Future and furniture - A study of a new economy firm's powers of persuasion

Torben Elgaard Jensen

    Research output: Contribution to journalJournal articleResearchpeer-review

    Abstract

    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.
    Original languageEnglish
    JournalScience, Technology & Human Values
    Volume33
    Issue number1
    Pages (from-to)28-52
    ISSN0162-2439
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - 2008

    Keywords

    • persuasion
    • sociology of expectations
    • Latour
    • New Economy
    • actor-network theory

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