Social Imaginaries of Technology and Work. A connective ethnography

ions and symbols that both represent the world and are objects in the world” (ibid.) and; (3) “it requires a formal education, i.e. abstract, technical and theoretical knowledge” (ibid.). Apart from the centrality of knowledge and information in the narratives of the information society/knowledge economy, assumptions are made about the changed nature of work demanding specifi c skills on the part of the knowledge worker or informational laborer. For instance, in Castells’ account of information labor, jobs are performed by “the group in the information age that manages, initiates and shapes affairs, by being well-educated, having initiative, welcoming the frenetic pace of change which typifi es the current epoch, and having, perhaps above all, the capacity to ‘selfprogramme’ itself” (Webster, 2005: 447). Similar to this notion of informational labor, Drucker asserts that “in knowledge work the task does not program the worker” (ibid.: 144). To this Drucker adds that “knowledge work requires continuous learning on the part of the knowledge worker, but equally continuous teaching on the part of the knowledge worker” (Drucker, 1999: 142). The knowledge worker or information laborer defi es routinization (reproducible ways of working), has a heightened self-monitoring, and is inquisitive and creative (Drucker, 1993). In both accounts of informational labor (Castells, 1996-1998) and knowledge work (Drucker, 2001) identifi ed is thus a process of ‘refl exive accumulation’ (Lash and Urry, 1994). Refl exive accumulation refers to the fact that “the labour force becomes increasingly self-monitoring as well as develops an even greater refl exivity with respect to the rules and resources of the workplace” (Lash and Urry: 1994: 6). The expectations of the information society/knowledge economy as discussed in the above are translated into the postulate of a post-bureaucratic organization in organizations. Post-bureaucracy is “a ‘trend’ encompassing a range of organizational changes which have as their espoused aim the erosion or dismantling of bureaucracy” (Grey and Garsten 2001: 230). In line with the notion of refl exive accumulation, and in stark contrast to the unwieldy bureaucratic organization, the post-bureaucratic organization appeals to characteristics such as fl uidity, fl exibility and creativity.3 Whereas the aforementioned thinking can be categorized under the heading of the information ‘revolution’, similar statements on the information society are made in the so-called computer or ICT revolution interpretation of the information society. In fact, the two interpretations are often found to converge. 3 As Barley and Kunda (2001) state, however, “most [academic and popular accounts of the post-bureaucratic organization] fall short of offering either a nuanced description of attributes of postbureaucratic organizing or a full account of why new forms of organizing have emerged” (Barley and Kunda, 2001: 77).