Format:
1 Online-Ressource (vii, 199 pages)
ISBN:
9780745609256
Content:
This highly topical book is a concise and accessible account of the relationship between technology and work. Firstly, it reviews and critically assesses a variety of recent approaches to the social and cultural dimensions of technology. Secondly, it examines the implications of these new approaches for existing ideas about the nature of technology and work organization. At the core of much thinking about technology is the assumption that the technical character and capacity of artefacts is given. The enduring image of deus ex machina captures the idea that it is the essential capacity 'within' a technology which, in the end, accounts for the way we organize ourselves, our work and other life experiences.
Note:
Description based upon print version of record
,
Cover; Title Page; Copyright; Contents; Acknowledgements; Introduction: Deus ex Machina; 1 Theories of Technology; Introduction; Defining the issues; Technological determinism as myth; Socio-technical systems; The social shaping approach; Socio-technical alignments; Actor-network theory; Anti-essentialism; Conclusion; 2 The Luddites: Diablo ex Machina; Introduction; Background; Competing traditional explanations of Luddism; The establishment perspective: rational technology, irrational Luddites; The traditional anti-establishment perspective: rational technology, irrational capitalism
,
The symbolic perspective: machine as metaphorAnti-essentialist explanations of Luddism; An actor-network perspective on the Luddites; The entrepreneurs' case: machinery as a Trojan horse; Conclusion; 3 Configuring the User: Inventing New Technologies; Introduction; The technical/non-technical dichotomy; Technology as text; An ethnography of computer development; Configuring the user; Organizational knowledge about users; Difficulties of knowing the user from within; Alleged deficiencies in company knowledge about users; Stories about users; User singular and users multiple
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Users don't necessarily know bestArticulating the configured user: usability trials; Boundary work: the importance of the case; User documentation: correct readings of the manuals; Enacting the users' context; Constructing natural users; Error and identity: the 'wrong' socket episode; The new machine meets its users; Conclusion; 4 Some Failures of Nerve in Constructivist and Feminist Analyses of Technology; Introduction; Technological determinism, essentialism and anti-essentialism; The metaphor of building in/embodiment; Specifying antecedent circumstances; Having effects
,
Technological determinism and textual determinismFeminism and technology; Reproducing technology?; Computerized genders; Conclusion: Deus Ex Machina or Machina Ex Dea?; 5 Technology and Work Organizations; Introduction; Assembling organizations: from Fordism to flexible specialization; Organizations as consumers of technologies; Organizations as technological panopticons or empowerers?; Conclusion; 6 What's Social about Being Shot?; Introduction; 'Excessive' relativism; The moral and epistemological case against scepticism
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An onion model of the sociology of technology: between Russian roulette and a 'hard case'Conclusion: truth as the basis for political action; Notes; References; Index
Additional Edition:
ISBN 9780745678405
Additional Edition:
Erscheint auch als Druck-Ausgabe The Machine at Work : Technology, Work and Organization
Language:
English
Keywords:
Arbeitnehmer
;
Technischer Fortschritt
;
Arbeitsplatz
;
Arbeitssoziologie
;
Automation
;
Electronic books
