MacKenzie Robert, Marks Abigail, Morgan Kate
Karlstad University, Sweden and University of Leeds, UK.
Heriot-Watt University, UK.
Sociology. 2017 Aug;51(4):732-748. doi: 10.1177/0038038515616352. Epub 2015 Dec 15.
This article explores the relationship between technology and occupational identity based on working-life biographical interviews with older telecommunications engineers. In the construction of their own working-life biographical narratives, participants attached great importance to the technology with which they worked. The article contends that workers' relationship with technology can be more nuanced than either the sociology of technology literature or the sociology of work literature accommodates. Adopting the concept of affordances, it is argued that the physical nature of earlier electromechanical technology afforded engineers the opportunity to 'fix' things through the skilled application of tools and act as autonomous custodians of 'living' machines: factors that were inherent to their occupational identity. However, the change to digital technology denied the affordances to apply hands-on skill and undermined key elements of the engineering occupational identity. Rather than simply reflecting the nostalgic romanticizing of the past, the biographies captured deterioration in the material realities of work.
本文基于对老年电信工程师的工作生活传记访谈，探讨了技术与职业身份之间的关系。在构建自己的工作生活传记叙事时，参与者非常重视他们所使用的技术。本文认为，工人与技术的关系可能比技术社会学文献或工作社会学文献所涵盖的更为细致入微。采用可供性的概念，有人认为早期机电技术的物理性质为工程师提供了通过熟练使用工具“修复”事物的机会，并使他们能够成为“有生命”机器的自主守护者：这些因素是他们职业身份所固有的。然而，向数字技术的转变剥夺了应用实践技能的可供性，并削弱了工程职业身份的关键要素。这些传记并非简单地反映对过去的怀旧式浪漫化，而是捕捉到了工作物质现实的恶化。
