Tuula Heiskanen
Action Spaces as Windows to Look at Mobile Boundaries of Information Society

My contribution to this workshop comes from a perspective of working life research. How should development trends in working life be interpreted, on what should we pay our attention and what kinds of methodological orientations would be feasible? I have, together with eight other researchers, an ongoing research project called "Mobile boundaries of the information society - restructuring practices of working life". The core idea of the project is to study construction of information society; as a point of departure being development phenomena of working life. The concept of information society has been used in the project to cover central features of the development of the society we are currently living through. Thus, according to our focus the concept helps to orientate in a broad sense to development processes of the society, while the question whether the development meets specified criteria for the information society (cf. Webster) will not be dealt with.

The point of view in our study is broader than in traditional working life studies. The basic assumption of the study is that along with the development towards information society the boundaries between institutions, organisations and differents spheres of peoples' lives disappear or take new forms. Setting research questions according to this basic assumption presupposes views both inside work organisations and also in other fields where transformations of boundaries can become visible.

The approach of the study can be characterised as a "bottom-up" approach. As a methodological orientation we focus our attention on practices in everyday life. From these practices we "read" social processes and also social structures. In the development tendency of working life, technology has a substantial role. We orientate to technology also from a practices perspective. In a broad sense our orientation to technology could be considered within the approach which emphasises social shaping of technology. Also we see that technology does not speak for itself but it has to be interpreted and its use has to be negotiated; our emphasis being in material practices. In literature and discussions on society/technology a certain kind of dualism has tended to prevail; there are social determinants and technology with their inherent properties. Lately a number of researchers have suggested approaches which help to transcend such dualism. Our practices orientation belongs to such effort.

Our interest is in the shaping of the action space of concrete actors of working life. Transformations of space have been in active interest in recent years, sometimes referring to physical aspects of space, sometimes covering also social aspects. Social theorists from Anthony Giddens and Manuel Castells to Scott Lash and John Urry have hypothesised the emergence of new forms of time and space. In our usage the action space refers to the conditions of activity, which involve material as well as social and cultural elements. In the undergoing transformations there are present both old and new elements, the tension of which is of a special interest. F.ex. hierarchical structures of working life and the expectation to reach a state of a fluent problem solving process regardless of hierarchical boundaries, or the requirement for intensive cooperation process with the simultaneous transformations of interpretative frameworks along with technology-mediated communication or the presence of global in the firmly local, concrete situation set often tension-filled boundary conditions for action spaces. From concrete actors' standpoint mobility of boundaries becomes visible in transformations of action space. Actors are not silent partners in the shaping of action space but deeply involved in it with greater or lesser degrees of freedom. The shaping of the action space and questions of actors' living world such as questions of identity, competence and learning are closely linked.

The question of the mobile boundaries is a broad hypothesis and cannot be fully answered by one study. The empirical cases shed light on internal processes in work organisations both in industrial and service sectors, on transformations of customer situations and new kinds of relationships between consumers and work organisations, on fitting together family life and working life and on new kinds of cooperation relationships and new forms of work along with network development. The following sub-projects are included in the study: A) Technological practices and gendering organisation cultures in manufacturing and service industries B) Information occupations and work in knowledge-intensive business services C) Future shapers: Computing professionals' suppositions in their visions of the future D) New practices in everyday life and working life - New opportunities in teleworking? E) Gender, citizenship and information society F) Constructive learning in web-aided knowledge -intensive cooperation processes G) Demands of and opportunities for learning - a working life perspective on learning society.

The examination of the internal processes of work organisations gíves in a methodological sense one standpoint for the mobility of boundaries, the relationships between organisations/institutions providing the second, the cutting points of work and everyday life the third.The actors in whose situations the processes are looked at are members of work organisations from different levels of hierarchies, independent practitioners, people in project tasks and target groups of services.

As a throughgoing theme in different sub-projects is the interest in interactive and communicating community as a central resource in the world of mobile boundaries. Also phenomena related to gender appear in several subprojects as well as questions of expertise, competence and identity.

We examine the construction of gender in the enduring societal and symbolic relations and orders, for example, in relation to identities, within the various changes in working life. We look for the possibility of change in the actors' definitions of their own action spaces and information technology related to them. We study the expertise embedded in the action space of workers and citizens from the starting point of concrete practices. What kind of support systems, networks, and institutions are embedded and are needed in the processes of expertise building? How are workers, teleworkers and citizens defining their own expertise and creating space of activity for themselves in working life and society in general? What are the conditions which make room for the broader understanding of expertise (technical knowledge related to the understanding of concrete situations and societal processes)? In the questions of developing expertise and competences and supporting learning we keep on the agenda simultaneously questions of personal and social meaning of work and identity. We examine the mutual shaping of community and identity in the changing practices of working life and the labour market, in the borders of work and telework, in the processes where the local and trans-national intertwine with the practices of work places.