What is interesting about talking about copying machines?
On the surface level, this book is a description of the actions and conversations undertaken by people who fix copying machines. A surprising topic for a book, I would suggest. What is interesting about this? What is the value of repeating the chats had over coffee between two Xerox technicians? Why would anyone want to read an extended narrative about Frank fixing a paper jam? To quote:
"After cleaning the inside of the machine, Frank puts the new photorecepter in and closes up that part of the machine. He changes the retard rolls on the paper trays, replacing the oily ones with fresh ones. He fills the fuser oil tank..." (p. 49).
..and etc, etc, etc. This is not exactly a gripping plot line, to say the least. So why spend hours, days, years, following around a bunch of technicians, documenting their every action, notating their every word, and then transcribing these observations into a 200 page book?
Because the story of the every day work of technicians who fix copy machines, and of the stories they relate about their work, tells us something much broader, deeper, and more interesting about the world, Orr asserts. As he lays out in the introduction, "Our goal is to gain an understanding of the technicians' work as they do it and as they understand it, and to use that understanding to look at the question of the relationship between work as it is done and work as it is described and prescribed" (p. 13).
Does Orr achieve this goal? What are the "understandings" that are revealed and what insights do they offer into "work" beyond that which is described in the book? There are a number of threads of broader themes that are woven within the narratives of technicians' actions and speech and throughout the book: the purpose and function of storytelling as part of the technician's job; the "triangular" relationship between technician, customer, and machine; the vertical and horizontal hierarchies of power that determine who attends to what task; the struggle for control and understanding when people and technology can defy both, etc. What do these observations reveal about "work" more generally in the modern world?
To try to draw in a little of Searle, it is also interesting to reflect on the idea of "work" as an "institutional fact." In a number of sections (p. 8, p.148) Orr puts forth an idea of "work" in the modern age beyond the brute fact of someone doing some task. Work as "situated practice" has a social context, a meaning attached to identities, nestled within a complex system of human interactions. How does Orr's narrative contribute to the constitution of "work" as an institutional fact? How do his observations of the work of technicians shape the parameters of this idea of "work"?
"After cleaning the inside of the machine, Frank puts the new photorecepter in and closes up that part of the machine. He changes the retard rolls on the paper trays, replacing the oily ones with fresh ones. He fills the fuser oil tank..." (p. 49).
..and etc, etc, etc. This is not exactly a gripping plot line, to say the least. So why spend hours, days, years, following around a bunch of technicians, documenting their every action, notating their every word, and then transcribing these observations into a 200 page book?
Because the story of the every day work of technicians who fix copy machines, and of the stories they relate about their work, tells us something much broader, deeper, and more interesting about the world, Orr asserts. As he lays out in the introduction, "Our goal is to gain an understanding of the technicians' work as they do it and as they understand it, and to use that understanding to look at the question of the relationship between work as it is done and work as it is described and prescribed" (p. 13).
Does Orr achieve this goal? What are the "understandings" that are revealed and what insights do they offer into "work" beyond that which is described in the book? There are a number of threads of broader themes that are woven within the narratives of technicians' actions and speech and throughout the book: the purpose and function of storytelling as part of the technician's job; the "triangular" relationship between technician, customer, and machine; the vertical and horizontal hierarchies of power that determine who attends to what task; the struggle for control and understanding when people and technology can defy both, etc. What do these observations reveal about "work" more generally in the modern world?
To try to draw in a little of Searle, it is also interesting to reflect on the idea of "work" as an "institutional fact." In a number of sections (p. 8, p.148) Orr puts forth an idea of "work" in the modern age beyond the brute fact of someone doing some task. Work as "situated practice" has a social context, a meaning attached to identities, nestled within a complex system of human interactions. How does Orr's narrative contribute to the constitution of "work" as an institutional fact? How do his observations of the work of technicians shape the parameters of this idea of "work"?
posted by Annie at 10:40 PM
5 Comments:
Guys, I know the main arguments of the book have nothing to do with what I am going to write but I have to share these impressions and I will also try to connect my points with (what I consider to be) some problems of ethnographic studies.
1- From now on, I’ll highly respect all the technicians.
2- I will never yell at anyone at a call center.
3- I will be fixing the printer in the PhD room. I believe I’m qualified enough right now.
4- I will also start my own business as a copier technician. It looks like the job is about ‘creating meaning’, ‘communicative action’, ‘socialization’ with a little bit of technical knowledge. (If I can get the printer working, I guess I have enough technical knowledge).
I sense an underlying unease with the inferential leap from Orr's (detailed, mundane) observations to his (abstract, general) conclusions.
I understand this. I think he moved from one to the other too quickly and wish he had spent more time connecting the dots, perhaps considering alternative interpretations and explaining why his interpretation better fits the data.
In response to Ela’s comment, I also get that there is this sense of discomfort with Orr’s conclusions. So I asked myself whether I would feel more comfortable with Orr’s conclusions if he reached out to all the technician groups in California and had them fill out a survey on how they view their work in terms of the customer-technician-machine triangle? After which he could do a multivariate regression analysis with the R2 and the t-statistics to figure out what exactly is important. But what would we gain from that type of analysis and what would we lose? I highly doubt that Orr would have come to the same conclusions that he did in this book. Or would it have been better if he worked in collaboration with other ethnographers who were working closely with other technician teams, and who all had a similar background in this technical work, like Orr? I’d prefer the ethnographic collaboration to the multivariate analysis but do I really feel that Orr’s conclusions are done a disservice by the way that his study is constructed?
Personally, I actually do not feel that Orr’s conclusions are such a reach for me to believe. I didn’t find that he made any claims on the general issue of work and field service. What I do believe he manages to do is to critique the research done on work using his discussion on field service, noting several gaps in the understanding so far. Orr finds that the problem with this literature is “its presumptions and prescriptions of what is to be done are not based on what is done and what needs to be done, on the reality of the job, the task to be accomplished” (151). Therefore I believe that in his conclusion, Orr intended his study to be used as a real-world example to analyze the validity of several theories on work that are being bandied about, and not as a prescriptive tool.
I think overall, I keep thinking about what this means for the field and the kind of research I would like to do once I finish this program and the internal conclusions I keep coming to are little unsettling.
1. Considering that the knowledge discovered is dependent on the researcher doing the uncovering, I don't know how I would say that there are "wrong" answers, only wrong underlying assumptions.
2. If there are no "wrong" answers when it comes to say, development strategies, how then do I begin to research and suggest solutions to fix some of the problems I may observe.
Firstly, I am sorry I still couldn't find the time to fix the printer - but I'll do so as soon as possible.
Secondly, I want to say a couple of words about Namalie's comment: "I didn’t find that he made any claims on the general issue of work and field service. "
I believe the discussion we had about the aims and objectives of ethnography was interesting in this point. Now, I don't think Orr had any intention of making claims about general issue of work and field service. He was looking at one very specific example and try to understand how they saw work.
His concluding remarks (or my interpretation of his concluding remarks) only said 'there are theories that say this but I found that'.
If we are to discuss whether it makes any sense to do a research on Xerox field workers, my reaction is more critical.
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