Meerwarth / Gluesing / Jordan Mobile Work, Mobile Lives

Cultural Accounts of Lived Experiences
1. Auflage 2009
ISBN: 978-1-4443-0967-6
Verlag: John Wiley & Sons
Format: PDF
Kopierschutz: Adobe DRM (»Systemvoraussetzungen)

E-Book, Englisch, 200 Seiten, E-Book

With the ever-increasing functionalities of information and communication technologies, as well as the spatial and temporal transformations brought about by shifts in global work patterns, mobile work has become more important than ever to workers and employers. The objective of this volume is to illustrate through narratives the patterns of mobility that are altering the meaning of work and how work is positioned with respect to the rest of life. The contributors to this volume are anthropologists who not only study remote, nomadic, and mobile workers but who are also remote, nomadic, and mobile themselves. They share observations about the evolution of their personal and professional identities, their attempts to define or merge boundaries between work and personal life, and their struggles to present the value of their work to others. Their descriptions of the tensions inherent in mobile life and work, and the strategies they employ to overcome them, greatly further our understanding of the interplay of self, work, place, and technology, and point to future research directions for the anthropology of work.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Meerwarth, Tracy L.

Gluesing, Julia C.

Jordan, Brigitte

Kedia, Satish

Wallace, Tim

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Introduction: Tracking the Context of Mobile Lives (Tracy L.Meerwarth, Julia C. Gluesing, and Brigitte Jordan).
Community, Context, and the Presentation of Self in DistributedWorkplace Interaction (Michael Youngblood).
Living a Distributed Life: Multilocality and Working at aDistance (Brigitte Jordan).
Occupational Websites as Locations for Remote and Mobile WorkerCulture:An Examination of Temporary Worker Websites (Loril M.Gossett).
Identity in a Virtual World: The Coevolution of Technology,Work, and Lifecycle (Julia C. Gluesing).
Remote or Mobile Work as an Occasion for (Re)StructuringProfessional and Personal Identities (Perri Strawn).
Disentangling Patterns of a Nomadic Life (Tracy L.Meerwarth).
Located Mobility: Living and Working in Multiple Places (AmyGoldmacher).
Interruptions and Intertasking in Distributed Knowledge Work(Patricia G. Lange).
Conclusion: Patterns of Mobile Work and Life (Julia C. Gluesing,Tracy L. Meerwarth, and Brigitte Jordan).
Biosketches of Authors.

Über Autor(innen)

Tracy L.Meerwarth has worked as an anthropologist andcontract researcher at General Motors Research and Development (GMR and D) since 2001. She graduated with an M.A. in appliedanthropology from Northern Arizona University with an emphasis inorganizational anthropology. She and her team at GM R and D havepublished articles in scholarly journals such as HumanOrganization, Journal of Manufacturing Management, and Space andCulture. Meerwarth has presented at numerous annual conferencesincluding the American Anthropological Association, Society forApplied Anthropology (SfAA), and the Ethnographic Praxis inIndustry Conference (EPIC). She has applied her interest incultural modeling, cognitive, and symbolic anthropology to variousprojects at GM, including collaboration, space, and architecture.In 2007, she and her team at GM R and D filed a patent entitled"System and Model for Performance Value Based CollaborativeRelationships," and received a U.S. CopyrightRegistration entitled "Collaboration Tools for Designing andImplementing an Ideal Manufacturing Culture in the U.S."Meerwarth is also a competitive golfer, yogi, and triathlete.
Julia Gluesing is a business and organizationalanthropologist and research professor in industrial andmanufacturing engineering at Wayne State University, specializingin global teaming and global product development. She is currentlyprincipal investigator of an NSF grant to study the diffusion ofinnovation across the global enterprise by tapping into anorganization's information technology infrastructure. Withmore than 25 years of industry experience, Gluesing also frequentlyserves as a consultant and trainer to help business teams developstrategies and skills for working globally. She conducts researchin global work practices and in cross-cultural and organizationalcommunication for companies such as Ford Motor Company, NissanMotor Corporation, Aegon, EDS Corporation, and Sun Microsystems.She has published professionally, most recently as a contributingauthor in Virtual Teams that Work: Creating Conditions for VirtualTeam Effectiveness, Handbook of Managing Global Complexity, andCrossing Cultures: Lessons from Master Teachers. Gluesing receivedher M.A. (1985) from Michigan State University in organizationalcommunication and her Ph.D. (1995) in cultural anthropology fromWayne State University.
Brigitte Jordan trained as a medical anthropologist(Ph.D., University of California, Irvine). Jordan has carried outethnographic research for more than 30 years in academic andcorporate settings, most recently as a principal scientist at XeroxPARC (now the Palo Alto Research Center). A freelance consultant,Jordan's research and consulting interests revolve around new"lifescapes" she sees emerging in a globalizing worldunder the impact of new communication and information technologies.Her special interests and expertise lie in the adaptation ofethnographic methods to physical, virtual, and hybrid ecologies.She is particularly concerned with the evolution and design oflearning and knowledge ecologies that support productive worksettings in the society of the future.