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Writing Power: Communication in an Engineering Center
Winner of the 2004 Distinguished Publication on Business Communication presented by the Association of Business Communication
Writing Power examines the way that texts, knowledge, and hierarchy generate and support one another within a for-profit corporation. By encouraging us to see texts and writing as powerful operators in the corporate world, this book presents a case study focused on how one engineering organization uses texts to create and maintain its knowledge and power structure. Based on over five years of observations, the book describes the co-generation of power/knowledge/text from several points of view, including that of managers, engineers, interns, and blue-collar workers. These groups of people use texts to build knowledge within their own areas and establish control over their work when it is passed along to the other groups. Employing Bourdieu's notion that people possess different kinds of "capital" that can be converted to one another under the right circumstances, the book demonstrates that text is one of the major ways that this conversion of capital takes place, and is thus one of the major ways that power and knowledge are generated and accumulated.
Writing Power examines the way that texts, knowledge, and hierarchy generate and support one another within a for-profit corporation. By encouraging us to see texts and writing as powerful operators in the corporate world, this book presents a case study focused on how one engineering organization uses texts to create and maintain its knowledge and power structure. Based on over five years of observations, the book describes the co-generation of power/knowledge/text from several points of view, including that of managers, engineers, interns, and blue-collar workers. These groups of people use texts to build knowledge within their own areas and establish control over their work when it is passed along to the other groups. Employing Bourdieu's notion that people possess different kinds of "capital" that can be converted to one another under the right circumstances, the book demonstrates that text is one of the major ways that this conversion of capital takes place, and is thus one of the major ways that power and knowledge are generated and accumulated.
183 pages, Paperback
First published July 1, 2003
11 people want to read
About the author
Dorothy A. Winsor
13 books56 followersDorothy A. Winsor is originally from Detroit but now lives near Chicago. She's a former English professor who has found that writing YA fantasy novels is more fun. Her novels include Dragoncraft (2024), Glass Girl (2023), The Trickster (2021), The Wysman (2020), The Wind Reader (2018), Deep as a Tomb (2016), and Finders Keepers (2015). She's published by Inspired Quill, a registered UK social enterprise.
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October 2, 2010
Read this for Tech/Prof/Sci Comm. As a pedagogical piece, this book is rather weak, since the author doesn't give a whole lot of recommendations. On the other hand, it's useful for observing the social movements and power dynamics of engineering corporations.
Displaying 1 of 1 review