Talking about Machines: An Ethnography of a Modern Job (Collection on Technology and Work)
Language: English
Published by ILR Press, 1996
- First Edition
- Softcover
- Used
Seller: George Kent, Bookseller, Silverhill, AL, U.S.A.George Kent, Bookseller
AbeBooks seller since April 9, 1997
Condition: Used - As new
£ 13.64
Quantity: 1 available
Add to basketItem description from seller
AS NEW assumed first edition of 172 pages is tight, bright, and clean, free of markings. This is a story of how work gets done.
Seller Inventory # 26980
- Title
- Talking about Machines: An Ethnography of a Modern Job (Collection on Technology and Work)
- Author
- Orr, Julian E.
- Publisher
- ILR Press
- Publication year
- 1996
- Condition
- As new
- Dust jacket
- No Jacket
- Binding
- Soft cover
- Language
- English
- ISBN 10
- 0801483905
- ISBN 13
- 9780801483905
- Edition
- 1st Edition
- Item weight
- 0.549 pounds
- Dimensions
- 13.97 centimeters width by 21.59 centimeters height by 1.42 centimeters depth
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.
"Synopsis" may belong to another edition of this title.
About the Author
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.
"About the title" may belong to another edition of this title.
George Kent, Bookseller
Silverhill, AL, U.S.A.
AbeBooks seller since April 9, 1997
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