The Skill Requirements of Work Activity: An Ethnographic Perspective

Abstract

EditorialT he past four years have given me the wonderful chance to edit this Review. It has been a pleasure to learn about the projects anthropologists throughout the country are pursuing that display the range of issues composing the Anthropology of Work. The profession is growing, and investigations about work all its forms-across cultures, countries, and time-are becoming increasingly significant During the last few years my own research has developed in anthropological ravine-combining "cognitive" and "material" approaches in the study of work. I have been concerned with how the knowledge, understanding, and ways of thinking in work places is crucial to the performance of work, particularly in light of the new "smart" technologies under continual development. Arguments concerning the relationship and impact of technology on society, the nature of human thought, deskilling, deindustrialization, and human communication are all important to the social change taking place in today's world.Since these issues are near and dear to my heart, and since this is my last issue of the Review, I am particularly pleased that the articles here target how the anthropological view of knowledge and work is an important arena for study. Baba argues that anthropological case studies yield evidence that is powerful in understanding work in organizations. This is an important argument in the "real world" in which "real evidence" is frequently quantitative, based on aggregate studies. Orr also provides evidence that the nature of knowledge among workers is invisible to many people within organizations, and that unless it becomes visible and acknowledged, organizational decisions will be made that are damaging to both workers and the social organization of work. These issues are also ones that were profoundly important to Sylvia Scribner, a founding member of SAW, who died this past summer.It is becoming increasingly important for us to articulate the strength that an anthropological perspective toward work provides. In so doing, we will be in a better position to share the insights we gain about the diversity of human work, the importance and persistence of social groups for shared knowledge and human development, and the ingenuity of people. Patricia Sachs

Letting “The System” Do the Work

“…2 Skills. Much of the discussion of labor and technological change has been phrased in terms of a decrease in worker skills (Baba, 1991;Braverman, 1974;Orr, 1991). However, there is also a considerable increase in skills that goes along with technological change.…”

“…At the same time, staff received their first training in overall agency operations and consolidated their policies into formal procedure manuals (which provided another defense against the capriciousness of upper management). In at least some cases, as well, there was an increase in the ability to deal with systems as a whole-something Baba (1991) has noted as a distinct new skill area in its own right.…”