Machine at Work or Just a Housewife

Machine at Work: Technology, Work and Organization

Author: Keith Grint

This highly topical book is a concise and accessible account of the relationship between technology and work. Firstly, it reviews and critically assesses a variety of recent approaches to the social and cultural dimensions of technology. Secondly, it examines the implications of these new approaches for existing ideas about the nature of technology and work organization.
At the core of much thinking about technology is the assumption that the technical character and capacity of artefacts is given. The enduring image of deus ex machina captures the idea that it is the essential capacity 'within' a technology which, in the end, accounts for the way we organize ourselves, our work and other life experiences. Recent work in the sociology of technology, by contrast, sets out relativist and constructivist accounts of technology, which begin to challenge this central assumption.
The Machine at Work includes a reinterpretation of the Luddites; a review of the social processes of development in information technology; a reassessment of theories of the role of technology in work; and an analysis of the common limitations of some constructivist and feminist perspectives on technology. The book argues that only a commitment to a particular conception of constructivism enables the kind of radical rethinking about technology and work relations that is needed.
This engaging and informative text will be of interest to students in a range of subject areas - from sociology, organizational theory and behaviour, to industrial relations, management and business studies.

Table of Contents:

	Acknowledgements
	Introduction: Deus ex Machina	1
1	Theories of Technology	6
2	The Luddites: Diablo ex Machina	39
3	Configuring the User: Inventing New Technologies	65
4	Some Failures of Nerve in Constructivist and Feminist Analyses of Technology	95
5	Technology and Work Organizations	116
6	What's Social about Being Shot?	140
	Notes	169
	References	176
	Index	195

Books about: Cuba after Castro or The Practical Student

Just a Housewife: The Rise and Fall of Domesticity in America

Author: Glenna Matthews

Housewives are a vast portion of humanity, yet they have received very little attention, let alone respect. Now Glenna Matthews, who spent many years as "just a housewife" before becoming a scholar of American history, sets out to redress this imbalance.
What she has found will surprise many readers: While there was always greater esteem for the male world of work, in the mid-nineteenth century, she maintains there was such widespread reverence for the home that housewives had considerable self-respect. The early stages of industrialization--the invention of the stove and the sewing machine, for example--made possible a craft tradition of cooking, baking and sewing that gave women great satisfaction and a place in the world. The home had an important religious role and was seen as the center of republican virtue. There was an intermingling of private and public spheres for both men and women, and marriage was generally companionate.
One hundred years later, even though women had new opportunities, most women were still occupying the role of housewife, yet much less esteem was attached to that role. On the basis of an examination of a vast array of sources, ranging from novels like Huckleberry Finn, Uncle Tom's Cabin and Main Street, as well as letters, popular magazines, and cookbooks, Matthews sets out to examine what women had, and what they have lost in modern times. She argues that the culture of profesionalism of the late nineteenth century and the culture of consumption that came to fruition in the 1920s combined to kill off the "cult of domesticity" and led to what Betty Friedan identified in Feminine Mystique as "the problem that has no name"--the emptinessand devaluation of many housewive's lives.
This is an important, challenging book that sheds new light on a central aspect of human experience, the essential task of providing for a society's nurture and daily maintenance.