assignment 1

My fieldwork will be conducted in Europe’s largest ports, the port of Rotterdam. It holds an important place in the world’s list of ports and plays an important role in the economy of Rotterdam, for example as a direct and indirect employer. They want to keep growing, and a port needs to grow in space, which they do by reclaiming the land of the Maasvlakte, but especially in the amount of cargo transshipment it can handle.

This context is relevant to understand my object of research, which is the experience of time, and the experience of time-pressure, by dockworkers. The city’s harbor company and the individual company all hold their targets as they want to keep growing, but as there are limits in space, there are also other physical limits. Not only do they need to employ more people, whom are sometimes hard to find, they also want them to be even more efficient than ever.

            In my research I would like to use video during my research as an explorative method. I would like to focus on how the dockworkers work, and when this is ‘work-time’ or ‘free time’. How often do they take breaks? (not only breaks for coffee and lunch, but also to go to the bathroom or have a cigarette). Are they free when they finish, or are they on call 24/7? And since the port of Rotterdam is quite a long stretch in space, how long do they have to travel from work to home and back? Using video during my research makes it a good means to gather data that I can analyze. I can measure time and I can see expressions on the faces of the dockworkers. Hearing someone say he is tired or that he is stressed at work is different than seeing it on someone’s face. There might be contradictions in what people say and show.

            This last reason as to why I will use video during my research is also one of the reasons why I want to produce an audiovisual end product where I will present my analysis along with a written text. I will show how these dockworkers experience time and time pressure throughout their daily lives. When you see how they work you might see something different than the discourse about their work. My intention is to show these daily lives as far as following them home, to see how they experience and use their ‘free’ or ‘private’ time. This will be the place where the dockworkers might feel they time is theirs to own, in contrary to when they are at work.

The time-pressure they experience must be placed in context and that I will do by either interviewing the employers, or preferably shooting some of their meetings, where they make logistical plannings for the port in general and within the company itself where I will conduct my research. They might even have informational meetings for visitors, employees or people that live around the port where managers, engineers or communication workers explain the plans they have for the port. If so it would be a great way to show the context and reasons why the dockworkers experience time and it’s possible pressure. You will see who causes the pressure in the port and the result will be shown by showing the effects on the daily lives of the dockworkers. Altogether there will be three layers, the main one will be the dockworkers at work, the second will be the dockworkers at home and thirdly I will show the context by showing some conversations or discussions with the people that plan and make decisions about how and when they should work.

The loss of Rotterdam being the first port in the world might be of solely emotional value, but the fact that it still is a world port does matter to Rotterdam as a world city. It puts Rotterdam on the map as a city that counts, and since it is a city with ‘no heart’, due to the bombing in WWII, this is one of the way Rotterdam tries to brand itself.  Question remains if the port holds this emotional value for the people from Rotterdam, or weather this is just a marketing strategy. If it does matter, then they also might have quite a specific perspective I presume positive) on the growth of the port.