Work's Intimacy

224 Pages·2011·8.26 MB·English

by  Melissa Gregg

3 011
Work’s Intimacy
@Jason_a_w
Work’s Intimacy
Melissa Gregg
polity
Copyright © Melissa Gregg 2011
The right of Melissa Gregg to be identified as Author of this Work has been asserted
in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
First published in 2011 by Polity Press
Reprinted in 2012
Polity Press
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Polity Press
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ISBN-13: 978-0-7456-5027-2
ISBN-13: 978-0-7456-5028-9 (pb)
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Contents
List of Figures vii
Acknowledgments viii
Preface x
Introduction: Work’s Intimacy - Performing
Professionalism Online and On the Job 1
Part I: The Connectivity Imperative: Business Responses
to New Media
1. Selling the Flexible Workplace: The Creative
Economy and New Media Fetishism 23
2. Working from Home: The Mobile Office and
the Seduction of Convenience 39
3. Part-time Precarity: Discount Labor
and Contract Careers 56
Part II: Getting Intimate: Online Culture and the Rise
of Social Networking
4. To CC: Or Not to CC: Teamwork in Office Culture 73
5. Facebook Friends: Security Blankets and
Career Mobility 87
Contents
VI
6. Know Your Product: Online Branding and
the Evacuation of Friendship 102
Part III: Looking for Love in the Networked Household
7. Home Offices and Remote Parents: Family Dynamics
in Online Households 121
8. Long Hours, High Bandwidth: Negotiating
Domesticity and Distance 138
9. On Call 153
Conclusion: Labor Politics in an Online Workplace -
The Lovers vs. the Loveless 166
Notes 175
References 187
Index 199
List of Figures
Figure 0.1 Open-plan newsroom, Brisbane, 2007 16
Figure 0.2 Arts festival workstation; Outlook running
on Dell 17
Figure 0.3 Brisbane suburbia 19
Figure 1.1 Selling the Brisbane Boom: a cover page from
the Courier Mail's weekly careers lift-out
halfway through the study; Within a few
months the financial crisis was threatening
hundreds of jobs © Newspix / Kevin Bull 27
Figure 5.1 Selection from “Bogan Gifts” Facebook
application 92
Figure 7.1 Miranda’s dining table 123
Figure 7.2 Kitchen office 124
Figure 7.3 Geoff’s home office (1) 127
Figure 7.4 Geoff’s home office (reverse view) 128
Figure 8.1 Bringing home to work 140
Figure 8.2 Domesticity at a distance 140
Figure 8.3 Bedroom offices 150
Figure 8.4 Patrick’s bedroom office 151
Acknowledgments
A three-year Australian Research Council Postdoctoral Discovery
Fellowship supported this research from 2007-9. Thanks to Graeme
Turner for his help in the draft stages of the application and for so
much more since. Further assistance for the project came from a
University of Queensland Foundation Research Excellence Award in
2007. This grant helped to fund the team of research assistants that
made this book possible: Neil Harvey, Ian Rogers, Nadia Mizner,
Sarah Xu, and Bo McGrath. I am grateful to all of them.
Colleagues at the Centre for Critical and Cultural Studies at the
University of Queensland and the Department of Gender and
Cultural Studies at the University of Sydney have been wonderfully
forgiving of my own work habits. I have made many close friends
in the long hours spent in the Forgan Smith Tower and the
Quadrangle, with and without the assistance of technology. On the
domestic front, thanks to Rachel O’Reilly, Jason Wilson, and
Catriona Menzies-Pike. Also to the many online friends who have
kept us occupied in and out of each other’s company,
For help with the manuscript, special thanks to Geert Lovink,
Graeme Turner, Terry Flew, and Michelle Dicinoski. For invitations
and support to present this material overseas, I particularly thank
Rosalind Gill, Andy Pratt, Mark Banks, Stephanie Taylor, Adi
Kuntsman, David Hesmondhalgh, Gavin Stewart, Alexis Wheedon,
Greg Seigworth, and Trebor Scholz. For feedback, references, soli¬
darity and provocation thanks to Lauren Berlant, Kris Cohen,
Genevieve Bell, Mark Deuze, Jo Littler, Helen Kennedy, John Clarke,