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Cognition and Communication at Work
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Date: Mon, 10 Feb 1997 18:01:42 +0000
From: David Middleton
Cognition and Communication at Work
Engestrom, Yrjo and Middleton, David (eds.)
Cambridge University Press 1996
350 pp. 11 halftones 42 line diagrams 8 tables
Hardback 0-521-44104-8 $54.95*
Available to order through CUP online catalogue at
http://www.cup.org/Titles/44/0521441048.html
This book brings together contributions from researchers within various social science disciplines who seek to redefine the methods and topics that constitute the study of work. A key theme in the material is the relationship between theory and practice. This is not an abstract problem of interest merely to social scientists. Rather, it is discussed as an issue that working people address whenever they attempt to understand a task and communicate its demands. Mindful practices and communicative interaction are examined as communities of practice in a variety of work settings.
Contributors:
1. Y. Engestrom, D. Middleton
Introduction: Studying work as mindful practice
2 E. Hutchins, T. Klausen
Distributed cognition in an airline cockpit
3. L. Suchman
Constituting shared workspaces
4. C. Goodwin, M. Harness Goodwin
Seeing as situated activity: Formulating planes
5. C. Heath and P. Luff
Convergent activities: Line control and passenger information on London Underground
6. S. Bodker, K. Gronbeaek
Users and designers in mutual activity: An analysis of cooperative activities in systems design
7. L. Norros
System disturbances as springboard for development of operators' expertise,
8. E.A. Laufer and J. Glick
Expert and novice differences in cognition and activity: A practical work activity
9. Y. Engestrom
The tensions of judging: Handling cases of driving under the influence of alcohol in Finland and California
10. D. Middleton
Talking work: Argument, common knowledge and improvization in teamwork
11.C. Mukerji
Scientific "genius" and laboratory signatures,
12. H. Shaiken
Experience and the collective nature of skill,
13. S.L. Star
Working together: Symbolic interactionism, activity theory and distributed artificial intelligence,
14. A. Raeithel
On the ethnography of cooperative work
Summary of contents
The contributors to this volume explore 'the doing' of thinking, learning and communicating in a variety of work settings, including courts of law, health teams, computer software design, scientific laboratories, telephone sales, airline cockpits, control rooms, and auto engine assembly plants. Two theoretical chapters (Susan Leigh Star and Arne Raeithel) provide a theoretical commentary on the issues raised and findings presented in the empirical chapters.
Edwin Hutchins and Tove Klausen (Chapter 2) is a case study that illuminates the analytic possibilities of a new approach in cognitive science. In his earlier research on the organization of work, Hutchins developed a theory of Distributed Cognition that takes as its unit of analysis a culturally constituted functional group rather than an individual mind. This theory reconceptualizes 'information' as the propagation of representational states of mediating structures that make up the dynamic and substance of any complex system. These structures include internal as well as external knowledge representations, (knowledge, skills, tools, etc). This approach permits descriptions of knowledge generation by tracing the movement of representations of states of affairs through a system and characterize the organization of system that affords performance, as individual members and as a functioning group.
Lucy Suchman (Chapter 3) analyses the way shared work spaces are interactionally produced in the service of joint work. She reveals how the centers of coordination cannot be conceived as pre-established but are continually reconstituted within the complex dynamic of relations of technology, persons, and space.
Charles Goodwin and Marjorie Harness Goodwin (Chapter 4) bring to the analysis the relations between skilled work and the material environments within which it occurs. They approach seeing as an activity constructed within the complex dynamic of the operations room. In doing so they demonstrate that is analysable as an emergent property of the ordering of communicative interactions rather than dependent upon pre-existing cognitive schema or cultural categories. Goodwin and Goodwin argue that formulating task-relevant views is crucial to the accomplishment of collaborative work.
These authors apply conversation analytic techniques to human interactions whilst acknowledging their being situated within a material world shaped by the historical activities of others. In doing this they explore links between conversation analysis (CA), Activity-Theoretical concepts drawn from the writings of Vygotsky and Leont'ev, and the growing discussions on Distributed Cognition.
The following two chapters are also concerned with technological mediation of collaborative work. However they address their discussions of empirical findings directly to implications for the design and development of technologies to support complex cooperative work activities.
Christian Heath and Paul Luff (Chapter 5) argue that despite technical advances in the area of system support for cooperative work, over the past few years there is still relatively little understanding of the organization of collaborative activity in real-world technologically supported, work environments. They discuss the possibility of applying recent developments within sociology, and in particular the naturalistic analysis of organizational conduct and social interaction, as a basis for the design and development of tools and technologies to support collaborative work. This emphasis on ordinary work practices and situated conduct is argued as the key to successful technological reform which has in the past been insensitive to such local and apparently mundane issues.
Susanne Bodker and Kaj Gornbaek (Chapter 6) are also concerned with tools for cooperative work. However their direct concern is with development of computer software that is capable of supporting complex cooperative work situations. The chapter illustrates their approach by examining the design of computer support for casework in a technical department of a Danish municipality. The authors deploy concepts derived from Activity Theory in order to discuss transformations of working practice. This Activity Theoretic discussion is elaborated further in the next two chapters by Edith Laufer and Yrj=F6 Engestr=F6m
Edith Laufer's and Joe Glick's contribution (Chapter 7) is also concerned with transformations in working practice from an Activity Theoretic perspective. They focuses on what is involved in 'being' an expert in a community of practice. They provides a detailed comparison of novice and expert functioning in the production of cost estimates for customers seeking to purchase a complex range of manufactured fasteners (eg nuts, bolts, screw, washers etc). They demonstrate how the analytic concepts developed within the framework of "Activity Theory" afford an analysis of work practices bridges individual-societal dualisms.
Yrjo Engestrom (Chapter 8) continues the analysis expertise as realised in joint rather than individual activity. This comparative study of courts of law in Finland and California examines the range and variability of participants (both the judiciary and the defendants) orientation or voice in formulating the issues and procedure in drunk driving cases. Expertise is argued to be understood as formulable as part of ordered social interactions rather than pre-existing cognitive schema and as containing the basis for the creative generation of new ways of doing things rather than dependent upon the orthodoxy of received wisdom.
The final three empirical chapters deal directly with accomplishment of collectivity in work settings.
David Middleton's paper (Chapter 9) examines examples of unscheduled conversations about team work recorded in a multi-disciplinary Child Development Centre (CDC) at a British National Health Service (NHS) hospital. The overall intention is to illustrate the construction of collectivity in team practice that occurs through the argumentative structure and content of team conversations. The suggestion is that teams should be understood performatively as constructed in and through the multiple occasions on which members define them and debate their definitions.
Chandra Mukerji's paper (Chapter 10) focuses on dilemmas of collectivity and individualization of practice in scientific laboratories. She reports a detailed ethnographic study she recently conducted examining work within scientific research laboratories. Central to the discussion is the notion of "laboratory signatures". These identify the way different laboratories develop and use idiosyncratic combinations of research techniques, theoretical allegiances, and empirical goals. This notion provides a way of linking the practices by which labs "think" about their topics to the cultural work that reproduces cultural images of science.
Harley Shaiken' contribution also explores the collective nature of skill in the motor industry. (Chapter 11; Experience and the collective nature of skill). His discussion combines the concern of macrosociological studies of work organisation and change with microsociological concerns to examine the local accomplishment and organisation of work in the interactions of participants. Shaiken analyses the human agency that maintains and repairs the cultures of practice that is the key to the way advanced manufacturing facilities evolve into effective systems. He demonstates that skills formation is located by participants as a collective concern, where communities of memory for know how have to actively worked on as participant concerns.
The theoretical paper by Susan Leigh Star (Chapter 12) contrasts a range of theoretical concerns that have already been introduced in earlier chapters
Arne Raeithel's concern (Chapter 13) is to examine the implications of ethnographic studies of cooperative work. In doing this he too draws of the recent discussions of Distributed Cognition in addition to examining examples from the ethnomethodologically related field of science studies. The implications for developing ethnographies of work that analyse work as a topic of concern for participants lies at the centre of his discussion. ```
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