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"During a busy day I don't get much done": on the materiality of immaterial labour in a multinational professional services firm
[journal article]
Abstract "During a busy day I don't get much done" In this quote from a client consultant condenses the dilemma discussed in this paper: what officially counts as creditable, "real work" rarely corresponds to the daily lived praxis in the office. The case study is based on my ethnographic research in a profe... view more
"During a busy day I don't get much done" In this quote from a client consultant condenses the dilemma discussed in this paper: what officially counts as creditable, "real work" rarely corresponds to the daily lived praxis in the office. The case study is based on my ethnographic research in a professional services firm and shows how the organisational understanding of what is recognised as work focuses on ascertainable deliverables such as presentations or spreadsheet reports. The lived praxis at the offices, however, is coined by relational and affective work (Hardt 1999) - paradoxically even more in situations of pressing delivery deadlines. The paper discusses these two conflictive perceptions of work/non-work in the (claiming to be) post-Fordist field of "immaterial" labour (Lazzarato 1996) and questions the proclaimed change towards an immaterial quality of labour of the "informational economy" (Hardt and Negri 2000).... view less
Classification
Ethnology, Cultural Anthropology, Ethnosociology
Free Keywords
services industry; immaterial labour; knowledge work; consultants; Mumbai
Document language
English
Publication Year
2017
Page/Pages
p. 107-119
Journal
EthnoScripts: Zeitschrift für aktuelle ethnologische Studien, 19 (2017) 2
Issue topic
The anthropology of work and labour
ISSN
2199-7942
Status
Published Version; peer reviewed