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as the goodness of fit of the piece of code with the larger system under development. Standards range from the precise integration of the underlying hardware to the 60Hz power coming out of the wall through a standard size plug. |
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Merely reducing the description to the physical aspect such as the plug does not get us anywhere interesting about the actual mixture of physical and conventional or symbolic. A good operations researcher could describe how and whether things would work together, often purposefully blurring the physical and conventional boundaries in making the analysis. But what is missing is a sense of the landscape of work as experienced by those within it. It gives no sense of something as important as the texture of an organization: Is it smooth or rough? Bare or knotty? What is needed is a sense of the topography of all of the arrangements: Are they colliding, coextensive, gappy, or orthogonal? One way to get at these questions is to take quite literally the kinds of metaphors that people use when describing their experience of organizations, bureaucracies, and information systems, which are discussed in more detail in chapter 9. |
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When we think of classifications and standards as both material and symbolic, we adapt a set of tools not usually applied to them. There are tools for analyzing built structures, such as structural integrity, enclosures and confinements, permeability, and durability, among many others. Structures have texture and depth. The textural way of speaking of classifications and standards is common in organizations and groups. Metaphors of tautness, knots, fabrics, and networks pervade modern language (Lakoff and Johnson 1980). |
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The Indeterminacy of the Past: Multiple Times, Multiple Voices |
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The third methodological theme concerns the past as indeterminate.
10 We are constantly revising our knowledge of the past in light of new developments in the present. This is not a new idea to historiography or to biography. We change our resumes as we acquire new skills to appear like smooth, planned paths of development, even if the change had been unexpected or undesired. When we become members of new social worlds, we often retell our life stories in new terminology. A common example of this is a religious conversion where the past is retold as exemplifying errors, sinning, and repentance (Strauss 1959). Or when one comes out as gay or lesbian, childhood behaviors and teenage crushes become indicators of early inklings of sexual choice (Wolfe and Stanley 1980). |
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