The effects of craft production range from ensuring the
cohesion of the group (Amish, musical instrument makers)
to the divisiveness brought on by market competition.
What is significant about the book is the cogent demon-
stration or the fluidity of artisan work, as opposed to the
more rigid definitions of work when linked within occupa-
tional categorizations. While the craftsperson does have
more control over his/her work than their "occupational"
counterpart, their room for maneuver is still constrained in
different ways. Craft and Community: Traditional Arts in
Work-Oriented Design of Computer Artifacts.
Pelle Ehn, Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell International
for Arbetslivcentrum, 1988. 496 pp.
David Hakken
Technology Policy Center
SUNY Institute of Technology
P elle Ehn is one of a small group of Scandinavians who
have substantially affected how we think about com-
puting. Work-Oriented Design of Computer Artifacts is his
attempt to summarize almost two decades of computer
practice, decades in which Ehn and his colleagues have
aimed to design computer systems that achieve both indus-
trial democracy and quality of product. The book is the
best introduction to and summary of this Fenno-Scandian
perspective on computing available in English.
Particularly notable is the international breadth of Ehn's
scholarship. Ehn sees his book as a Scandinavian challenge
to the dominant conceptions of the design of computer
systems. He argues that our approach to the dominant ma-
chines of our era must be rethought along anthropological
lines. More generally, the book is a challenge to the tech-
nicist style of thinking which dominates modern societies.
Given his interest in culture and the prominence of
"work" in the title, Work-Oriented Design . . . should be of
great interest to work anthropology.
Unfortunately, the conception of work in the book is
not adequate to the design practice Ehn advocates. A ma-
ture work anthropology should be able to help remedy
these theoretical shortcomings. Except for this failure,
Ehn's tool perspective on computers themselves and his
"infologicar approach to the more general process of com-
puterization can stand as a model for the application of a
social systems perspective to technical activity.
Content
Work-Oriented Design of Computer Artifacts is divided
into four Parts. Part I is a reflection on the philosophical
perspectives which underline existing theories of design.
Ehn develops a philosophical critique of the Cartesian ra-
tionality and objectivism which dominate most design
thinking. He outlines three alternative design philosophies,
Heidiggerian existential phenomenology, Marxist
emancipatory practice, and late Wittgensteinian language-
games. When combined, these perspectives provide a
14 Anthropology of Work Review
Contemporary Society illustrates how artisans in a contem-
porary industrial society specifically mold their work to
meet constraints, whether aesthetic or utilitarian.
References
Applebaum, Herbert 1984 'Theoretical Introduction." In
Applebaum, Herb, ed., Work in Market and Industrial Societies,
pp. 1-32. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.
Staub, Shalom D. 1988 "Traditional Craftsmanship in Pennsylva-
nia: An Ethnographic Perspective." In Craft and Community.
basis for an alternative approach to design, one that inte-
grates social and technical views: "Today, computer arti-
facts have to be understood in a much wider sense—as so-
cial phenomena playing an increasingly dominant role in
our everyday life" (p. 39).
Part II is an examination of the typical practice of De-
sign. A critique of this practice, especially the contribution
of Herbert Simon, is followed, as in Part I, by an outline of
alternative perspectives. Part III is a description of the alter-
native practice in Scandanavia, especially the DEMOS and
UTOPIA projects in which Ehn participated. Although Ehn
labels his a "socio-technical" approach, he differentiates it
from that of Enid Mumford and others in the U.K. who use
the same term. For example, Ehn places much more em-
phasis on the role of trade unions in system development.
Part IV is Ehn's attempt to specify positively and prescrip-
tively the Design principles that underlie his approach.
Prominence is given to the notion of "craftsmanship," "a
tool perspective" and the question of skill in his summary.
Ehn's Work Anthropology
The importance of computerization to our contempo-
rary lives cannot be established in a brief review, nor the
value of these reflections to how we should think of De-
sign. Certainly the approach of Ehn and his Fenno-
Scandian colleagues like Bjorn-Andersen, Vehillenian,
Boedaker, Kyng, Sandberg, and Nygaard was a major stim-
ulus to the way computer people in Sheffield, England
were thinking when I returned to the field in 1986. In this
review, I would rather concentrate on Ehn's anthropology,
in particularly the extent to which Ehn succeeds in generat-
ing a theory of work on which an adequate theory of de-
sign can be based.
The legitimacy of a reading of the book which places
emphasis on anthropology and work is easily established.
In outlining what is challenging about work, Ehn com-
ments:
This approach is a challenge to rethink traditional un-
derstanding of the process of design and its relation
to the use of computers in working life. However,
work-oriented design of computer artifacts is, as I
see it, not only a strategy to include users and their
trade union activities in the design process, but more
fundamentally to include a cultural and anthropolog-
ical understanding of human design and use of arti-
facts, to rethink the dominating objectivistic and ra-
Volume X, Number 4
 tionalistic conceptions of design. At least in this
sense, the work-oriented design of computer arti-
facts espoused in this book reaches beyond the bor-
ders of Scandinavia" (p. 5).
As is evident from his discussion of the Cartesian basis
of design, Ehn is critical of the ethnocentrism of current
design practice. His challenge is to develop an approach
to design that is oriented toward more fundamental char-
acteristics of human life, especially work.
Unfortunately, Ehn's work construct is inadequate to
the task. Despite the presence of the term "work" in his
title, Ehn employs the term in an under-theorized, incon-
sistent manner (Hakken 1987). Nowhere in the book does
he attempt to specify just what activities constitute the
"work" toward which design is to be oriented. In much of
the book, "work" seems to mean wage labor; in his
"postmodern" epilogue, Ehn asks, "If work gets less and
less important in our lives in the postmodern or post-in-
dustrial social, what, then, is the value of a work-oriented
approach?" (p. 476). At other points, his work concept is
more a humanistic value; a belief "in work as a fundamen-
tal category in human life" is grouped with "the emancipa-
tory ideal", "a belief in progress," and "democratic ratio-
nality" as the values underlying work-oriented design (p.
475). He also refers to "traditional values of work, like the
craft skill ideal and pleasure in work" which can be ap-
plied in design of computers (p. 474). What exactly is the
•work" toward which design is to be oriented? Clearly it is
not the condition of wage labor as such, since wage labor
is not an ethnological construct "fundamental to human
life." Nor is work to be understood as an aspect of
"laborism," as what goes on at a laborsite over which
trade unions exercise considerable influence, irrespective
of the quality of that experience.
In his critique of Labor and Monopoly Capital, Al
Syzmanski assailed Harry Braverman's concept of the skill
being degraded by the Twentieth Century as a mere nos-
talgic paean to the experience of the shipwright. While
the notions of craft and skill that inform Ehn's work are
more general than that critiqued by Syzmanski, they are
still inadequately developed to the role assigned in Ehn's
theory of design. The closest Ehn comes to an ethnologi-
cal concept of work is his commentary on Marx's
Crundrisse, in which work is recognized as one of "the
fundamental aspects of practice" along with language and
morals. While projecting work as a broader notion, he
only addresses it within the framework of contemporary
employment-based socral formations:
We must relate the design of computer artifacts to
a l l . . . aspects of practice: In practice as work, this is
to the transformation of a given labor process and to
the users' participation in the design process.... In
this chapter I will focus on practice as work, espe-
cially the labor process of design and use of com-
puter artifacts under the 'capitalist' mode of produc-
tion" (p.86).
Volume X, Number 4 Anthropology of Work Review
The broader concept of work, as a dimension of all
practice, is not developed further. We cannot define work
in terms of the labor process, both because the wage-
labor form is historically specific and because it is being
transformed. Nor can we separate the "work" aspect of
"user participation in the design process" from the "lan-
guage" and "moral" aspects. Indeed, Ehn comes close to
equating "work" with "practice" in this chapter, and
"work" to "design" elsewhere in the book. While the no-
tion of "design-oriented design" might be a catchy slogan,
it is not an adequate basis on which to found a technologi-
cal theory.
Reflections
It may be a misreading of Ehn to think that his purpose
in writing Work-Oriented Design . . . was to prepare a
manual for a new generation of system developers. Fur-
ther, while Ehn's book, deliberately written first in English,
is one of the most polished examples of "Scenglish" of
which I am aware, I still feel there are points where I miss
his intent. As in the title itself, certain stylistic infelicities
make Ehn's meanings more obscure than they need be. I
raise these points because they are an important element
of the Wittgensteinian "language-game" which takes place
between native speakers of English like myself and those
like Ehn (and Rushdie) who are creating a new interna-
tional language. Nonetheless, I feel that the book needs a
more clearly articulated work construct if it is to be of the
fullest value to those who wish to maximize the human
quality of computer systems. Through developing a cross-
culturally applicable theory of work, one which both speci-
fies which activities constitute work and identifies the
major transformations in relationship between involve-
ment in work and legitimated access to the human prod-
uct, a vigorous work anthropology has much to contribute
to the issues Ehn has raised. Ehn's discussion of the philos-
ophy of design is first-rate, as is his critique of standard de-
sign methodology. The design experiments in which he
participated during the 1970s and '80s are now recog-
nized as prototypes for developing progressive computer
systems, and his comments on these experiments are of
great value.
Work-Oriented Design of Computer Artifacts deserves a
broad reading within the anthropological community, be-
cause it offers a specific opportunity for development of
an important fusion of theoretical and practice perspec-
tives.
Reference
Hakken, D. 1987 "Studying Work; Anthropological and Marxist
Perspectives,'' in Hakken and J. Lessinger, eds. Perspectives in
U.S. Marxist Anthropology, pp 57-80. Boulder: Westview.
75