Donald J. Winiecki

Subjects, Subjectivity, and Subjectification in Call Center Work: The Doings of Doings

In postindustrial society, paid labor is increasingly characterized as tertiary labor rather than primary or secondary labor and commonly mediated by computer and telecommunication technologies. However, there are few ethnographic studies on the production of the subject and subjectivity in postindustrial workplaces. This article reports a poststructurally informed ethnographic research in four telephone call centers, focusing on how technological and managerial practices are deployed and continuously oriented to in subjectification processes. The result, although “rational” and “real,” is shown to be a construction of concerted compliance and secondary adjustments through strategic processes named shadowboxing with data. Implications for the study of subjectivity and subjectification are discussed.

Attitudes and Skill Levels of College Students Entering a Typical Introductory College Computing Course

AbstractSkills and attitudes of students entering introductory computing courses have changed over the last decade, but not as much as some might think. Students new generally possess rudimentary computing skills, but lack most of the knowledge necessary for them to make effective use of computers as teachers. Students attitudes toward computers are generally positive but this study suggests a possibility that attitudes toward computers, particularly among females, may be less positive today than they were a few years ago.

The Call Centre and its Many Players

Call centres have been presented as a poster child for many things ranging from a leap in management success, to a locale of total panoptic power, to electronic sweatshops, to the latest effort in deskilling physical and emotional labour for corporate profit, to an outpost of corporate empire. Proponents of these positions frame their assertions with theoretical positions that advance particular views of either ‘nature’ or ‘society’ as the commonsensically-present ‘active ingredient’ behind the forces at play. Aided by actor-network theory, this article attempts to avoid these theoretically-constructed positions to describe how some of the many and varied actors (both human and non-human) contribute to the day-to-day production of call centres and call centre work in and of themselves. Through this analysis, the article demonstrates how artefacts produced in the field itself both help and enable self-discipline of the living in an ongoing reflective accomplishment of order.