Dear all,
I --along with few others-- have contributed to the updated (and translated)
version of this book, just released by the MIT Press.
Dominique VINCK (ed.), Everyday engineering. An Ethnography of Design and
Innovation, MIT Press, Cambridge MA, Inside Technology Serie, 2003, 247 p.
http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?sid=3F6B17AB-416C-45E2-8ABB
-668B980F082C&ttype=2&tid=9623
Everyday Engineering was written to help future engineers understand what
they are going to be doing in their everyday working lives, so that they can
do their work more effectively and with a broader social vision. It will
also give sociologists deeper insights into the sociotechnical world of
engineering. The book consists of ethnographic studies in which the authors,
all trained in both engineering and sociology, go into the field as
participant-observers. The sites and types of engineering explored include
mechanical design in manufacturing industries, instrument design, software
debugging, environmental management within companies, and the implementation
of a system for separating household waste.
The book is organized in three parts. The first part introduces the
complexity of technical practices. The second part enters the social and
cultural worlds of designers to grasp their practices and motivations. The
third part examines the role of writing practices and graphical
representation. The epilogue uses the case studies to raise a series of
questions about how objects can be taken into account in sociological
analyses of human organizations.
Enjoy your reading,
--
Olivier LAVOISY
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http://www.lavoisy.net
http://www.themeris.com
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Tel. +33 (0)4 76 82 73 26
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