Talking about Machines: The Emergence of an Independent Women's Movement in America, 1848-1869

This is a story of how work gets done. It is also a study of how field...
CHF 70.66
CHF 70.66
SKU: 9780801483905
Product Type: Books
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Author: Julian E. Orr
Format: Paperback
Language: English
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Talking about Machines: The Emergence of an Independent Women's Movement in America, 1848-1869 by Orr, Julian E.

Talking about Machines: The Emergence of an Independent Women's Movement in America, 1848-1869

CHF 70.66

Talking about Machines: The Emergence of an Independent Women's Movement in America, 1848-1869

CHF 70.66
Author: Julian E. Orr
Format: Paperback
Language: English

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.



Author: Julian E. Orr
Publisher: ILR Press
Published: 10/17/1996
Pages: 192
Binding Type: Paperback
Weight: 0.56lbs
Size: 8.42h x 5.49w x 0.58d
ISBN: 9780801483905
Audience: Young Adult

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.


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