Made To Work: Mobilising Contemporary Worklives [Hardcover]

Made to Work analyses the conditions of mobile knowledge work (MKW) in contemporary worklives, contrasting and drawing parallels among three highly significant sectors of the Knowledge Economy: academia, information communication technology (ICT) management, and digital creative work.

It introduces the concept of corollary work to characterise the elusive work underpinning the configuration of workers, informational, technological, relational and infrastructural resources in (re)producing liveable worklives.

It ultimately illuminates the myriad strands of corollary work that enable MKW to take place and contributes to emergent debates on how exploitation, at least in the domain of MKW, can be named, resisted and creatively subverted. In so doing, it opens up a conversation about the complex ways in which contemporary worklives are made to work, and about potential interventions to bring about more just worklife conditions in the future.

Introduction

1. Corollary Work: The Mainstay of Mobile Knowledge Work

2. Cities and Regions in the Placing of Worklives

3. Everyday Worklife Placing

4. Anticipatory Availability: Time Work in the Worklives of ICT Managers and
Digital Creatives

5. Reflexive Rhythmicity and the Making of Academic Worklives

6. The Productivity Quest

7. Identity Work: Animating the Mobile Knowledge Worklife

Conclusion

Based on an empirical study of academics, digital creatives and ICT managers' worklives, this book unravels the interwoven strands of the 'corollary work' that makes mobile knowledge work possible.

Breda Gray is Senior Lecturer in Sociology, University of Limerick (Ireland).