Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-fbnjt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-05T21:12:04.909Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

2 - Making a case: ‘knowledge’ and ‘routine’ work in document production

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 May 2010

Paul Luff
Affiliation:
King's College London
Jon Hindmarsh
Affiliation:
King's College London
Christian Heath
Affiliation:
King's College London
Get access

Summary

Introduction

Discursive practices are used by members of a profession to shape events in the domains subject to their professional scrutiny. The shaping process creates the objects of knowledge that become the insignia of a profession's craft: the theories, artifacts and bodies of expertise that distinguish it from other professions. Analysis of the methods used by members of a community to build and contest the events that structure their lifeworld contributes to the development of a practice-based theory of knowledge and action.

(C. Goodwin, 1994:606)

The emergence of ‘information’ as the dominant commodity of the late twentieth century has brought with it an accompanying preoccupation with ‘knowledge work’ as the defining form of labour. At least implicitly, knowledge work stands always in contrast with certain other, persistent forms of work that are taken not to involve the active production and use of information. These latter may be either the residue of so-called ‘manual’ labour, or mediating processes in the operation of information technologies that remain to be automated, still requiring human interventions but otherwise defined as routine (data input being the prototypical case).

A starting concern of this chapter is how, in reproducing oppositions of mental versus manual, the discourse of knowledge versus routine work sustains old assumptions as a basis for conceptualising new relations of work and technology. Developing an alternative to these traditional conceptualisations requires that we re-examine the basic premises about knowledge on which they rest. One by now common-sense premise is that professionalised forms of labour have grown up around particular bodies of specialist knowledge, held, maintained and developed by profession members.

Type
Chapter
Information
Workplace Studies
Recovering Work Practice and Informing System Design
, pp. 29 - 45
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2000

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×