Melissa Gregg | Intel Corporation (original) (raw)

Books by Melissa Gregg

This book provides a long-overdue account of online technology and its impact on the work and lif... more This book provides a long-overdue account of online technology and its impact on the work and lifestyles of professional employees. It moves between the offices and homes of workers in the knew "knowledge" economy to provide intimate insight into the personal, family, and wider social tensions emerging in today’s rapidly changing work environment.

Drawing on her extensive research, Gregg shows that new media technologies encourage and exacerbate an older tendency among salaried professionals to put work at the heart of daily concerns, often at the expense of other sources of intimacy and fulfillment. New media technologies from mobile phones to laptops and tablet computers, have been marketed as devices that give us the freedom to work where we want, when we want, but little attention has been paid to the consequences of this shift, which has seen work move out of the office and into cafés, trains, living rooms, dining rooms, and bedrooms. This professional "presence bleed" leads to work concerns impinging on the personal lives of employees in new and unforseen ways.

This groundbreaking book explores how aspiring and established professionals each try to cope with the unprecedented intimacy of technologically-mediated work, and how its seductions seem poised to triumph over the few remaining relationships that may stand in its way.

This field-defining collection consolidates and builds momentum in the burgeoning area of affect ... more This field-defining collection consolidates and builds momentum in the burgeoning area of affect studies. The contributors include many of the central theorists of affect—those visceral forces beneath, alongside, or generally other than conscious knowing that can serve to drive us toward movement, thought, and ever-changing forms of relation. As Lauren Berlant explores “cruel optimism,” Brian Massumi theorizes the affective logic of public threat, and Elspeth Probyn examines shame, they, along with the other contributors, show how an awareness of affect is opening up exciting new insights in disciplines from anthropology, cultural studies, geography, and psychology to philosophy, queer studies, and sociology. In essays diverse in subject matter, style, and perspective, the contributors demonstrate how affect theory illuminates the intertwined realms of the aesthetic, the ethical, and the political as they play out across bodies (human and non-human) in both mundane and extraordinary ways. They reveal the broad theoretical possibilities opened by an awareness of affect as they reflect on topics including ethics, food, public morale, glamor, snark in the workplace, and mental health regimes. The Affect Theory Reader includes an interview with the cultural theorist Lawrence Grossberg and an afterword by the anthropologist Kathleen Stewart. In the introduction, the editors suggest ways of defining affect, trace the concept’s history, and highlight the role of affect theory in various areas of study.

In a series of encounters with key figures in the field of cultural studies, this book draws atte... more In a series of encounters with key figures in the field of cultural studies, this book draws attention to the significance of voice and address in enacting a political project from within the academy. Combining a focus on theories of "affect" lately dominant in the humanities with a history of cultural studies as a discipline, it highlights the diverse modes of performance that accompany and assist scholarly practice. Writing from the perspective of a new generation of cultural studies practitioners, Melissa Gregg provides a missing link between the field's earliest political concerns with those of the present. Throughout, she emphasizes the ongoing importance of engaged, public intellectualism.

Papers by Melissa Gregg

Oxford Handbook of Media, Technology and Organisation, 2019

The clock has long been a social technology, a way of authorizing a singular source of informatio... more The clock has long been a social technology, a way of authorizing a singular source of information to propel collective activity. In this chapter, we explore this function and ask whether it continues in quite the same way in the distributed work worlds of the present. We investigate the particular role of the clock in the workplace, and how a predictable relationship to time accrued value for The Organization as an institutional form. The clock is at the heart of normative frameworks governing bodies and their labours. Yet its role in the organization of work is changing with the inﬂuence of new sensor based systems.

Published in The Sociology of Speed: Digital, Organizational and Social Temporalities. Judy Wajcm... more Published in The Sociology of Speed: Digital, Organizational and Social Temporalities. Judy Wajcman and Nigel Dodd (editors). Oxford UP. Pre-publication proof.

Keywords in Media Studies

Data plays a major role in orchestrating contemporary power relations through the collecting capa... more Data plays a major role in orchestrating contemporary power relations through the collecting capacities of knowledge-generating machines. For media studies, data is an increasingly important term as information gathered and shared through personal and public communication channels becomes subject to new kinds of tracking, quantification and analysis. When communication technologies and people are equally mobile, we are no longer observing discrete bodies interacting with static media entities of transmission and aggregation so much as we are elaborating a hybrid relationship of occasional collaboration. The media studies to come will need to explain our involvement with data and their capturing devices as an accommodation, a co-habitation, a shared breath, mutual dwelling.

Draft chapter for The Sociology of Speed: Digital, Organizational and Social Temporalities, Judy Wajcman and Nigel Dodd (eds).

How do employers encourage productivity in knowledge workers? How do we measure outputs and accom... more How do employers encourage productivity in knowledge workers? How do we measure outputs and accomplishment in a world of immaterial labor? Inspired by Kittler’s (1999) Gramophone, Film, Typewriter, this article traces a series of management innovations over the past century that cumulatively determined the speed and character of labor. In the shift from shop floor to social factory, productivity moved from an external imposition to a performance of individual will – a lifestyle choice for responsible professionals. The personalization of productivity completes a process of professional subjectification that sutures aspiration and athleticism to competitive ends. It turns the workplace into a sporting field that promises to reward champions.

This paper analyzes the rise of ‘hackathons’ – intensive code- and data-sharing events that bring... more This paper analyzes the rise of ‘hackathons’ – intensive code- and data-sharing events that bring participants together to accomplish specific challenges – to understand their role in the ecosystem for app development and the qualities of work they promote. It isolates the specific ideological work of the civic hackathon, which presents a new development in the history of sacrificial labor supplementing creative industries. Hackathons are a bridge between the ‘free labor’ foundational to the early internet and the practice of spec work in the field of design. When the hackathon is advertised as 'civic' voluntarism, the labor involved in design is doubly discounted.

Cultural Studies

This paper for a special issue of Cultural Studies focuses on Graeme Turner’s exemplary managemen... more This paper for a special issue of Cultural Studies focuses on Graeme Turner’s exemplary management style – his role as a mentor and a keen institutional operator. Turner’s brand of cultural studies is defined by its attention to the arts and politics of management alongside the customary business of doing research. It is cultural studies’ lack of engagement with management theory that has made this type of work difficult to appreciate. This paper acknowledges the significance of Turner’s management politics, its relevance to his broader intellectual project, and its importance for the field of Cultural Studies at a time of 'adhoc professionalism'.

Television and New Media, 2015

This paper focuses first on the scopophilic aspects of large scale data visualization – the fanta... more This paper focuses first on the scopophilic aspects of large scale data visualization – the fantasy of command and control through seeing (Halperin 2014) – and places these in relation to key sites and conventions inside the tech industry. Borrowing John Caldwell’s (2008) notion of “industrial reflexivity”, I explain the charismatic power and performative effects that attend representations of data as visual spectacle. Drawing on 12 months of personal experience working for a large technology company, and observations from a number of relevant showcases, conferences and events, I take a “production studies” approach (Mayer et al., 2010) to understand the forms of commonsense produced in industry settings. I then offer two examples of data work understood as a new kind of "below the line" labor.

Forthcoming in tripleC: Communication, Capitalism & Critique

This paper questions the binary of material and immaterial labor in the information era. Instead,... more This paper questions the binary of material and immaterial labor in the information era. Instead, we propose a “circuits of labor” model, a holistic framework that helps connect various concepts and traditions in the study of labor and ICT (information and communication technology). Inspired by du Gay et al’s “circuit of culture”, we argue conventional frameworks need to be synthesized and updated to reflect fundamental changes and persisting issues of labor in our contemporary era, of which the iPhone is emblematic.

This chapter makes connections between productivity applications -also known as "Getting Things D... more This chapter makes connections between productivity applications -also known as "Getting Things Done" (GTD) apps -and the tradition of time management pedagogy that has developed in modern business culture over the past several decades. Both spheres have religious dimensions: I show how old ideas of confession, abstinence and salvation appear as rehabilitative marketing spin in services touted by GTD prophets today. This context illustrates GTD's appeal as a secular ethics, and as what I will suggest is a kind of religious practice. In the shift from the printed page to the network, time management techniques accumulate some of the resonances of Silicon Valley mythology, and become a set of tenets that propel contemporary ideas of creativity and industry through association with vocation and religious calling.

Interactions , Jul 2014

Civic hackathons allow for a temporary, intense, and event-based belonging. They turn location an... more Civic hackathons allow for a temporary, intense, and event-based belonging. They turn location and the experience of place into a discrete set of actionable demands, many of which prove to be both more mundane and realistic notions of citizenship than we usually see displayed in public. Civic hackathons generate design artifacts that archive and act as prompts for action to bring about a better relationship to place: a process we call building belonging.

"This paper opens with two questions: 'what is big?' and 'what is data?' to highlight some critic... more "This paper opens with two questions: 'what is big?' and 'what is data?' to highlight some critical consequences of the terms' current articulation. It then offers three concepts - data agents, data sweat, and data exhaust - that avoid the empiricism and anthropomorphism of present thinking on Big Data. This is work in progress. Feedback is welcome."

This is a reworked and expanded version of 'Adultery Technologies', also available on this site. ... more This is a reworked and expanded version of 'Adultery Technologies', also available on this site. It is currently under consideration for a special issue of Surveillance & Society on ‘(Dis)Trust,Truth and Surveillance Texts: a review of interconnections’ - any feedback or improvements welcome.

Continuum

This article introduces the idea of a “pedagogy of regret” to illustrate some of the inadequacies... more This article introduces the idea of a “pedagogy of regret” to illustrate some of the inadequacies in recent government policy initiatives which target young women’s drinking practices. In the Australian context, the National Binge Drinking Campaign warned young women: “Don’t turn a night out into a nightmare”. A similar British campaign advised drinkers to “know their limits”. The rhetorical appeal of these campaigns hinges on the notion of regret: young women will lament the excesses of hedonistic indulgence the morning after given the inevitable consequences of risky behaviour. This paper shows the limitations of such an appeal through a “sympathetic online cultural studies” approach (Driscoll and Gregg, 2008a, 2008b, 2010) exploring the nexus between contemporary drinking cultures and the social networking site Facebook. Ordinary and mundane uses of Facebook—status updates anticipating the weekend, mobile posts in the midst of intoxication, photo uploading and album dissemination the morning after—reveal the anticipatory pleasures, everyday preparations and retrospective bonding involved in hedonistic and risky alcohol consumption. This demonstrates the fundamentally social dimensions accompanying young women’s drinking. The enjoyment derived from sharing the “risky” and “regrettable” experience on Facebook is part of an ongoing “drunken narrative” between girls (Griffin et al 2009). Such pleasures, which are increasingly mediated by social networking sites, confound the notion that young women are haunted by inevitable regret and remorse.

Responding to a recent marketing campaign in Australia, this paper considers how the politics of ... more Responding to a recent marketing campaign in Australia, this paper considers how the politics of love suggested in Hardt and Negri’s Commonwealth (2009) may have pragmatic application for media studies. The publicity strategies of a major bank in the wake of the Global Financial Crisis provide a rich illustration of the ways love's genres and registers can be directly co-opted towards commercial interests - and the challenges this presents for critical thinking. Placing Hardt and Negri's 'turn to love' in the context of ongoing debates in feminist and queer theory, the paper isolates both the possibilities and limitations of autonomist thinking. The authors' distinct contribution is to note the inventiveness characteristic of both love and poverty, which in turn provides a model for the kind of ontological bearing necessary to trouble the ongoing pact between intimacy and property under capitalism.

Oxford Handbook of Media, Technology and Organisation, 2019

Keywords in Media Studies

Draft chapter for The Sociology of Speed: Digital, Organizational and Social Temporalities, Judy Wajcman and Nigel Dodd (eds).

Cultural Studies

Television and New Media, 2015

Forthcoming in tripleC: Communication, Capitalism & Critique

Interactions , Jul 2014

Continuum

The 2010 press release announcing the first-release sites for Australia’s National Broadband Netw... more The 2010 press release announcing the first-release sites for Australia’s National Broadband Network (NBN) identified five locations chosen for their contrasting ‘housing density, housing type, geography, climate and local infrastructure’ (nbnco.com.au). On these measures, the South Australian town of Willunga was described as a ‘small rural town’ with ‘dispersed housing’. It thus served as a model for the country constituencies crucial to securing support for the Federal Government’s large-scale infrastructure investment. But what else is there to know about Willunga that made it an ideal first-release site? Are there local histories that shed light on the decision to grant its residents access to high-speed broadband before the rest of the country? This paper shares findings from ethnographic research conducted in Willunga during the 2011 NBN roll-out to answer these questions.

Cultural Studies Review, Jan 1, 2010

This essay attempts to suggest some features comprising an ontology of the nonmetro. It is an exp... more This essay attempts to suggest some features comprising an ontology of the nonmetro. It is an experiment in applying what might be considered a highly abstract and academic interest - affect theory - to a specific policy debate: the logistics of broadband provision in rural Australia. My intention, following the work of Kathleen Stewart (2007), is not so much to bring these two objects together to provide a story of ‘what’s going on’. Rather, it is to ‘fashion some form of address that is adequate’ to the ordinary affects of rural life, in order to move beyond a certain impasse in the imaginative lexicon of telecommunications policy, advertising and activism. A further aim is to reveal some of the limitations in the complex ideology of fulfillment contained in the twin promises of online connectivity and citizenship that are unevenly distributed in knowledge economies.

"This paper draws on empirical evidence and theories of affect to make sense of the online landsc... more "This paper draws on empirical evidence and theories of affect to make sense of the online landscape for information labour. My aim is to unpack notions of workplace subjectivity and agency premised on ‘separate spheres’ and ‘clock time’ – questioning their usefulness in biomediated work worlds (Adkins 2009, Clough 2010). While the evidence used is based on a small study of professionals in Brisbane, Australia, the discussion bears relevance for workers in a range of industries, due to the so-called ‘ubiquity’ of mobile computing (Dourish and Bell 2011). If modernist notions of labour hinged on a set number of hours for work, often conducted at a set physical location, the fact that labour now escapes spatial and temporal measure poses obvious problems for defining work limits.
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Over the years, Gender and Cultural Studies have each legitimated different modes of academic res... more Over the years, Gender and Cultural Studies have each legitimated different modes of academic research and writing that would once have been seen as suspect within the university. Feminist research has promoted the use of many different research methodologies and theoretical positions in order to question the sometimes implicit masculine/white/middle-class bias in academic writing. It has also established measures to foreground the ethical basis of the research process itself. In doing so, feminist scholars have questioned the basis of many accepted modes of arguing and researching for their the presumption of universality.

Please note: Tutors are not paid for consultation beyond their teaching days, so do not email you... more Please note: Tutors are not paid for consultation beyond their teaching days, so do not email your tutors with course queries and expect to be answered quickly. For queries outside teaching days, call the course convenor by office phone, or leave a message on the course website. For lengthy feedback, make an appointment to meet with the course convenor during consultation hours.

Draft chapter for Louise Thomas and Anne Reinertsen (eds) Academic Writing and Identity Constructions: Performativity, space and territory in academic workplaces. Palgrave, forthcoming.

What social, economic and material conditions prompt innovations in academic writing? How does th... more What social, economic and material conditions prompt innovations in academic writing? How does the university create time and space for research, reflection and composure? Is a campus environment the only place where writing has such an important role in creating a measure of professional status? Can academics engage with the world beyond the conference circuit and classroom? This chapter is an attempt to answer these questions that have preoccupied my writing over many years, both within and outside the university. I document changes that transpired from my doctoral research and early blogging experiments through to the book publications that enabled me to move careers and countries. Throughout, academic writing is shown to be the primary way I have expressed and transcended the constraints of specific professional locations. Reflecting on this history, the chapter concludes with observations on the role of academic writing in the high-pace technology industry.

Draft chapter for Oxford Handbook of Media, Technology and Organization Studies.

The fourth issue of CAMEO Cuts examines the changing social relations of time and self-management... more The fourth issue of CAMEO Cuts examines the changing social relations of time and self-management at work. Melissa Gregg shows how the dispersed organization increasingly relies on technologies and platforms that aim to improve personal productivity and efficiency, but tend to do so at the expense of collectivity. She explores how it might be possible to create new forms of elective association – 'productive atmospheres' – based on shared resources and care rather than metrics of individual performance. This forms the argument of her forthcoming book Counterproductive: Time management after the organization (Duke University Press).

Affect in Relation: Families, Places, Technologies. Essays on affectivity and subject formation in the 21st century. Birgitt Rottger-Rossler & Jan Slaby (eds).

Coworking spaces not only ease the loneliness of contingent life and minimise the upfront resourc... more Coworking spaces not only ease the loneliness of contingent life and minimise the upfront resources of precarious careers. In this chapter, we suggest they provide an accommodating environment for work lives that exceed clear spatial boundaries. Focusing on the community manager, our fieldwork suggests that a particular mix of manual, technical and affective labor makes these jobs emblematic of a new kind of emotion work that has evolved from the early writing of Arlie Russell Hochschild, to produce a "safe and convivial" environment for professional productivity.