Last chapter

Posted on | March 13, 2010 | No Comments

I am finally writing the last chapter of my book. It is the one called “Long hours, high bandwith: Negotiating domesticity at a distance”.

This chapter illustrates how office and home space are each transformed and rendered visible as ambient technologies allow a widening number of close companions throughout the working day. The “full time intimate community” (Ito 2007 ) enabled by online devices is one way that relationships are developing to compensate for the lack of physical time available to share with loved ones. In other contexts, however, the constant flow of email from morning to night can help workers feel valued in a way that may not be obvious in their present domestic relationships.

And so forth. Since the book is about work’s “intimacy”, this is where I talk about the language workers use to justify why they stay in contact with work so much.

If the romantic notion of love typically involves the desire to spend time with another, can we begin to see the constantly-connected behaviour of workers in this book as a form of unrecognised intimacy? If employees regularly claim to “love” their work, what does love mean in this context, and how seriously should we take it as a rationale for the long hours they choose to spend in work’s company?

Category: Research, Work

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