Posts Tagged ‘work’
In Praise of Idleness
Like most of my generation, I was brought up on the saying: ‘Satan finds some mischief for idle hands to do.’ Being a highly virtuous child, I believed all that I was told, and acquired a conscience which has kept me working hard down to the present moment. But although my conscience has controlled my actions, my opinions have undergone a revolution. I think that there is far too much work done in the world, that immense harm is caused by the belief that work is virtuous, and that what needs to be preached in modern industrial countries is quite different from what always has been preached. Everyone knows the story of the traveler in Naples who saw twelve beggars lying in the sun (it was before the days of Mussolini), and offered a lira to the laziest of them. Eleven of them jumped up to claim it, so he gave it to the twelfth. this traveler was on the right lines. But in countries which do not enjoy Mediterranean sunshine idleness is more difficult, and a great public propaganda will be required to inaugurate it. I hope that, after reading the following pages, the leaders of the YMCA will start a campaign to induce good young men to do nothing. If so, I shall not have lived in vain.
From teams to knots: Activity-Theoretical Studies of Collaboration and Learning at Work
Teams are commonly celebrated as efficient and humane ways of organizing work and learning. By means of a series of in-depth case studies of teams in the United States and Finland over a time span of more than ten years, this book shows that teams are not a universal and ahistorical form of collaboration. Teams are best understood in their specific activity contexts and embedded in historical development of work. The book develops a set of conceptual tools for analysis and design of transformations in collaborative work and learning.
Cognition and communication at work
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. They investigate work activity in ways that do not reduce it to a “psychology” of individual cognition or to a “sociology” of societal structures and communication. A key theme in the material is the relationship between theory and practice. Mindful practices and communicative interaction are examined as situated issues at work in the reproduction of communities of practice in a variety of settings including: courts of law, computer software design, the piloting of airliners, the coordination of air traffic control, and traffic management in underground railway systems.
The Pleasures of Learning at Work – Foucault and Phenomenology Compared
This paper provides a comparative account of two conceptualisations of pleasure. The first draws on Foucault’s analysis of bio-power. The second provides a phenomenological account where pleasure is viewed as an aspect of our immediate consciousness. These conceptualisations are illuminated through an analysis of employees’ accounts of learning at work. Overall, the paper demonstrates how, in a Foucauldian analysis, pleasure disappears as it becomes a cipher for power whereas within the phenomenological account pleasure is foregrounded but power disappears. The concluding section focuses on the problems of both conceptualisations and explores whether we should simply accept that different analytical frameworks do different work for us or whether we should be more concerned at the losses, and gains, associated with theoretical choices. The conclusion further asks whether a concern to foreground pleasure in accounts of learning represents an antidote to the pessimism of much critical analysis or whether we should treat pleasure as a morally duplicitous category that encourages political apathy.
Vygotsky at work and play
Vygotsky at Work and Play relates the discoveries and insights of Russian psychologist Lev Vygotsky to ordinary people and their communities. The authora, Lois Holzman, working with her intellectual partner Fred Newman, has advanced a unique performance-based methodology of development and learning that draws upon a fresh and in some ways unconventional reading of Vygotsky. In this book, Holzman shows this methodology at work in key learning environments: psychotherapy, classrooms, out-of-school youth programs, and the workplace.
The book vividly describes Vygotskian-inspired programs involving thousands of people from a wide range of cultural backgrounds, ages and occupations. Interwoven in each chapter are discussions of Vygotskya (TM)s understandings of play, speaking, thinking, the zone of proximal development, the individual and the group. Holzman brings practice and theory together to provide a way forward for those who wish to liberate human development and learning from the confines of the social scientific paradigm, the institutional location of educational and psychological research, and the practices that derive from them.Vygotsky at Work and Play presents a challenge to the underlying distinctions and boundaries of psychology, most significantly to the presumption of a cognitive-emotive divide, the notion of fixed identity, the privileging of the individual over the group, and the instrumental nature of play and performance.
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