Wintersemester 2019/20

TU Dresden

Institut für Soziologie

Seminar

Technology at Work (in engl.)

Dr. Susann Wagenknecht

Zeit: Montag, 5. DS

Beginn: ab dem 4.11.

Ort: SE2/203/U 

Kurzbeschreibung

Let technology do the work for you—no one is entirely immune to this promise. But then everyone knows that it requires an awful lot of work to get technology working. It has to be designed, installed, adapted, configured and reconfigured, maintained, repaired, and properly disposed of. Above all, it has to be understood and incorporated into practice. Think about cloud computing. Or, think about the copy machine: The modern office relies upon documents and their copies. Making copies is both an utterly boring as well as crucially important part of office life. The copy travels between colleagues and departments. Armed with copies, employees guard themselves against management and customers venture to tackle customer service.

Copy machines, however, are cranky. They are not easy to use and often ‘out of order.’ In her seminal work, Lucy Suchman demonstrates how poorly instructions for use relate to the practice of using copy machines. Julian Orr, in turn, shows what it takes to keep copy machines up and running—stories, community, and business suits. Because repair, as Christopher Henke argues, is about much more than just spare parts. It is about creating social order and negotiating what it actually means for a machine to be ‘up and running.’

This course proceeds from the observation that handling technology at the workplace is much more than bland routine. The course combines text-based discussion sessions with small student projects, complementing ethnographic observations that course readings offer with other forms of qualitative data. To this end, groups of students will conduct an interview. Together we will then probe ways to analyze the data and discuss findings.