Christina Wasson
Biographic Data
| ID | 3639144 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Christina Wasson |
| GIVEN NAMES | Christina |
| FAMILY NAME | Wasson |
| SIGNATURE | WASSON C |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of North Texas |
| VERIFIED | No |
| TOTAL WORKS | 24 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 37 |
| WORKS AS AUTHOR | 24 |
| WORKS AS EDITOR | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2000 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2022 |
| H-INDEX | 4 |
Caution and consensus in American business meetings
This article contributes to studies of politeness and talk in the workplace. In particular, it focuses on the ways in which cautiousness is exercised to achieve consensus in American business meetings. This topic is elaborated against the real-world background of the surveillance culture of corporate America and a tradition of consensus-oriented decision-making, in the theoretical context of politeness theory (adding variables related to the ‘pol…
Participatory Design of Language and Culture Archives
Online archives to preserve and share Indigenous language and culture materials emerged in the 1990s and 2000s. They were, in part, a response to concerns about Indigenous language and culture loss that gained prominence during that time period, both in Indigenous communities and in fields such as anthropology and linguistics. From an Indigenous perspective, language and culture were central to community members’ identities and exercise of sovere…
Contested Spaces, Shared Concerns
Roadways are sociocultural spaces constructed for human travel which embody intersections of technology, transportation, and culture. In order to navigate these spaces successfully, autonomous vehicles must be able to respond to the needs and practices of those who use the road. We conducted research on how cyclists, solid waste truck drivers, and crossing guards experience the driving behaviors of other road users, to inform the development of a…
Designing for Diverse User Groups
This article explores the challenges of designing large-scale computing systems for multiple, diverse user groups. Such computing systems house large, complex datasets, and often provide analytic tools to interpret the data. They are increasingly central to activities in industry, science, and government agencies, and are often associated with 'big data,' data warehousing, and/or scientific 'cyberinfrastructure'. A key characteristic of these sys…
Training the Next Generation
Design Anthropology
Autonomous Vehicle Study Builds Bridges between Industry and Academia
Researchers have long explored the desirability and benefits of industry-university collaborations and acknowledge they can be fraught with difficulties. We examine one such alliance, focused on driverless cars, a current hot topic in the public imagination and in technology design. Our collaboration began as an alliance between two anthropologists, one a professor at the University of North Texas, the other a consultant with the Nissan Research …
No More Cakes and Ale?” Discovering Ethical Gray Areas in a Design Anthropology Class
This article examines how ethics were learned in a design anthropology class. Training in ethics is an essential part of any graduate program in anthropology, and we show how it was built into this course. At the same time, the fieldwork that students conducted as part of a client project for Motorola confronted some of them with unexpected and ethically ambiguous circumstances, which generated experiential learning as well. Regardless of how cle…
Two Reflections on the Symbolic Position of Business Anthropology
This article provides comments and reflection on the symbolic position of business anthropology with mainstream anthropology
It was like a little community
In this time of social, technical, educational and industrial upheaval, time and space are being compressed and stretched as social actors develop new practices in response to shifts in their lived experience. In the American educational sector, these phenomena have crystalized in the meteoritic rise of MOOCs, massive open online courses. The story of their ascent weaves together neoliberal shifts in financing education, technology developments, …
We've Come a Long Way, Maybe
Gender Disparities Remain
Designing the First Online Master's Program in Applied Anthropology
In this article, I provide an overview of the development of the first-ever online master's program in anthropology, from the perspective of the person who was asked to lead the process. I begin by narrating the early history of the department's efforts to develop this program. Then I discuss three of the key issues that we had to resolve. Thirdly, I describe the start of the program in fall 2006, and our efforts to build community across online …
The Whys and Hows of an Online Applied Anthropology Program
The Department of Anthropology at the University of North Texas created the first master's program in applied anthropology offered in Texas, starting in 2000. At that time, the department had 6 full-time faculty members. The Department of Anthropology is part of the College of Public Affairs and Community Service, and shares the vision of interweaving academia and research to serve the community. In fact, given our experience with the undergradua…
Distance Learning as a Pedagogical Approach for Applied Anthropology
Coswa Update
Rick Iedema , Discourses of post-bureaucratic organization
Rick Iedema , Discourses of post-bureaucratic organization . Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2003. Pp. ix, 234. Hb $82.00. Discourses of post-bureaucratic organization represents an ambitious effort by Rick Iedema to synthesize the fields of discourse studies and organization studies. Not since Deirdre Boden's The business of talk (1994) has this feat been attempted in such depth by a scholar whose starting point is linguistics (as opposed to manageme…
Histories and Futures at the Frontier
In the conclusion to this volume, I address commonalities across chapters in terms of both the authors' early lives and their advice to the next generation of anthropologist practitioners. The advice falls into five major categories: (1) mentoring and networking; (2) follow your dream; (3) anthropology skills; (4) workplace skills; and (5) academic-practice connections. We hope the experiences presented here can provide useful ideas and insights …
Making History at the Frontier
This volume presents the stories of 11 women anthropologists whose career paths have successfully navigated the terrain of practice. Its overall goal is to help future generations of anthropologists who are initiating careers in practice, both women and men. Students in applied anthropology programs, and others considering careers in practice, are hungry for such information. A second goal is to highlight the contributions and concerns of women p…
Being in Two Spaces at Once
This article examines the meetings of virtual teams in a corporate workplace. I explore how these meetings are different from the face-to-face meetings that have historically been analyzed by linguistic anthropologists. In particular, I investigate the ramifications of team membersability to participate in two interactional spaces at the same time. Goffman s writings are used to develop an analytical framework that accommodates the new possibilit…
National Association for the Practice of Anthropology
Celebrating The Cutting Edge
This paper examines and celebrates the notion of the “cutting edge” as it applies to ethnographic praxis in industry. First of all, EPIC is the first-ever business anthropology conference. Secondly, the conference is just one example of the growth and mainstreaming of the field of design anthropology. Thirdly, the field of design is, after all, all about innovation, and anthropologists who work in this area can provide examples of leading practic…
The paradoxical language of enterprise
This paper examines the use of marketplace metaphors to describe workplace relationships – in other words, enterprise language and the ideology behind it. I offer the first ethnographic study to investigate their effects on the daily lives of corporate employees. While management consultants present enterprise ideology as a liberating force for employees, I found that the experience of employees was more complex; the language of enterprise create…
Ethnography in the Field of Design
Members of the design profession help develop new products and services of many kinds, and they are centrally concerned with satisfying the needs of users of their products. Ethnography appeals to designers because it provides a window onto the ways consumers interact with products in their everyday lives. The paper provides an overview of this extension of applied anthropology to a new domain. It traces how ethnography became known to designers …
Being in Two Spaces at Once
This article examines the meetings of virtual teams in a corporate workplace. I explore how these meetings are different from the face-to-face meetings that have historically been analyzed by linguistic anthropologists. In particular, I investigate the ramifications of team membersability to participate in two interactional spaces at the same time. Goffman s writings are used to develop an analytical framework that accommodates the new possibilit…
The paradoxical language of enterprise
This paper examines the use of marketplace metaphors to describe workplace relationships – in other words, enterprise language and the ideology behind it. I offer the first ethnographic study to investigate their effects on the daily lives of corporate employees. While management consultants present enterprise ideology as a liberating force for employees, I found that the experience of employees was more complex; the language of enterprise create…
Design Anthropology
Autonomous Vehicle Study Builds Bridges between Industry and Academia
Researchers have long explored the desirability and benefits of industry-university collaborations and acknowledge they can be fraught with difficulties. We examine one such alliance, focused on driverless cars, a current hot topic in the public imagination and in technology design. Our collaboration began as an alliance between two anthropologists, one a professor at the University of North Texas, the other a consultant with the Nissan Research …
Making History at the Frontier
This volume presents the stories of 11 women anthropologists whose career paths have successfully navigated the terrain of practice. Its overall goal is to help future generations of anthropologists who are initiating careers in practice, both women and men. Students in applied anthropology programs, and others considering careers in practice, are hungry for such information. A second goal is to highlight the contributions and concerns of women p…
We've Come a Long Way, Maybe
Designing the First Online Master's Program in Applied Anthropology
In this article, I provide an overview of the development of the first-ever online master's program in anthropology, from the perspective of the person who was asked to lead the process. I begin by narrating the early history of the department's efforts to develop this program. Then I discuss three of the key issues that we had to resolve. Thirdly, I describe the start of the program in fall 2006, and our efforts to build community across online …
The Whys and Hows of an Online Applied Anthropology Program
The Department of Anthropology at the University of North Texas created the first master's program in applied anthropology offered in Texas, starting in 2000. At that time, the department had 6 full-time faculty members. The Department of Anthropology is part of the College of Public Affairs and Community Service, and shares the vision of interweaving academia and research to serve the community. In fact, given our experience with the undergradua…
Ethnography in the Field of Design
Members of the design profession help develop new products and services of many kinds, and they are centrally concerned with satisfying the needs of users of their products. Ethnography appeals to designers because it provides a window onto the ways consumers interact with products in their everyday lives. The paper provides an overview of this extension of applied anthropology to a new domain. It traces how ethnography became known to designers …
The paradoxical language of enterprise
This paper examines the use of marketplace metaphors to describe workplace relationships – in other words, enterprise language and the ideology behind it. I offer the first ethnographic study to investigate their effects on the daily lives of corporate employees. While management consultants present enterprise ideology as a liberating force for employees, I found that the experience of employees was more complex; the language of enterprise create…
National Association for the Practice of Anthropology
Celebrating The Cutting Edge
This paper examines and celebrates the notion of the “cutting edge” as it applies to ethnographic praxis in industry. First of all, EPIC is the first-ever business anthropology conference. Secondly, the conference is just one example of the growth and mainstreaming of the field of design anthropology. Thirdly, the field of design is, after all, all about innovation, and anthropologists who work in this area can provide examples of leading practic…
Rick Iedema , Discourses of post-bureaucratic organization
Rick Iedema , Discourses of post-bureaucratic organization . Amsterdam: John Benjamins, 2003. Pp. ix, 234. Hb $82.00. Discourses of post-bureaucratic organization represents an ambitious effort by Rick Iedema to synthesize the fields of discourse studies and organization studies. Not since Deirdre Boden's The business of talk (1994) has this feat been attempted in such depth by a scholar whose starting point is linguistics (as opposed to manageme…
Histories and Futures at the Frontier
In the conclusion to this volume, I address commonalities across chapters in terms of both the authors' early lives and their advice to the next generation of anthropologist practitioners. The advice falls into five major categories: (1) mentoring and networking; (2) follow your dream; (3) anthropology skills; (4) workplace skills; and (5) academic-practice connections. We hope the experiences presented here can provide useful ideas and insights …
Making History at the Frontier
This volume presents the stories of 11 women anthropologists whose career paths have successfully navigated the terrain of practice. Its overall goal is to help future generations of anthropologists who are initiating careers in practice, both women and men. Students in applied anthropology programs, and others considering careers in practice, are hungry for such information. A second goal is to highlight the contributions and concerns of women p…
Being in Two Spaces at Once
This article examines the meetings of virtual teams in a corporate workplace. I explore how these meetings are different from the face-to-face meetings that have historically been analyzed by linguistic anthropologists. In particular, I investigate the ramifications of team membersability to participate in two interactional spaces at the same time. Goffman s writings are used to develop an analytical framework that accommodates the new possibilit…
Designing the First Online Master's Program in Applied Anthropology
In this article, I provide an overview of the development of the first-ever online master's program in anthropology, from the perspective of the person who was asked to lead the process. I begin by narrating the early history of the department's efforts to develop this program. Then I discuss three of the key issues that we had to resolve. Thirdly, I describe the start of the program in fall 2006, and our efforts to build community across online …
The Whys and Hows of an Online Applied Anthropology Program
The Department of Anthropology at the University of North Texas created the first master's program in applied anthropology offered in Texas, starting in 2000. At that time, the department had 6 full-time faculty members. The Department of Anthropology is part of the College of Public Affairs and Community Service, and shares the vision of interweaving academia and research to serve the community. In fact, given our experience with the undergradua…
Distance Learning as a Pedagogical Approach for Applied Anthropology
Coswa Update
We've Come a Long Way, Maybe
Gender Disparities Remain
It was like a little community
In this time of social, technical, educational and industrial upheaval, time and space are being compressed and stretched as social actors develop new practices in response to shifts in their lived experience. In the American educational sector, these phenomena have crystalized in the meteoritic rise of MOOCs, massive open online courses. The story of their ascent weaves together neoliberal shifts in financing education, technology developments, …
No More Cakes and Ale?” Discovering Ethical Gray Areas in a Design Anthropology Class
This article examines how ethics were learned in a design anthropology class. Training in ethics is an essential part of any graduate program in anthropology, and we show how it was built into this course. At the same time, the fieldwork that students conducted as part of a client project for Motorola confronted some of them with unexpected and ethically ambiguous circumstances, which generated experiential learning as well. Regardless of how cle…
Two Reflections on the Symbolic Position of Business Anthropology
This article provides comments and reflection on the symbolic position of business anthropology with mainstream anthropology
Autonomous Vehicle Study Builds Bridges between Industry and Academia
Researchers have long explored the desirability and benefits of industry-university collaborations and acknowledge they can be fraught with difficulties. We examine one such alliance, focused on driverless cars, a current hot topic in the public imagination and in technology design. Our collaboration began as an alliance between two anthropologists, one a professor at the University of North Texas, the other a consultant with the Nissan Research …
Training the Next Generation
Design Anthropology
Designing for Diverse User Groups
This article explores the challenges of designing large-scale computing systems for multiple, diverse user groups. Such computing systems house large, complex datasets, and often provide analytic tools to interpret the data. They are increasingly central to activities in industry, science, and government agencies, and are often associated with 'big data,' data warehousing, and/or scientific 'cyberinfrastructure'. A key characteristic of these sys…
Contested Spaces, Shared Concerns
Roadways are sociocultural spaces constructed for human travel which embody intersections of technology, transportation, and culture. In order to navigate these spaces successfully, autonomous vehicles must be able to respond to the needs and practices of those who use the road. We conducted research on how cyclists, solid waste truck drivers, and crossing guards experience the driving behaviors of other road users, to inform the development of a…
Participatory Design of Language and Culture Archives
Online archives to preserve and share Indigenous language and culture materials emerged in the 1990s and 2000s. They were, in part, a response to concerns about Indigenous language and culture loss that gained prominence during that time period, both in Indigenous communities and in fields such as anthropology and linguistics. From an Indigenous perspective, language and culture were central to community members’ identities and exercise of sovere…
Caution and consensus in American business meetings
This article contributes to studies of politeness and talk in the workplace. In particular, it focuses on the ways in which cautiousness is exercised to achieve consensus in American business meetings. This topic is elaborated against the real-world background of the surveillance culture of corporate America and a tradition of consensus-oriented decision-making, in the theoretical context of politeness theory (adding variables related to the ‘pol…
Sociology (20 works) · Anthropology (12 works) · Computer Science (11 works) · Anthropology: Ethics, History, Culture (9 works) · Political science (9 works) · Epistemology (7 works) · History (6 works) · Philosophy (6 works) · Engineering (5 works) · Ethnography (5 works)