CONSUMING WORK - COMPUTERS, SUBJECTIVITY AND APPROPRIATION IN THE UNIVERSITY WORKPLACE

The introduction of technologies has long been a central issue in the sociology of work. This has, however, largely been analysed in terms o f worker displacement, deskilling and management control, while little empirical work has focused on questions concerning subjectivity. Curr ent interest in Foucauldian approaches to questions of work and identi ty has remained primarily theoretical in nature and similarly lacks a sustained discussion of agency. Recent work on the relation between co nsumption and work has begun to provide a more nuanced framework for d iscussing the context-specific forms of appropriation in the workplace and their relation to workplace subjectivities. This article, based o n a study of individuals' relationships with the personal computer in the university workplace, adopts a consumption-based approach to explo re the complex interplay between subjectivity, technology and work. It examines how the introduction of the personal computer articulates wi th the interweaving of a 'professional self' and a sense of self drawn from the non-work realm. These different subjectivities relate to dif ferent tactics of appropriation: appropriation by mastery and by domes tication of the work environment. Technologies themselves, however, al so participate in the reconfiguration of work spaces and routines, inv olving questions of competence, knowledge and power, time and space, a nd the boundaries between home and work, in the new environments of co mputerised academia.