Modern Times

Interview Project

Traveling Facts, Reproducing Sites
Modern Times Artifact Project Interview Project Anthropology of Truths Part I - Common Knowledge Part II - Sources Part III - Cultures of Truths Weight-loss Drugs Attention Deficit Disorder Gulf War Syndrome	The second project is about situated knowledge, culture, and production. The challenge is to find a way to apply some of the topics we have talked about in class to interviews with differently situated people within a site of knowledge production. How do they understand the world they inhabit? How do they do so differently than others? Your assignment is to: Pick a site of knowledge production and fact flow Business/Industry Department Laboratory Agency Medical Office Map the different kinds of positions within it Organization Chart, with dotted lines outside the site Hierarchy Chart Career Path Network Chart Find three people to interview who are in different positions Ask them questions about their position What do they actually do? (% time spent on different activities) How do they talk about these activities (by project, by task, by people)? How do they keep up with knowledge (division, site, customers, profession, world)? Sources (meetings, networking, conferences, internet, newsletters/journals, magazines)? What makes a person good in that position? In other positions? How much is learned, how much has to be already in the person? What qualities beyond merit does a person need to succeed? What kinds of pressures are there (publish or perish, sales quota, networking)? e.g. How important is loyalty in this industry? Are there some aspects of the job that they didn’t know beforehand, no one told them, but that turned out to be incredibly important? How are decisions made (company wide)? How does the person come to know about them? How are local decisions made (democratic, committee, autocratic, modeling)? More specific questions related to a topic in our class: Information control, knowledge production in-house, risks? Different measures of risk, differing styles of belief? Explanations of the behaviors of others (even customers, activists, competitors. etc.)? Changing times, importance of financial aspects, globalization? Job/Company/Department structure differences? Outsourcing? Industry-University collaboration (how has this changed)? Official politics (Washington), what roles are there? What qualities do good students/recruits have? Have they changed over the last 10 years? How are new projects chosen? How are folks targeted (or not)? Discuss your findings in a paper: How do the differently positioned folks inhabit different worlds? What kinds of assumptions do they share? What roles might these similarities and differences play in the reproduction of the site? Reproduction at other levels (individual, group, division/department, discipline/profession)? What do you notice about behavior, demeanor, dress, style, neatness, etc.? How are these important? What areas did you find difficult to find out about? Why do you think so? Relate your analysis to some of the papers that we have read and talked about. Length: 5-7 pages / 2500 words.