This article uses a sociology of knowledge approach to discuss the reproduction of inequality within the sociocultural world of clerical workers. A model of a semiotic square is used to analyze the experiences of bored and busy work. Through this analysis of bored and busy work, the author discovered clerical workers' perceptions and activities which were both subordinating and empowering. Clerical workers participate in the process of subordination through bored/busy work. However, they also participate in empowering strategies through not-bored/not-busy work. This sociology of knowledge approach shows that people are not automatons and strengthens our understanding of the social reproduction of inequality as a multi-faceted phenomenon.
Get full access to this article
View all access options for this article.
References
1.
BeckfordJames1978. “Accounting for Conversion.”British Journal of Sociology29: 249–262.
2.
BergerPeter L.LuckmannThomas1967. The Social Construction of Reality. Garden City, NY: Anchor.
3.
BravermanHarry1974. Labor and Monopoly Capital: The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century. New York: Monthly Review Press.
4.
BurawoyMichael1979. Manufacturing Consent: Changes in the Labor Process under Monopoly Capitalism. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
5.
CicourelAaron1964. Method and Measurement in Sociology. New York: Free Press.
6.
CromptonRosemaryJonesGareth1984. White Collar Proletariat: Deskilling and Gender in Clerical Work. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
7.
CsikszentmihalyiMihaly1975. Beyond Boredom and Anxiety. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.
8.
DaviesMargery1982. Woman's Place is at the Typewriter: Office Work and Office Workers 1870–1930. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
9.
GiddensAnthony1984. The Constitution of Society: Outline of a Theory of Stratification. Berkeley: University of California Press.
10.
GreimasA. J.CourtesJ.1982. Semiotics and Language: An Analytical Dictionary. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
11.
HochschildArlie1983. The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling. Berkeley: University of California Press.
12.
Jules-RossetteBennetta1978. “The Politics of Paradigms: Contrasting Theories of Consciousness and Society.”Human Studies1: 92–110.
13.
KlappOrrin1986. Overload and Boredom: Essays on the Quality of Life in the Information Society. New York: Greenwood.
14.
MacLeodJay1987. Ain't No Makin It: Leveled Aspirations in a Low-Income Neighborhood. Boulder, CO: Westview.
15.
MannheimKarl1952. “An Approach to the Sociology of Knowledge.” Pp. 33–63 in Essays on the Sociology of Knowledge, by MannheimK.London: Routledge and Kegan Paul.
16.
MarcusGeorge1986. “Contemporary Problems of Ethnography in the Modern World System.” Pp. 165–193 in Writing Culture: The Poetics and Politics of Ethnography, edited by CliffordJ.MarcusG.Berkeley: University of California Press.
17.
MatthaeiJulie1982. An Economic History of Women in America: Women's Work, the Sexual Division of Labor and the Development of Capitalism. New York: Schocken.
18.
MolstadClark1986. “Choosing and Coping with Boring Work.”Urban Life15: 215–236.
19.
Nakano-GlennEvelynFeldbergRoslyn1977. “Degraded and Deskilled: The Proletarianization of Clerical Work.”Social Problems25: 52–64.
20.
ParsonsTalcott1967. “An Approach to the Sociology of Knowledge.” Pp 139–165 in Sociological Theory and Modern Society, edited by ParsonsT.New York: Free Press.
21.
RenzettiClaireCurranDaniel1989. Women, Men, and Society. Boston: Allyn and Bacon.
22.
RiemerJeffrey1977. “Varieties of Opportunistic Research.”Urban Life5: 467–477.
23.
RotellaElyce1981. From Home to Office: U. S. Women at Work, 1870–1930. Ann Arbor, MI: U. M. I. Research Press.
24.
SchutzAlfred1967. The Phenomenology of the Social World. Translated by WalshG.LehnertF.Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.
25.
ThompsonWilliam1983. “Hanging Tongues: A Sociological Encounter with the Assembly Line.”Qualitative Sociology6: 215–237.
26.
WillisPaul1977. Learning to Labor: How Working Class Kids Get Working Class Jobs. New York: Columbia University Press.
