Dialogues of being-in-living relations : re-imagining office education

UNCG Author/Contributor (non-UNCG co-authors, if there are any, appear on document)
Frances Crocker Rhoney (Creator)
Institution
The University of North Carolina at Greensboro (UNCG )
Web Site: http://library.uncg.edu/
Advisor
Fritz Mengert

Abstract: From a feminist perspective this paper represents a rediscovery and reconstruction of meaning for education through a reaffirmation of our human wholeness and in celebration of our ambiguous human condition. This is a powerful and interpenetrating vagueness which leaves room for multifarious interpretations and becomes implied within the author's title. The concern reflects the rise of fundamentalism and the unwillingness to live in ambiguity, a life that requires constant learning and seeking toward authentic existence. Exploring the historical backdrop of scientific management in relation to descriptions of a gendered hierarchy of management and the language which propelled it into existence, the author performs a thinking completion by revealing how the connecting threads of a dual structure, patriarchal social relations and political-economic forces, influenced the ambiguity of women's lives who entered the American office between 1900-1930. From this legacy, the author discusses the ethos of the modern office, rooted as it is in a hierarchy of class, gender and race distinctions, and a paradoxical mythology that says hard work and merit determines rank; conclusively pointing toward our ambiguous human condition as persons simultaneously distinct and yet intimately related to others.

Additional Information

Publication
Dissertation
Language: English
Date: 1996
Subjects
Office management $x History
Businesswomen $x History

Email this document to