Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Date of Degree

2008

Document Type

Doctoral Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy

Program

Sociology

Advisor

Stanley Aronowitz

Committee Members

William Kornblum

Mitchell Duneier

Subject Categories

Sociology

Abstract

Anonymous workbloggers—employees who write online diaries about their work—are often simultaneously productive workers and savage critics of the corporate cultures in which they toil. Writing under an assumed identity, these workers create satirical portraits of their supervisors and colleagues, rail against management gurus and corporate buzzwords, celebrate time-wasting capers, and daydream about quitting. Their irreverent and fictionalized accounts of work, which are shielded from the gaze of co-workers and supervisors, reveal how office workers critically negotiate a labor process that, increasingly, demands their hearts and minds.

This study, which comprises an overview of media and organizational responses to the phenomenon, ethnographic case study of a small group of anonymous workbloggers in the North West of England, and analysis of a broader sample of workblogs from both sides of the Atlantic, explores anonymous workblogging as a window on the nature of dissatisfaction and alienation among knowledge workers. Considering these workers as authors, it reveals that a small yet vocal group of cynical workers are engaged in sophisticated, creative, and networked forms of resistance, exploiting the knowledge workplace's decentralized structure to reclaim time and creative space from corporate culture's encroachment.

Paying close attention to the artistry and craftsmanship that workers employ in writing blogs, this study draws attention to the diversion of significant creative and intellectual resources away from the labor process. Treating employee dissent as an intellectually and technologically sophisticated phenomenon that emerges from the contemporary white-collar labor process, this dissertation argues that—in concert with ecologically and ethically driven sustainability mandates—the creative activity of a very small and disparate number of talented and disaffected workers can produce a counter-hegemonic force in the cultural realm. However, using the literati of the past as a guide, the study also highlights the intellectual thrill of unrealized dreams and foiled ambitions, which makes the postponement of the end of capitalism, and oppression itself, a source of exquisite fulfillment for those who pursue their art clandestinely.

Comments

Digital reproduction from the UMI microform.

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