BRINGING GLOBALIZATION HOME: A HOMEWORKER IN THE INFORMATION AGE

Abstract

Studies of social processes at the aggregate level reduce worker identity to an abstraction defined by social structures. This paper considers the daily routine of one worker to clarify the construction of identity. A homeworker is chosen because the contrast between her structurally defined identity and her personally defined identity is particularly salient. Her relation to distant situations—via television, radio, computer networking, telephone, and traditional postal communication—is a central element of her involvement in time and space. This worker's perception of achieving a desirable lifestyle and the actual reduction of various forms of oppression problematizes Castells' structurally defined representation of identity. Her lifestyle also suggests a mechanism for transformation in the status of the home and the city as well: home becomes less a container than an access node linking experience and action to the world, while the city recovers a level of neighborhood activity lost earlier through automobile-dependent lifestyles.