development and use in multiple contexts, with focus on electronically-based workplaces. She brings in architecture, theatre - today: gender
"telespace" - uses space metaphor a lot - from architecture, theatre: stage design
Space as both geographical/cultural category.
Networked electronic environments create new kinds of spaces, create links between spatially distributed spaces and vectors.
Also looks at connection between place and time
Move from compressed, fragmented to more flowing, sequential pace/time/experiences.
contrast two worlds: design (architecture) vs. telecommunity
emphasize creative potential of computer technologies - what do they add to designers' work?
feminist theory - space metaphor. Place within space as specific settings of interactions, which provide context. Places are furnished by specific practices, symbols, knowledges, perhaps ideologies. Stress: it is important to understand place because it provides people with a view from somewhere (Harraway).
Places are connected, others are disconnected.
Connections:
1) reflect other places - we can carry things around when we travel from one place to the next.2) what is present is mediated by what is absent.
Often places are internally regionalized - subdivided into specific areas for specific processes activities.
The kind of feminist theory she is interested in: places reflect power relations - "place" is a good framework for addressing issues of power: terms of inclusion, exclusion, confinement; unequal furnishings, connections/lack of connections with other places.
Also from feminism: the fundamental ambiguity of places. E.g., home. Struggle of women of being positioned in places not necessarily of their own choice, places denigrated as inferior to other places - but you can also find pleasure in living and working in these places. Home is built around women...also includes space for negotiating their identities.
Space also raises questions of authorship and agency. Dorothy Smith has emphasized the possibility of locating and identifying positionings (where am I, where do I come from) as preconditions for knowing. A particular script can only be produced in particular places - also emphasizes connection between place and knowledge.
Conversely, making sense of distant knowledges. Often the subject has disappeared from these knowledges; they have to be reinterpreted and acted upon. A place offers a chance to reintroduce subjectivity into distant knowledges.
Telespace puts some of these basic assumptions into question because it puts place/location and authorship grounded in place/location into question. Telespace opens up a wide space for disrupting narrative, reassembling narrative, etc.
Makes telespace attractive in many ways, as it decontextualizes social knowledge in many ways.
Metaphors: bricoleur; cosmopolitan; (Leschen Ari (?) ) the carnival - revelers wear masks in which they are free to try on a variety of identities. In this world of circulating masks and identities, aesthetic reflexivity becomes an important concept. The power to evoke fantasies - a valuable resource for evoking the human gaze to wander into new terrains.
Electronic space and time: strong connection between events in space and time. (The issues of time have been much better explored than space.)
A wider range of temporal modes becomes available - hence a greater variety of temporal orders.
The kaleidescopic character of electronic mediation of time: suspends connection with history - introduce techniques of filmmaking, e.g., time becomes reversable in interesting ways.
Compression of time, meshing of temporal orders - shift from more sequential (characteristic of mechanism) to more parallel processes.
The importances of electronic spaces for work.
Networked computer systems in combination with hypermedia/multimedia - offer means of temporal variation in work spaces, new means of visual representation. (She studies design work in connection in telecommuniting.)
Two aspects:
(1) when there is no longer a distinct time and place for everything;(2) commuting between places
(1) spaces in flux: (medium favors polychronic mode - several things going on at once, like jugglers).
We know that in theatre these fluxes are used in many ways. The here and now of the stage becomes multilayered. It becomes possible to become synchronous and asynchronous at the same time.
In architectural design, they may switch between different design variants.
Over against the single author/step-by-step design process - these technologies allow for simultaneous multiple authors, exploration of a variety of possibilities. To extend and distribute the communities of practice, in order to pull in more people to enter into the work process. To support, accelerate, the work process - generate new organization for forms of work.
Telecommuting -
Some problems created for people who move in these spaces and flux - of presence and availability.
High project densities, a culture of immediate response. In gendered power relationships - presence is not alway substitutible. Telecommuters are expected to act as continuous back-up systems for others - e.g., the secretary must be immediately available for whatever comes in.
Mrs. B. used telecommuting to control her time - but she was criticized for not immediately responding to phone calls and e-mail. She was not allowed to continue with this arrangement - the system shows little respect for individual privacy.
Different rhythms of work between office /home - especially if there are children at home.
Flexible adjustment between these orders is difficult in part because of power relationships - client whose request includes weekend time, intrusion of e-mail into the private sphere.
Experience of the home as a place - how much it is meshed as a place for home/family activities, separated from other places, including workplace. The potential invisibility of the home as a workplace. One policy - strict centralization of all client contacts via telephone. Clients may not know local phone number - in tension with client interest in knowing.
Regionalization of home as place for both private life and work- most obvious mark of gender.
For men, work at home takes place within well-defined boundaries - men intrude home space by working at dining-room table (!).
Working at home does not mean a mixing of spheres - but rather, extra effort must be made to keep the sphere separate. Some men withdrew from telecommuting arrangements because there was too much work involved in keeping the children out, etc.
Context: of documents, people - an ecology of organizations, institutions connected to a workplace/place/history. Families insist on the presence and vision of particular subjects: "we need a politics of location"
Design: disrupting context or narrative can become a medium of artistic expression. Electronic spaces are the ideal medium for montage/collage. An assemblage of fragments which invite multiple readings and multiple combinations.
Telecommuting: places of work are not easily interchangable. It is not always easy to establish connections defined for one place to another place - nor is it always desirable. Managers, clients in the workplace - not at home. Spacially embedded in a team of colleagues at the office - others valued as potential sources of information, spontaneous informal contact; a rich context of work which is not electronically accessible. When moving from such a dense environment to the home, something is lost.
Conclusion: telecommuting seems to strengthen to organizations' emphasis on the individual's ability to self-organize needed support. An increasing market of informal resources - to move as clients move.
Comments in response to questions:
She wouldn't collapse everything into equality issues. There are many layers involved.
It is difficult to make generalizations: their study included 45 telecommuters, 10 of whom are women.
The only strong statement she'd make on gender: women find it much easier to make fluent transitions between work and private life.
On gender and education: computers are very much "boys' toys" - recruitment of women in computer science is going down.
The Norwegian view is that they are good on gender equality in most contexts - but their percentages are dropping, from 22% in 1993 to 6% in 1996 (?).
For her, it's a matter of sense of life: the strongest issue - does it make sense to keep certain things separate?
She is skeptical about living in the modern world in integrated ways; she is also skeptical about the desirability of blending spaces in these ways.
Telecommuting meant that
1) people worked longer outside ordinary office hours - they worked too much;2) decentralization/regionalization strategy, especially for multinational corporations. Telecommuting means the loss of people support from regional office groupings - and "outplace persons [i.e., persons who are telecommuters removed from traditional office, with support personnel, etc.] become even more frequent travelers."
In a study of rural municipalities: "place" would not have meaning in telecommunication society - but it does have meaning in terms of living, closeness to nature, etc.
[Reference: _Economics of Space_, Lasher Ari (?)]
She also notes that many forms of re-evaluating place are nostalgic.
Her attitude, finally, is cautious, skeptical.
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