[Air-l] Fwd: CFP: Technical Communication in the Age of Distributed Work

[Steve Jones]

Begin forwarded message:

> Special Issue of TCQ: Technical Communication in the Age of 
> Distributed Work
> spinuzzi  05/30/2005 - 04:34
> Call for Proposals: Technical Communication in the Age of Distributed 
> Work
>
> Shoshana Zuboff and James Maxmin are excited about it and see it as a
> moment of new liberation and choice for consumers and workers alike. 
> Gilles
> Deleuze saw it as horrifying, even worse than the disciplinary society
> Michel Foucault described. It goes by many names: Distributed 
> capitalism,
> the control society, the informatics of domination, the support 
> economy.
> Whatever its name, the characteristics are the same: control over
> organizations is as distributed as ownership is in managerial 
> capitalism;
> digital technologies play a vital enabling role; consumption is
> individuated, taking the form of the desire for unique identities and
> unique experiences; direct relationships between customers and 
> businesses
> become more important; and customers look for stable beneficial
> relationships among consumers and producers that support these 
> individual
> experiences. These needs are supplied not by large, vertically 
> integrated
> companies but by temporary "federations" of suppliers for each 
> individual
> transaction. These federations are endlessly recombinant. Work is
> fragmented temporally, geographically, and disciplinarily. Lifelong
> employment is replaced by what Zuboff and Maxmin call "lifelong 
> learning"
> -- what Donna Haraway calls continual deskilling and retraining.
>
> We can see the early signs of distributed work in the service sector, 
> in
> the outsourcing of technical support, and in places like eBay and 
> Craig's
> List. But we can also see it in the rise of homeschooling, the 
> weakening of
> unions, the shift from stable identity politics to unstable 
> subsegments,
> and the popularity of automobile customization. We can detect it in the
> proliferation of time management methods, the popularity of distance
> education, the increasing importance of content management systems, 
> and the
> early success of Howard Dean's campaign. We can trace its contours in
> Brenton Faber's discussion of corporate universities; Johndan
> Johnson-Eilola's explorations of dataclouds; and Teresa Harrison and 
> James
> Zappen's development of online community spaces and attendant research
> methods.
>
> What does distributed work mean to us as technical communicators? How 
> is it
> changing our field? Should we adapt to it, critique it, or resist it?
>
> In this special issue of Technical Communication Quarterly, we will 
> discuss
> distributed work's implications for technical communication theory,
> methodology, pedagogy, ethics, and practice. In particular, we will
> consider topics such as:
>
>    * How is technical communication practice changing, and how will it
> change in the future, as it adapts to distributed work? How will it
> accommodate, resist, or redirect?
>    * How do we teach technical communicators who expect to go into the
> support economy? What are our political-ethical responsibilities and 
> our
> logistical challenges? What changes do we need to make to pedagogical
> theory?
>    * What roles will technology play in an economic climate in which
> knowledge, expertise, and intelligence are widely distributed? For
> instance, how can software documentation survive when users routinely
> Google for answers?
>    * What theoretical frameworks are useful for theorizing the shift to
> distributed work? What case studies can be used to illustrate it and
> explore its implications for technical communication?
>    * What research methods do we need to adapt or develop to apply to
> distributed work in technical communication research? What methods 
> should
> we abandon?
>    * Finally, what are the contours of distributed work? What are its
> promises and horrors?
>
>
> Schedule:
>
>    * 1-2 page proposal for paper: March 15, 2006
>    * Full paper (if proposal is accepted): June 30, 2006
>    * Scheduled publication of issue: Summer 2007
>
> Contact information: Send proposals in .DOC, .RTF, or .HTML to
>
>    Clay Spinuzzi
>    clay.spinuzzi at mail.utexas.edu
>
> Also, please contact the editor by email if you would like to be 
> considered
> a reviewer for this special issue.
>
>
> ---------- End Forwarded Message ----------