City Research Online

Abstract

Self-employment accounts for a significant share of income-producing work but the ‘sociology of self-employment’ remains embryonic. This article argues that, to-date, sociologists have viewed self-employment through discrete lenses, rooted in different intellectual traditions. A novel typology is developed that conceptually maps extant analyses, revealing the variety of ways these lenses portray the relationship of self-employment to capitalism. The identified lenses are: 1) Self-employment as residual; 2) self-employment as dynamic; 3) self-employment as hyper-exploitation; 4) self-employment as mundane; and 5) self-employment as ideology. The article suggests that the empirical complexity of self-employment as a phenomenon underpins this multiplicity of sociological conceptualisations. Self-employment is both driver and residuum of capitalist development; self-employed labour both potential (or at least putative) capitalist enterprise and the absence of waged-labour. Reconciling the sociology of self-employment requires we recognise and embrace this complexity for what it tells us about the conditions of work in contemporary capitalism.

Publication Type:	Article
Additional Information:	© The Author(s) 2025. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) which permits any use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages (https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage).
Publisher Keywords:	capitalism, entrepreneurship, precarity, self-employment, sociology
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > HM Sociology
Departments:	School of Policy & Global Affairs School of Policy & Global Affairs > Sociology & Criminology
SWORD Depositor:	Symplectic Administrator

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