The authors contributing to this volume represent a growing concern within anthropology, psychology, communications, sociology, sociology of science, and cognitive science for redefining the methods and topics that constitute the study of work. They investigate work activity in ways that do not reduce it to a “psychology” of individual cognition or a “sociology” of communication (whether “micro” or “macro”) and societal structures. The chapters aim to demonstrate approaches that have moved beyond such Cartesian orthodoxies. Mindful practices and communicative interaction are examined as situated issues at work in the reproduction of communities of practice in a wide variety of work settings including courts of law, health care, computer software design, scientific laboratories, telephone sales, control, repair, and maintenance of advanced manufacturing systems, the piloting of airliners, air traffic control, baggage handling, traffic management in underground railway systems, and auto-engine assembly plants.

Sociology of work

In sociological studies of work, two broad traditions may be identified: macrolevel discussions of the impact of technological development on the skills and organization of work and microsociological analysis of locally constructed and negotiated work activities. The macrosociological discussions [sometimes dubbed the labor-process debate (Wood, 1982; 1989)] have moved from general assessments of automation to more differentiated analyses of “post-Fordism,” flexible production, and “lean production” (e.g., Warner, Wobbe, & Brodner, 1990; Womack, Jones, & Roos, 1991; Berggren, 1992).

There is also continuing sociological analysis and debate concerning historical changes in the patterning and social positioning of work (see, for example, Adler, 1992).