a situation for a period of time can allow access to people and
experiences that would otherwise be difficult to get at. In the case of the study
of conditions of employment and (what is unfortunately known as) ‘social
deviance’, this is particularly true. However, this is not to denigrate other forms
of social enquiry, and, as with my own study, a multi method approach can
often lend increased assurance to assertions made as a result of data arising
from such methods.
Recently, there has been a tendency in some quarters to present a particu-
lar ‘way of doing things’ as better than another. Although I have confronted
similar methodological issues to those of people purporting to doing
‘edgework’, I am unhappy with the distinction such a label makes between
certain research environments and others. There are many situations where
researchers may experience similar physical or emotional reactions to occur-
rences during research, but where the researchers themselves are not doing
‘edgework’. This drift towards a distinction between ethnographical types
appears to have arisen with an increase in interest in studies of consumption
and lifestyle – and subsequently niche populations, and away from the sorts of
research arenas that may relate to many people’s experience of the social
world – for example, work and employment.
While accepting that there should be research covering the spectrum of
human activity, the decline in ethnographies of work and employment seems
strange, especially with the increasing interest in ‘risk’ in the social sciences.
Work is a place where many people are hurt, where social ‘legitimacy’ is estab-
lished and where many people spend most of their lives. In order for ethnog-
raphy to matter, researchers must be prepared to examine the world of
everyday experience and report it as they find it.
AC K N OW L E D G E M E N T S
I would like to thank the anonymous referees for their helpful comments on an earlier
draft of this article. I am also indebted to friends and colleagues at the Cardiff School
of Social Sciences; in particular, Professor Theo Nichols, Professor Valerie Walkerdine
and Dr Sara Delamont. I am also grateful to the ESRC for funding the project (award
no. R42200134184).

NOTE
1. Names of firms, individuals and specific locations – such as public houses – have
been changed.
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is a research associate with QUALITI, part of the National Centre

B E N JA M I N F I N C H A M
for Research Methods at the Cardiff School of Social Sciences, Cardiff University. His
research interests are in the areas of culture and community, risk and danger, experi-
ences of working in the peripheral labour market, the body, identity and sport. He is
also a founder member of the Cycling and Society Research Group.
Address: Cardiff School of Social Sciences, Cardiff University, Glamorgan Building, King
Edward VII Avenue, Cardiff CF10 3WT, Wales, UK. [email: finchamb@cardiff.ac.uk]


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Qualitative Research http://qrj.sagepub.

Back to the ‘old school’: bicycle messengers, employment and

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Citations (this article cites 8 articles hosted on the

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Back to the ‘old school’: bicycle

A B S T R A C T This article examines issues that arose from a mixed

KEYWORDS: bicycle messengers, danger, edgework, employment,

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particular reference to Stephen Lyng’s (1990) ‘edgework’ method. Finally,

The work of a cycle messenger

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Bicycle messengering in London and Cardiff

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The process described by Vail is very close to my own, where established

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This feeling dissipated over the course of the fieldwork:

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Working as a messenger while studying messengering also gave access to

In my fieldwork, I have found that my willingness to work as a messenger has

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heard it used as a pejorative within messengering. It has given me access to

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This technique provides opportunities to further question respondents on

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However, there are good phenomenological reasons for putting yourself in

Phenomenology and ‘edgework’

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Within the boundaries of this definition, the ethnography of bicycle messen-

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During my time in London, I found that reflecting on the conditions of cycling

The sorts of data produced by such methods in such environments can be

Downloaded from http://qrj.sagepub.com at UNIVERSITE DE MONTREAL on March 26, 2007

Distinction between recreational ‘risk-taking’ and ‘risk-taking’

Downloaded from http://qrj.sagepub.com at UNIVERSITE DE MONTREAL on March 26, 2007

anthropologists have long entered worlds of work to describe the conditions,

Downloaded from http://qrj.sagepub.com at UNIVERSITE DE MONTREAL on March 26, 2007

It is an important distinction to recognize. In the case of bicycle messenger-

It is apparent that there are differing implications to analysing voluntary,

Downloaded from http://qrj.sagepub.com at UNIVERSITE DE MONTREAL on March 26, 2007

‘marginal’ communities. There are obviously questions of exclusivity when

Downloaded from http://qrj.sagepub.com at UNIVERSITE DE MONTREAL on March 26, 2007

Adler, P. and Adler, P. (1995) ‘The Demography of Ethnography’, Journal of Contempor-

Downloaded from http://qrj.sagepub.com at UNIVERSITE DE MONTREAL on March 26, 2007

Jacobs, B.A. (1998) ‘Researching Crack Dealers: Dilemmas and Contradictions’, in J.

Downloaded from http://qrj.sagepub.com at UNIVERSITE DE MONTREAL on March 26, 2007

is a research associate with QUALITI, part of the National Centre

Downloaded from http://qrj.sagepub.com at UNIVERSITE DE MONTREAL on March 26, 2007

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