Kaveri Medappa
Biographic Data
| ID | 4369129 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Kaveri Medappa |
| GIVEN NAMES | Kaveri |
| FAMILY NAME | Medappa |
| SIGNATURE | MEDAPPA K |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Oxford |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-4723-2664 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 6 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 12 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 6 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2020 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 2 |
Visibilising the gritty realities of truck driving work in the UK
This article introduces Josephine (Jo) Noon, a woman truck driver in her early 40s. Speaking as a woman in a male-dominated occupation, a recent entrant into the UK’s truck driving workforce and with experience driving in the UK and Europe, Jo’s account disrupts common misconceptions about truck driving and truck drivers. The article contributes to sociological debates at the intersections of mobility and labour by drawing attention to how spatia…
Precarious mobilities: Occupational auto-mobilities, precarity and relationality amongst new truck drivers in the UK
In this paper, we advance debates on labour precarity by examining occupational auto-mobilities as a key site through which embodied and relational dimensions of precarity are produced. To do so, we empirically examine the experiences of newly qualified (‘new pass’)1 truck drivers in the UK. Drawing on longitudinal qualitative interviews (2023–2025) with new passes, interviews with insurance and road haulage industry representatives, and observat…
Lived Capitalisation: How Speculative Finance Shapes the Social and Financial Lives of 'Gig' Workers in Bengaluru, India
This article examines how speculative investments in platform businesses generate acute financial risks and the threat of downward social mobility for platform-based cab drivers and food delivery workers in Bengaluru, India. Informed by ethnographic research, this article departs from predominant understandings of platform workers' experiences at 'the point of production' and investigates 'gig' workers' social and financial lives as mediated by p…
Rethinking Mutual Aid Through the Lens of Social Reproduction: How Platform Drivers Ride Out Work and Life in Bengaluru, India
This paper presents an ethnographic account of the support and mutual aid mechanisms evolved by members of an app-based cab drivers union in Karnataka during the recurrent ‘waves’ of the COVID-19 pandemic. It also describes the app-based-driver-led infrastructures of support that were in place during ‘normal’ times, even before the pandemic. The paper deploys ethnographic methods and a feminist political economy lens to analyse the workings of pl…
India’s Gig Economy Workers at the Time of Covid-19: An Introduction
Nostalgia as Affective Landscape: Negotiating Displacement in the “World City”
Bangalore, an aspiring “world city”, is rapidly transforming as factories and mills are sold to private developers. As their neighbourhoods now accommodate multi‐million‐dollar gated communities and post‐industrial labour markets, residents experience an in situ displacement, staying in place while landscapes around them dramatically reconfigure. This paper makes sense of how old‐time residents locate themselves within such urban growth through n…
Rethinking Mutual Aid Through the Lens of Social Reproduction: How Platform Drivers Ride Out Work and Life in Bengaluru, India
This paper presents an ethnographic account of the support and mutual aid mechanisms evolved by members of an app-based cab drivers union in Karnataka during the recurrent ‘waves’ of the COVID-19 pandemic. It also describes the app-based-driver-led infrastructures of support that were in place during ‘normal’ times, even before the pandemic. The paper deploys ethnographic methods and a feminist political economy lens to analyse the workings of pl…
Nostalgia as Affective Landscape: Negotiating Displacement in the “World City”
Bangalore, an aspiring “world city”, is rapidly transforming as factories and mills are sold to private developers. As their neighbourhoods now accommodate multi‐million‐dollar gated communities and post‐industrial labour markets, residents experience an in situ displacement, staying in place while landscapes around them dramatically reconfigure. This paper makes sense of how old‐time residents locate themselves within such urban growth through n…
India’s Gig Economy Workers at the Time of Covid-19: An Introduction
Nostalgia as Affective Landscape: Negotiating Displacement in the “World City”
Bangalore, an aspiring “world city”, is rapidly transforming as factories and mills are sold to private developers. As their neighbourhoods now accommodate multi‐million‐dollar gated communities and post‐industrial labour markets, residents experience an in situ displacement, staying in place while landscapes around them dramatically reconfigure. This paper makes sense of how old‐time residents locate themselves within such urban growth through n…
Rethinking Mutual Aid Through the Lens of Social Reproduction: How Platform Drivers Ride Out Work and Life in Bengaluru, India
This paper presents an ethnographic account of the support and mutual aid mechanisms evolved by members of an app-based cab drivers union in Karnataka during the recurrent ‘waves’ of the COVID-19 pandemic. It also describes the app-based-driver-led infrastructures of support that were in place during ‘normal’ times, even before the pandemic. The paper deploys ethnographic methods and a feminist political economy lens to analyse the workings of pl…
India’s Gig Economy Workers at the Time of Covid-19: An Introduction
Lived Capitalisation: How Speculative Finance Shapes the Social and Financial Lives of 'Gig' Workers in Bengaluru, India
This article examines how speculative investments in platform businesses generate acute financial risks and the threat of downward social mobility for platform-based cab drivers and food delivery workers in Bengaluru, India. Informed by ethnographic research, this article departs from predominant understandings of platform workers' experiences at 'the point of production' and investigates 'gig' workers' social and financial lives as mediated by p…
Visibilising the gritty realities of truck driving work in the UK
This article introduces Josephine (Jo) Noon, a woman truck driver in her early 40s. Speaking as a woman in a male-dominated occupation, a recent entrant into the UK’s truck driving workforce and with experience driving in the UK and Europe, Jo’s account disrupts common misconceptions about truck driving and truck drivers. The article contributes to sociological debates at the intersections of mobility and labour by drawing attention to how spatia…
Precarious mobilities: Occupational auto-mobilities, precarity and relationality amongst new truck drivers in the UK
In this paper, we advance debates on labour precarity by examining occupational auto-mobilities as a key site through which embodied and relational dimensions of precarity are produced. To do so, we empirically examine the experiences of newly qualified (‘new pass’)1 truck drivers in the UK. Drawing on longitudinal qualitative interviews (2023–2025) with new passes, interviews with insurance and road haulage industry representatives, and observat…
Digital Economy and Work Transformation (5 works) · Economics (4 works) · Business (3 works) · Social science (3 works) · Sociology (3 works) · Economy (2 works) · Everyday life (2 works) · Geography (2 works) · Labor Movements and Unions (2 works) · Law (2 works)