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Future and Furniture: A Study of a New Economy Firms Powers of Persuasion
Torben Elgaard Jensen*
Department of Manufacturing Engineering and Management
* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: tej{at}ipl.dtu.dk.
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Abstract |
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This article explores the differences between two strategies of persuasion. The first strategy, called drawing things together, is Actor-Network Theory’s classic analysis of how modern science has gained tremendous persuasive powers through systematic inscription and centralized accumulation of information traces. The second strategy, called drawing contrasts together, is derived from the author’s empirical analysis of the rhetorics and materialities of a Scandinavian New Economy firm. The persuasive powers of this firm, it is argued, are based on its ability to evoke and articulate a series of pointed contrasts between the attractive working life within the firm and the ordinary and problematic work life elsewhere. The article argues that both persuasive strategies work in a pragmatic sense. But where "drawing things together" enacts a relatively stable and knowable world, the persuasive strategy of "drawing contrasts together" depends on, and enacts, a world of dramatic epochal changes.
First published on December 10, 2007, doi:10.1177/0162243907306193
Science, Technology & Human Values 2008;33:28.
A more recent version of this article appeared on January 1, 2008
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