Asaf Darr
Biographic Data
| ID | 267665 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Asaf Darr |
| GIVEN NAMES | Asaf |
| FAMILY NAME | Darr |
| SIGNATURE | DARR A |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Haifa |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-2489-4796 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 25 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 102 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 25 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1999 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 6 |
Weaving market narratives as a coping strategy
As financial markets become increasingly automated, the role of human traders faces existential challenges. This study examines how foreign exchange (FX) traders adapt to the rise of algorithmic trading by engaging in narrative construction, a form of cognitive and cultural coping. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in a high-volume FX dealing room, we show how traders “weave” market narratives to preserve professional agency, relevance, and exper…
Workplace platforms and the affordances of the alleloptic vision
This article explores the workplace consequences of the implementation of the alleloptic vision through Jira, a digital platform used to manage complex software development projects. The alleloptic vision means making it possible for all software workers and managers to mutually view work-related, self-reported data streaming in real time across the network. We demonstrate how the alleloptic vision promotes managerial surveillance and control of …
Le rôle des salons professionnels dans la création de marchés et d’industries
Cette étude aborde la question de la constitution des marchés dans les sociétés avancées. Plus précisément, cet article étudie le rôle d’un salon professionnel itinérant dans la création du marché de l’informatique temps réel, marché qui appartient au secteur états-unien de l’électronique, au milieu des années 1990. Les produits informatiques temps réel participent au transfert, au stockage et au traitement des signaux numériques en temps réel, s…
The social infrastructure of online marketplaces
This study is designed to remedy the tendency of existing studies to analyze online marketplaces as either sites of work or trading arenas. We argue that the theoretical notion of "social infrastructure" is particularly apt to offer a comprehensive framework that captures the unique intersection of work and trade in online marketplaces. We study the social infrastructure of an online marketplace: the institutions, conditions and forms, and the ho…
Gift-Giving as a Conversion Device in Online Marketplaces
The social foundations of the platform economy stand at the forefront of academic research in economic sociology, communication, and organization studies. Can a study of patterns of gift-giving in online marketplaces further our understanding of the social ties and normative structures underpinning trade? This study suggests that the answer is in the affirmative. Studies of gift-giving in offline markets assert that gifting is predicated on recip…
Automatons, sales-floor control and the constitution of authority
Workplace authority in contemporary contexts is increasingly being constituted through online automatons, internet platforms whose logic is diametrically opposed to the notion of hierarchical knowledge. They govern the organization of work and derive legitimacy from three principles: (1) the streaming of information into a network composed of all workers; (2) the transparency of the information and measurements they provide to workers; and (3) th…
Palestinian Arabs and Jews at Work
What are the workplace manifestations of ongoing ethno-national conflict? How do co-workers on rival sides in war-torn countries cope with these manifestations? Interviews with nurses, nursing assistants and physicians in a Palestinian-Arab hospital and in a Jewish retirement home reveal how the broader ethno-national conflict in Israel penetrates the workplace. Problems arise for them when violence related to the conflict erupts outside the work…
Locating local knowledge in global networks
Gift giving in mass consumption markets
What types of social relationships and expressions of moral economy does gift giving foster in mass consumption markets? Approaching this issue through the literature on gift giving in advanced capitalist contexts and the sociology of markets, this study presents gifting as a micro-foundational element in contemporary markets. Analysis of 50 interviews and documentation of daily sales encounters in a computer chain store in Tel-Aviv, Israel, foun…
Producer Cooperatives
Producer cooperatives are a form of work organization that differs from traditional capitalist organizations in two key features relating to governance structures. Traditional firms in advanced Western economies are typically owned and controlled by a capitalist or by a large number of external stock owners. With producer cooperatives, membership is restricted to those who work in them, and, more importantly, they are both owned and controlled by…
An Economic Sociological Look at Economic Anthropology
The paper is intended to be a brief introduction into the field of economic anthropology. The authors make an overview of the main issues of the discipline. More specifically, the paper focuses on the foundations of economic anthropology, key debates within the field and the topics the field typically deals with. Some classical works that concern these topics are mentioned. In conclusion, possible fruitful encounters between economic anthropology…
Trade Shows and the Creation of Market and Industry
This study addresses the question of the constitution of markets in advanced societies. Specifically, the article studies the role of the traveling trade show in creating the real time computing market, which is part of the US electronics sector, during the mid-1990's. Real time computing products assist the transfer, storage and processing of digital signals in real time and support many of the internet applications we use today. By applying eth…
Sales work and the situated constitution of legitimate economic exchange
The legitimacy of economic transactions is a fundamental element of market order, and its constitution facilitates the ongoing exchange of commodities and services. By bringing sales work to centre stage, this study empirically examines the theoretical claim that legitimacy in advanced markets is constituted not only by macro-structures and institutions, but also in the course of sales encounters. Based on 50 interviews and on extensive observati…
Commodity, gift and mass-gift
While 'gifts' and 'commodities' as theoretically distinct forms of circulation are central to economic sociology and anthropology, we argue that in practice they are often hybridized. Inspired by Bruno Latour's work, we first describe the use in supermarkets and chain stores of one hybrid category, the mass-gift, which is neither a commodity nor a gift. Through our empirical investigation of sales interactions we critically describe the emergence…
The Rise of the Techno-Service Sector
This paper attempts to move away from portraying service and knowledge work as opposite trends in advanced economies. Instead, it maintains that a closer look at the changing nature of work will highlight the need to rearrange our aggregate occupational data so as to include special categories for a hybrid form: the techno-service sector. After presenting a typology of occupations based on the degree to which knowledge and service elements are in…
Assumptions, Assertions and the Need for Evidence
Despite growing interest in the knowledge economy, the work practice of its key workers has remained neglected. This article reviews the key sociological and managerial debates about ascendant knowledge workers. The authors argue that both debates assume, rather than empirically examine, changing work practices and through a leap of faith move on to discuss the enhanced class position of knowledge workers and the managerial challenges that they p…
The Mutual Weaving of Obligation Networks in Mass Industrial Markets
Despite the growing tendency to depict markets as social institutions, sales work in mass industrial markets remains a neglected area of study. The results of an ethnographic exploration of the US electronics industry reported here suggest that buyers and sellers in industrial markets, in which firms trade with other firms, engage in the mutual weaving of obligation networks. The article presents a theoretical claim that obligation networks provi…
Capitalism, Social Privilege and Managerial Ideologies
Social Capital and the Absorption of Immigrant Scientists and Engineers into Israeli Communities of Experts
Social Capital and the Absorption of Immigrant Scientists and Engineers into Israeli Communities of Experts Asaf Darr (bio) and Leora Rothschild (bio) Introduction During the early 1990s, Israel experienced a massive influx of immigration from the former Soviet Union, now amounting to approximately one-sixth of the Jewish population in Israel. This immigration wave has influenced Israeli society and the economy in a variety of ways, and has attra…
Product Review
Technicians, clients, and professional authority
This ethnographic study of technicians in action supplements a structural analysis of technical labour by delineating the distinct occupational identities of different technicians through their framed interactions with their clients and professionals with whom they work. We suggest that educational reform predicated on a structural conception of technicians will fail to redress the impending technical skill shortages
The Technicization of Sales Work
When do salespeople become technical experts, and when does sales work become technical in nature? To address these questions, this study presents a typology of markets and compares the impact of the structure of knowledge on the organization of sales practices in a mass and in a non-standard market in the electronic industry. A year-long ethnographic study in the United States shows that the technicization of sales occurs only in the non-standar…
Coopting Change toward Industrial Democracy
This paper asks why the democratic election of leaders, which is so fundamental an institution in much of Western society, is held sacred in the political sector of social life but rejected in the economic one. We propose that democracy stops at the factory gates partly because of the practices and ideologies of practice of the professionals who construct and maintain the boundaries between the workplace and the larger political sphere. Specifica…
Technical Labour in an Engineering Boutique
This ethnographic study of engineers in action introduces an interpretive approach to the recent debate about the factors shaping the organisation of engineering labour within the firm. The study compares the consciousness of kind and of difference developed by R&D and sales engineers (also known as customer engineers) working for an engineering boutique. Two case stories and other field data exemplify that the R&D and the customer engineers not …
Conflict and Conflict Resolution in a Cooperative
What conflict resolution mechanisms do democratic worker cooperatives generate and to what extent could these mechanisms be called democratic? This case study tries to address these questions by examining both conflict and conflict resolution in a democratic organization, a 66-year-old taxi cooperative. The conflicts presented stem from three main sources: ethnic origin, local division of labor, and "class" affiliation. These conflicts are resolv…
Commodity, gift and mass-gift
While 'gifts' and 'commodities' as theoretically distinct forms of circulation are central to economic sociology and anthropology, we argue that in practice they are often hybridized. Inspired by Bruno Latour's work, we first describe the use in supermarkets and chain stores of one hybrid category, the mass-gift, which is neither a commodity nor a gift. Through our empirical investigation of sales interactions we critically describe the emergence…
The social infrastructure of online marketplaces
This study is designed to remedy the tendency of existing studies to analyze online marketplaces as either sites of work or trading arenas. We argue that the theoretical notion of "social infrastructure" is particularly apt to offer a comprehensive framework that captures the unique intersection of work and trade in online marketplaces. We study the social infrastructure of an online marketplace: the institutions, conditions and forms, and the ho…
Trade Shows and the Creation of Market and Industry
This study addresses the question of the constitution of markets in advanced societies. Specifically, the article studies the role of the traveling trade show in creating the real time computing market, which is part of the US electronics sector, during the mid-1990's. Real time computing products assist the transfer, storage and processing of digital signals in real time and support many of the internet applications we use today. By applying eth…
Assumptions, Assertions and the Need for Evidence
Despite growing interest in the knowledge economy, the work practice of its key workers has remained neglected. This article reviews the key sociological and managerial debates about ascendant knowledge workers. The authors argue that both debates assume, rather than empirically examine, changing work practices and through a leap of faith move on to discuss the enhanced class position of knowledge workers and the managerial challenges that they p…
Palestinian Arabs and Jews at Work
What are the workplace manifestations of ongoing ethno-national conflict? How do co-workers on rival sides in war-torn countries cope with these manifestations? Interviews with nurses, nursing assistants and physicians in a Palestinian-Arab hospital and in a Jewish retirement home reveal how the broader ethno-national conflict in Israel penetrates the workplace. Problems arise for them when violence related to the conflict erupts outside the work…
Technical Labour in an Engineering Boutique
This ethnographic study of engineers in action introduces an interpretive approach to the recent debate about the factors shaping the organisation of engineering labour within the firm. The study compares the consciousness of kind and of difference developed by R&D and sales engineers (also known as customer engineers) working for an engineering boutique. Two case stories and other field data exemplify that the R&D and the customer engineers not …
Locating local knowledge in global networks
Conflict and Conflict Resolution in a Cooperative
What conflict resolution mechanisms do democratic worker cooperatives generate and to what extent could these mechanisms be called democratic? This case study tries to address these questions by examining both conflict and conflict resolution in a democratic organization, a 66-year-old taxi cooperative. The conflicts presented stem from three main sources: ethnic origin, local division of labor, and "class" affiliation. These conflicts are resolv…
Technicians, clients, and professional authority
This ethnographic study of technicians in action supplements a structural analysis of technical labour by delineating the distinct occupational identities of different technicians through their framed interactions with their clients and professionals with whom they work. We suggest that educational reform predicated on a structural conception of technicians will fail to redress the impending technical skill shortages
Automatons, sales-floor control and the constitution of authority
Workplace authority in contemporary contexts is increasingly being constituted through online automatons, internet platforms whose logic is diametrically opposed to the notion of hierarchical knowledge. They govern the organization of work and derive legitimacy from three principles: (1) the streaming of information into a network composed of all workers; (2) the transparency of the information and measurements they provide to workers; and (3) th…
Sales work and the situated constitution of legitimate economic exchange
The legitimacy of economic transactions is a fundamental element of market order, and its constitution facilitates the ongoing exchange of commodities and services. By bringing sales work to centre stage, this study empirically examines the theoretical claim that legitimacy in advanced markets is constituted not only by macro-structures and institutions, but also in the course of sales encounters. Based on 50 interviews and on extensive observati…
Gift-Giving as a Conversion Device in Online Marketplaces
The social foundations of the platform economy stand at the forefront of academic research in economic sociology, communication, and organization studies. Can a study of patterns of gift-giving in online marketplaces further our understanding of the social ties and normative structures underpinning trade? This study suggests that the answer is in the affirmative. Studies of gift-giving in offline markets assert that gifting is predicated on recip…
Gift giving in mass consumption markets
What types of social relationships and expressions of moral economy does gift giving foster in mass consumption markets? Approaching this issue through the literature on gift giving in advanced capitalist contexts and the sociology of markets, this study presents gifting as a micro-foundational element in contemporary markets. Analysis of 50 interviews and documentation of daily sales encounters in a computer chain store in Tel-Aviv, Israel, foun…
The Technicization of Sales Work
When do salespeople become technical experts, and when does sales work become technical in nature? To address these questions, this study presents a typology of markets and compares the impact of the structure of knowledge on the organization of sales practices in a mass and in a non-standard market in the electronic industry. A year-long ethnographic study in the United States shows that the technicization of sales occurs only in the non-standar…
The Rise of the Techno-Service Sector
This paper attempts to move away from portraying service and knowledge work as opposite trends in advanced economies. Instead, it maintains that a closer look at the changing nature of work will highlight the need to rearrange our aggregate occupational data so as to include special categories for a hybrid form: the techno-service sector. After presenting a typology of occupations based on the degree to which knowledge and service elements are in…
Social Capital and the Absorption of Immigrant Scientists and Engineers into Israeli Communities of Experts
Social Capital and the Absorption of Immigrant Scientists and Engineers into Israeli Communities of Experts Asaf Darr (bio) and Leora Rothschild (bio) Introduction During the early 1990s, Israel experienced a massive influx of immigration from the former Soviet Union, now amounting to approximately one-sixth of the Jewish population in Israel. This immigration wave has influenced Israeli society and the economy in a variety of ways, and has attra…
Conflict and Conflict Resolution in a Cooperative
What conflict resolution mechanisms do democratic worker cooperatives generate and to what extent could these mechanisms be called democratic? This case study tries to address these questions by examining both conflict and conflict resolution in a democratic organization, a 66-year-old taxi cooperative. The conflicts presented stem from three main sources: ethnic origin, local division of labor, and "class" affiliation. These conflicts are resolv…
Technical Labour in an Engineering Boutique
This ethnographic study of engineers in action introduces an interpretive approach to the recent debate about the factors shaping the organisation of engineering labour within the firm. The study compares the consciousness of kind and of difference developed by R&D and sales engineers (also known as customer engineers) working for an engineering boutique. Two case stories and other field data exemplify that the R&D and the customer engineers not …
Technicians, clients, and professional authority
This ethnographic study of technicians in action supplements a structural analysis of technical labour by delineating the distinct occupational identities of different technicians through their framed interactions with their clients and professionals with whom they work. We suggest that educational reform predicated on a structural conception of technicians will fail to redress the impending technical skill shortages
The Technicization of Sales Work
When do salespeople become technical experts, and when does sales work become technical in nature? To address these questions, this study presents a typology of markets and compares the impact of the structure of knowledge on the organization of sales practices in a mass and in a non-standard market in the electronic industry. A year-long ethnographic study in the United States shows that the technicization of sales occurs only in the non-standar…
Coopting Change toward Industrial Democracy
This paper asks why the democratic election of leaders, which is so fundamental an institution in much of Western society, is held sacred in the political sector of social life but rejected in the economic one. We propose that democracy stops at the factory gates partly because of the practices and ideologies of practice of the professionals who construct and maintain the boundaries between the workplace and the larger political sphere. Specifica…
Social Capital and the Absorption of Immigrant Scientists and Engineers into Israeli Communities of Experts
Social Capital and the Absorption of Immigrant Scientists and Engineers into Israeli Communities of Experts Asaf Darr (bio) and Leora Rothschild (bio) Introduction During the early 1990s, Israel experienced a massive influx of immigration from the former Soviet Union, now amounting to approximately one-sixth of the Jewish population in Israel. This immigration wave has influenced Israeli society and the economy in a variety of ways, and has attra…
Product Review
Capitalism, Social Privilege and Managerial Ideologies
The Mutual Weaving of Obligation Networks in Mass Industrial Markets
Despite the growing tendency to depict markets as social institutions, sales work in mass industrial markets remains a neglected area of study. The results of an ethnographic exploration of the US electronics industry reported here suggest that buyers and sellers in industrial markets, in which firms trade with other firms, engage in the mutual weaving of obligation networks. The article presents a theoretical claim that obligation networks provi…
The Rise of the Techno-Service Sector
This paper attempts to move away from portraying service and knowledge work as opposite trends in advanced economies. Instead, it maintains that a closer look at the changing nature of work will highlight the need to rearrange our aggregate occupational data so as to include special categories for a hybrid form: the techno-service sector. After presenting a typology of occupations based on the degree to which knowledge and service elements are in…
Assumptions, Assertions and the Need for Evidence
Despite growing interest in the knowledge economy, the work practice of its key workers has remained neglected. This article reviews the key sociological and managerial debates about ascendant knowledge workers. The authors argue that both debates assume, rather than empirically examine, changing work practices and through a leap of faith move on to discuss the enhanced class position of knowledge workers and the managerial challenges that they p…
Commodity, gift and mass-gift
While 'gifts' and 'commodities' as theoretically distinct forms of circulation are central to economic sociology and anthropology, we argue that in practice they are often hybridized. Inspired by Bruno Latour's work, we first describe the use in supermarkets and chain stores of one hybrid category, the mass-gift, which is neither a commodity nor a gift. Through our empirical investigation of sales interactions we critically describe the emergence…
Producer Cooperatives
Producer cooperatives are a form of work organization that differs from traditional capitalist organizations in two key features relating to governance structures. Traditional firms in advanced Western economies are typically owned and controlled by a capitalist or by a large number of external stock owners. With producer cooperatives, membership is restricted to those who work in them, and, more importantly, they are both owned and controlled by…
An Economic Sociological Look at Economic Anthropology
The paper is intended to be a brief introduction into the field of economic anthropology. The authors make an overview of the main issues of the discipline. More specifically, the paper focuses on the foundations of economic anthropology, key debates within the field and the topics the field typically deals with. Some classical works that concern these topics are mentioned. In conclusion, possible fruitful encounters between economic anthropology…
Trade Shows and the Creation of Market and Industry
This study addresses the question of the constitution of markets in advanced societies. Specifically, the article studies the role of the traveling trade show in creating the real time computing market, which is part of the US electronics sector, during the mid-1990's. Real time computing products assist the transfer, storage and processing of digital signals in real time and support many of the internet applications we use today. By applying eth…
Sales work and the situated constitution of legitimate economic exchange
The legitimacy of economic transactions is a fundamental element of market order, and its constitution facilitates the ongoing exchange of commodities and services. By bringing sales work to centre stage, this study empirically examines the theoretical claim that legitimacy in advanced markets is constituted not only by macro-structures and institutions, but also in the course of sales encounters. Based on 50 interviews and on extensive observati…
Locating local knowledge in global networks
Gift giving in mass consumption markets
What types of social relationships and expressions of moral economy does gift giving foster in mass consumption markets? Approaching this issue through the literature on gift giving in advanced capitalist contexts and the sociology of markets, this study presents gifting as a micro-foundational element in contemporary markets. Analysis of 50 interviews and documentation of daily sales encounters in a computer chain store in Tel-Aviv, Israel, foun…
Palestinian Arabs and Jews at Work
What are the workplace manifestations of ongoing ethno-national conflict? How do co-workers on rival sides in war-torn countries cope with these manifestations? Interviews with nurses, nursing assistants and physicians in a Palestinian-Arab hospital and in a Jewish retirement home reveal how the broader ethno-national conflict in Israel penetrates the workplace. Problems arise for them when violence related to the conflict erupts outside the work…
Automatons, sales-floor control and the constitution of authority
Workplace authority in contemporary contexts is increasingly being constituted through online automatons, internet platforms whose logic is diametrically opposed to the notion of hierarchical knowledge. They govern the organization of work and derive legitimacy from three principles: (1) the streaming of information into a network composed of all workers; (2) the transparency of the information and measurements they provide to workers; and (3) th…
The social infrastructure of online marketplaces
This study is designed to remedy the tendency of existing studies to analyze online marketplaces as either sites of work or trading arenas. We argue that the theoretical notion of "social infrastructure" is particularly apt to offer a comprehensive framework that captures the unique intersection of work and trade in online marketplaces. We study the social infrastructure of an online marketplace: the institutions, conditions and forms, and the ho…
Gift-Giving as a Conversion Device in Online Marketplaces
The social foundations of the platform economy stand at the forefront of academic research in economic sociology, communication, and organization studies. Can a study of patterns of gift-giving in online marketplaces further our understanding of the social ties and normative structures underpinning trade? This study suggests that the answer is in the affirmative. Studies of gift-giving in offline markets assert that gifting is predicated on recip…
Le rôle des salons professionnels dans la création de marchés et d’industries
Cette étude aborde la question de la constitution des marchés dans les sociétés avancées. Plus précisément, cet article étudie le rôle d’un salon professionnel itinérant dans la création du marché de l’informatique temps réel, marché qui appartient au secteur états-unien de l’électronique, au milieu des années 1990. Les produits informatiques temps réel participent au transfert, au stockage et au traitement des signaux numériques en temps réel, s…
Workplace platforms and the affordances of the alleloptic vision
This article explores the workplace consequences of the implementation of the alleloptic vision through Jira, a digital platform used to manage complex software development projects. The alleloptic vision means making it possible for all software workers and managers to mutually view work-related, self-reported data streaming in real time across the network. We demonstrate how the alleloptic vision promotes managerial surveillance and control of …
Weaving market narratives as a coping strategy
As financial markets become increasingly automated, the role of human traders faces existential challenges. This study examines how foreign exchange (FX) traders adapt to the rise of algorithmic trading by engaging in narrative construction, a form of cognitive and cultural coping. Drawing on ethnographic fieldwork in a high-volume FX dealing room, we show how traders “weave” market narratives to preserve professional agency, relevance, and exper…
Sociology (19 works) · Political science (16 works) · Law (14 works) · Business (12 works) · Economics (11 works) · Engineering (10 works) · Law (9 works) · Computer Science (8 works) · Social science (8 works) · Management and Organizational Studies (7 works)