300056 "Workplace Studies" (englisch, Theorieseminar) (S) (WiSe 2010/2011)

Workplace studies are a subgenre of ethnomethological research, but they have also turned out to be much more than that. Garfinkel’s call to study work in its natural settings has been attracting a number of researchers beyond the ethnomethodological camp. Analyzing work as situated activity has become prominent in otherwise quite disparate areas of social research like science and technology studies and the sociology of organizations, and various research interests have been converging on “bringing work back in” (Barley & Kunda 2001). We will start the seminar by reconstructing the original ethnomethodological impetus towards studying work in its natural settings, subsequently exploring how the theme has been taken up by others. Though studies of a more theoretical nature will be part of our sample, we will engage with case studies in most of our sessions. Despite the focus on analyzing specific cases of work in its natural settings, assessing what we can learn from studying work about phenomena other than specific instances of work will be crucial to evaluating the contribution of workplace studies to sociological discourse. What we can learn about organizations from studying work during the course of the seminar will, hopefully, be a central aspect of this assessment.

Bibliography

Barley, Stephen R. / Kunda, Gideon, 2001: Bringing Work Back In. Organization Science, 12: 76-95.