Work as dance

Abstract

This article argues that use of the dance analogy has potential as an heuristic device in ethnographies of work. The nature and variety of dance is explored as a way of studying movement, gendered embodiment, audience, emotion and rhythm at work. It can thus serve to provide a richly multi-dimensional view of work, while also having the potential to draw attention to the unfolding of patterns of work over time. While such an approach has much in common with classic studies of work, as well as some more recent work that emphasizes work as embodied practice, it may also open up new avenues or at least unsettle some of the dominant ways of researching work and its organization. As such it is offered as a stimulus to debate on the nature of work and its organization and how it might be undertood. There are, however, limitations to the dance analogy and these mean that the approach might be best seen as a useful complement to approaches which focus on the verbal, rather than sufficient in itself.

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