Home and Work: Negotiating Boundaries Through Everyday Life

By Christena E. Nippert-Eng

Book Overview

Do you put family photos on your desk at work? Are your home and work keys on the same chain? Do you keep one all-purpose calendar for listing home and work events? Do you have separate telephone books for colleagues and friends? In Home and Work, Christena Nippert-Eng examines the intricacies and implications of how we draw the line between home and work.

Arguing that relationships between the two realms range from those that are highly "integrating" to those that are highly "segmenting," Nippert-Eng examines the ways people sculpt the boundaries between home and work. With remarkable sensitivity to the symbolic value of objects and actions, Nippert-Eng explores the meaning of clothing, wallets, lunches and vacations, and the places and ways in which we engage our family, friends, and co-workers. Commuting habits are also revealing, showing how we make the transition between home and work selves though ritualized behavior like hellos and goodbyes, the consumption of food, the way we dress, our choices of routes to and from work, and our listening, working, and sleeping habits during these journeys.

The ways each of us manages time, space, and people not only reflect but reinforce lives that are more "integrating" or "segmenting" at any given time. In clarifying what we take for granted, this book will leave you thinking in different ways about your life and work.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0226581462
• ISBN13: 9780226581460
• Release Date: June 1996
• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Length: 343 Pages
• Weight: 1.06 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

update the book to reflect a blurring of the boundaries

Nippert-Eng has studied how people demarcate their work and personal lives in this lucid text. Some preserve a rigid separation, enforced above all by the home and workplace being physically separate. This can be reinforced by the wearing of different clothes, or otherwise changing one's appearance. Perhaps assisted by a workplace requiring a uniform, be this a mechanic's garb or a doctor's lab coat. The book also explores how the demarcation can involve different eating and drinking habits. A working lunch these days might be alcohol-free, as opposed to a dinner with friends. The book was written in 96. Since then, the continued increase in the usage of personal computers and associated technologies like wireless and broadband access, has led to a blurring of workplace and non-workplace for some of us. Exaceberated by the pervasive use of email and Instant Messaging. It would be interesting for her to update the book to reflect these changes.