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Talking About Machines: An Ethnography of a Modern Job - Couverture rigide

Orr, Julian E.

 
9780801432972: Talking About Machines: An Ethnography of a Modern Job
Couverture rigide
ISBN 10 : 0801432979 ISBN 13 : 9780801432972
Editeur : ILR Press, 1996

Synopsis

This is a story of how work gets done. It is also a study of how field service technicians talk about their work and how that talk is instrumental in their success. In his innovative ethnography, Julian E. Orr studies the people who repair photocopiers and shares vignettes from their daily lives. He characterizes their work as a continuous highly skilled improvisation within a triangular relationship of technician, customer, and machine. The work technicians do encompasses elements not contained in the official definition of the job yet vital to its success. Orr's analysis of the way repair people talk about their work reveals that talk is, in fact, a crucial dimension of their practice. Diagnosis happens through a narrative process, the creation of a coherent description of the troubled machine. The descriptions become the basis for technicians' discourse about their experience, and the circulation of stories among the technicians is the principal means by which they stay informed of the developing subtleties of machine behavior. Orr demonstrates that technical knowledge is a socially distributed resource stored and diffused primarily through an oral culture.Based on participant observation with copier repair technicians in the field and strengthened by Orr's own years as a technician, this book explodes numerous myths about technicians and suggests how technical work differs from other kinds of employment.

Les informations fournies dans la section « Synopsis » peuvent faire référence à une autre édition de ce titre.

À propos de l'auteur

Julian E. Orr is a member of the research staff in the Work Practice and Technology Area of the Systems and Practices Laboratory of Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center. He is the author of Talking About Machines: An Ethnography of a Modern Job.

Les informations fournies dans la section « A propos du livre » peuvent faire référence à une autre édition de ce titre.

Éditeur
ILR Press
Date d'édition
1996
Langue
anglais
ISBN 10 
0801432979
ISBN 13 
9780801432972
Reliure
Relié
Nombre de pages
192
Coordonnées du fabricant
non disponible
Personne responsable
non disponible