Michael M Prentice
Biographic Data
| ID | 99292 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Michael M Prentice |
| GIVEN NAMES | Michael M |
| FAMILY NAME | Prentice |
| SIGNATURE | PRENTICE M M |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Sheffield |
| ORCID | 0000-0003-2981-7850 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 9 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 29 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 9 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2015 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2022 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Introduction: Genre Work and the New Economy
The special issue brings together anthropologists working at the intersection of language and economy to draw attention to the dynamics of how people’s experiences of social change are articulated through genre work in different institutional contexts. In recent years, many scholars working in cultural economy have turned to language as an analytic, and this has often focused on the performative dimensions of economic practice as the most signifi…
From drafts to drafting: Genre work, time, and the fragility of managerial expertise in South Korea
This article develops an approach towards managerial expertise as a practice organized around and dependent on what I describe as drafting time. The empirical focus is on an employee satisfaction survey at a South Korean conglomerate where I conducted ethnographic research between 2014 and 2015. Departing from approaches that see drafts in service of organizational function or as a production-line model, the article describes how drafting time is…
Genres in new economies of language
This article suggests that one of the understudied and substantive ways in which actors produce and transform social hierarchies and classifications is by aligning and mis-aligning genres. Alignments within and across genres have furnished methods for construing and evaluating qualities of people - as examples, the genre repertoires of job applications or promotion dossiers. A fine attunement to new and emergent semiotic alignments via genres can…
Dynastic aura: Proximity to the powerful and its promise in corporate South Korea
This article discusses the experiences of high-level managers at a South Korean conglomerate named 'Sangdo' who worked within the corporate group's head office under the owner-executive family. These highly credentialled professionals were attracted to the idea of working directly under or alongside an elite, wealthy corporate dynasty who both owned the conglomerate and were its top executives. Rather than seeing this as a site of inherent confli…
The securitized workplace: Document protection, insider threats and emerging ethnographic barriers in a South Korean organization
PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how document protection has become a key object of concern for organizations, how the threat of leaks has led to an increase in security technologies and policies and how these developments present new and emergent ethnographic challenges for researchers. Through a study of a South Korean organization, the paper aims to demonstrate the ways workplace documents are figured into wider legal, regula…
Old Spirits of Capitalism: Managers and Masculine Alterity in/as the Korean Office
This article analyzes the aging of a figure of labor: the male Korean office manager. In contrast to its normative heyday in late 20th century East Asia, the figure of the older manager has become a devalued and deviant figure in contemporary Korea. Based on ethnography of a Korean white-collar workplace, I argue that the older male manager has emerged as a "figure of alterity" that seems to permeate all aspects of Korean company life. By attunin…
Durkheim and the Internet: On Sociolinguistics and the Sociological Imagination. JanBlommaert. London, New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2018. xii + 123pp
The Powers in PowerPoint: Embedded Authorities, Documentary Tastes, and Institutional (Second) Orders in Corporate Korea
Microsoft PowerPoint is both the bane and banality of contemporary South Korean office work. Corporate workers spend countless hours refining and crafting plans, proposals, and reports in PowerPoint that often lead to conflicts with coworkers and overtime work. This article theorizes the excessive attention to documents in modern office contexts. Where scholars have been under the impression that institutional documents align with institutional p…
Managing Intertextuality: Display and Discipline across Documents at a Korean Firm
This article addresses the social, material, and practical dimensions by which intertextuality is managed in a corporate setting. Managing intertextuality entails more than the circulation of entextualized fragments—it involves the everyday ways in which individuals come to negotiate with environments saturated and defined by textual objects. Based on fieldwork at a Korean brand consulting firm, I chart a range of ways that employees took differe…
The Powers in PowerPoint: Embedded Authorities, Documentary Tastes, and Institutional (Second) Orders in Corporate Korea
Microsoft PowerPoint is both the bane and banality of contemporary South Korean office work. Corporate workers spend countless hours refining and crafting plans, proposals, and reports in PowerPoint that often lead to conflicts with coworkers and overtime work. This article theorizes the excessive attention to documents in modern office contexts. Where scholars have been under the impression that institutional documents align with institutional p…
Old Spirits of Capitalism: Managers and Masculine Alterity in/as the Korean Office
This article analyzes the aging of a figure of labor: the male Korean office manager. In contrast to its normative heyday in late 20th century East Asia, the figure of the older manager has become a devalued and deviant figure in contemporary Korea. Based on ethnography of a Korean white-collar workplace, I argue that the older male manager has emerged as a "figure of alterity" that seems to permeate all aspects of Korean company life. By attunin…
Genres in new economies of language
This article suggests that one of the understudied and substantive ways in which actors produce and transform social hierarchies and classifications is by aligning and mis-aligning genres. Alignments within and across genres have furnished methods for construing and evaluating qualities of people - as examples, the genre repertoires of job applications or promotion dossiers. A fine attunement to new and emergent semiotic alignments via genres can…
Managing Intertextuality: Display and Discipline across Documents at a Korean Firm
This article addresses the social, material, and practical dimensions by which intertextuality is managed in a corporate setting. Managing intertextuality entails more than the circulation of entextualized fragments—it involves the everyday ways in which individuals come to negotiate with environments saturated and defined by textual objects. Based on fieldwork at a Korean brand consulting firm, I chart a range of ways that employees took differe…
Durkheim and the Internet: On Sociolinguistics and the Sociological Imagination. JanBlommaert. London, New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2018. xii + 123pp
Managing Intertextuality: Display and Discipline across Documents at a Korean Firm
This article addresses the social, material, and practical dimensions by which intertextuality is managed in a corporate setting. Managing intertextuality entails more than the circulation of entextualized fragments—it involves the everyday ways in which individuals come to negotiate with environments saturated and defined by textual objects. Based on fieldwork at a Korean brand consulting firm, I chart a range of ways that employees took differe…
Durkheim and the Internet: On Sociolinguistics and the Sociological Imagination. JanBlommaert. London, New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2018. xii + 123pp
The Powers in PowerPoint: Embedded Authorities, Documentary Tastes, and Institutional (Second) Orders in Corporate Korea
Microsoft PowerPoint is both the bane and banality of contemporary South Korean office work. Corporate workers spend countless hours refining and crafting plans, proposals, and reports in PowerPoint that often lead to conflicts with coworkers and overtime work. This article theorizes the excessive attention to documents in modern office contexts. Where scholars have been under the impression that institutional documents align with institutional p…
Old Spirits of Capitalism: Managers and Masculine Alterity in/as the Korean Office
This article analyzes the aging of a figure of labor: the male Korean office manager. In contrast to its normative heyday in late 20th century East Asia, the figure of the older manager has become a devalued and deviant figure in contemporary Korea. Based on ethnography of a Korean white-collar workplace, I argue that the older male manager has emerged as a "figure of alterity" that seems to permeate all aspects of Korean company life. By attunin…
Genres in new economies of language
This article suggests that one of the understudied and substantive ways in which actors produce and transform social hierarchies and classifications is by aligning and mis-aligning genres. Alignments within and across genres have furnished methods for construing and evaluating qualities of people - as examples, the genre repertoires of job applications or promotion dossiers. A fine attunement to new and emergent semiotic alignments via genres can…
Dynastic aura: Proximity to the powerful and its promise in corporate South Korea
This article discusses the experiences of high-level managers at a South Korean conglomerate named 'Sangdo' who worked within the corporate group's head office under the owner-executive family. These highly credentialled professionals were attracted to the idea of working directly under or alongside an elite, wealthy corporate dynasty who both owned the conglomerate and were its top executives. Rather than seeing this as a site of inherent confli…
The securitized workplace: Document protection, insider threats and emerging ethnographic barriers in a South Korean organization
PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how document protection has become a key object of concern for organizations, how the threat of leaks has led to an increase in security technologies and policies and how these developments present new and emergent ethnographic challenges for researchers. Through a study of a South Korean organization, the paper aims to demonstrate the ways workplace documents are figured into wider legal, regula…
Introduction: Genre Work and the New Economy
The special issue brings together anthropologists working at the intersection of language and economy to draw attention to the dynamics of how people’s experiences of social change are articulated through genre work in different institutional contexts. In recent years, many scholars working in cultural economy have turned to language as an analytic, and this has often focused on the performative dimensions of economic practice as the most signifi…
From drafts to drafting: Genre work, time, and the fragility of managerial expertise in South Korea
This article develops an approach towards managerial expertise as a practice organized around and dependent on what I describe as drafting time. The empirical focus is on an employee satisfaction survey at a South Korean conglomerate where I conducted ethnographic research between 2014 and 2015. Departing from approaches that see drafts in service of organizational function or as a production-line model, the article describes how drafting time is…
Sociology (8 works) · Political science (6 works) · Business (4 works) · Engineering (4 works) · Law (4 works) · Law (4 works) · Public relations (4 works) · History (3 works) · Computer Science (2 works) · Context (archaeology (2 works)