These arguments regarding the movement between the 'constituted' and 'constitutive' character of subjectivity are explored in a significant way in terms of this thesis, with regard to Foucault's
( 1 995)
notion of the 'disciplined self and the 'disciplinary society' . That is, Foucault asserts that power in contemporary societies is transformed from the 'top down' exercise of sovereign power that operates through repression and denial into internal systems of self-regulation or disciplinary power which produce 'subjected', 'practised' and 'docile' bodies (Gavey,1992: 327).
These disciplinary practices are constituted for Foucault( 1 995)
not only as negative and constraining, but as productive and 'constitutive' , that is, as producing meanings, desires and practices.I first became interested in this element of Foucault's
( 1 995)
theorising, and the correspondence between it and home-based workplaces in relation to Foucault's description of Bentham's model of the ideal prison, 'The Panopticon' , as an exemplar of modern forms of 'disciplinary' power. At the periphery of the Panopticon is a circular structure, divided into cells; at its centre, an observation tower. Each cell has two windows, one facing the tower and the other the outside with the effect that each captives' shape is visible "standing out precisely against the light" (ibid:2(0). All
that was needed, according to Bentham, was to place a supervisor in the tower and to shut up in each cell "a madman, a patient, a condemned man, a worker or a schoolboy" where each subject is alone and cut-off from the others but constantly visible from the tower (ibid).This state of "conscious and permanent visibility" assures the "automatic" functioning of power according to Foucault, because power is both
visible,
in so far as the prisoner can see the tower from which they are spied upon; andunverifiable
because the prisoner can never know if they are being looked at from moment to moment but can only sure that they may be so observed (ibid:201).
In the periphery "one is totally seen without seeing; in the central tower, one sees everything without ever being seen" (ibid:202).
In this context of(ibid:
208),
where the subject, knowing they may be observed at any time, takes over the job of policing themselves. Disciplinary practices are thus "subtly present" and internalised by the subject, ratherthan
imposed like a "rigid, heavy constraint" from without (ibid:206),
through the production of "isolated and self policing" selves (Bartky,1990: 79).
Disciplinary power for Foucault is "everywhere and always alert, since by its very principle it leavesno
zone of shade" (1995: 177
emphasis added), where the captive assumes responsibility for self-regulation, taking on both the role of jailer and prisoner; becoming the "principle of his own subjection" (Foucault,1995: 203).
Foucault argues that the concept of the Panopticon has a utility to the appreciation of the "operation of power relation (in) ... everyday life", as a "generalizable model" of the functioning of power in the 'disciplinary' society (ibid:
205).
When I read of Bentham's Panopticon in Foucault's work it resonated with my feelings about the home-based businesses I had seen, where the lack of spatial and temporal boundaries between 'home'and
'work' similarly evoked for me the spectre of "no zone of shade".As I
visited garage workshops in Melbourne, travelled in my father's vehicle which was the basis of his mobile business, visited the home-based entrepreneurs who ran my corner dairy and wrote my PhD on the dining room table, I too wondered, where was the 'zone of shade' ? I also wondered where was Lasch's ''haven in a heartless world", and what were the implications of aspects of the competitive and demanding world of work taking up residence in the very centre of this 'haven' , the home? The 'disciplinary' power of work for home-based entrepreneurs similarly appeared 'everywhere and nowhere' ; it was "visible and unverifiable" (ibid:201);
it was i n thepotential
for the next phone call to be a major client, o r the next fax. to be a lucrative contract.However, this transformation of discipline into an internal system of self-regulation is not just a negative and constraining process, but positive and productive; it is 'constituted' and 'constitutive' , to paraphrase Davies
(1997).
For example, despite the long hours and not being able to get away from home-based business, working from home may represent the 'ideal' of owning your own business and being in control of one's work and indeed one's life. Whatever its ultimate effect, Bartky(1990: 77)
argues, discipline can provide the individual with a sense of mastery and a secure sense of self, where this sense is generated in the skill and competence associated with disciplinary practices. Women and men may become their own 'jailers' , as Foucault suggests, but in this instance they are imprisoned not by an institution but by thestimulation of productive forms of power,
where the rewards of compliance are a sense of control, of competence and of a coherent sense of self.Two different conceptualisations of discipline emerge in the telework literature which address this issue of discipline as constitutive or 'productive'. One concerns the disciplined, 'self-made' entrepreneurial man who Mulliolland characterises as typified by the qualities of "self-denial, discipline
and physical endurance" (1996: 144).
This evocation of discipline is particularly focused on disciplining the body, which errantly demands food and sleep, to enable extended periods of work during time usually allocated for rest or leisure. A different use of the concept of discipline associated specifically with teleworking women in the literature, concerns disciplining the self not to respond to the demands of the household and to work intensely and at odd hours in order to deal with the sense of the constancy of the demands of 'work'and
'home' (phizack1ea and Wolkowitz,1995: 109;
Hamblin,1995: 485;
Soares,1992: 126).
For example, Goldmann and Richter's( 1986)
study discussed the ways women disciplined themselves to work hard in their businesses and their homes so that their families would not "notice" any change to their domestic regimes, and considered it a ''personal failure" if their disciplinary practices failed and they needed to call on partners for assistance.This notion of disciplinary power captures the dilemma of the home-working self succinctly. That is, how do the teleworkers practices suggest their
self-regulation,
and how is this an effect of both the insecurities of self-employment and the 'disciplinary' imperative of clients' demands (constituted relations)and/or
the effect of the production of entrepreneurs' own desires for control and autonomy, channelled into a search for excellence and success in enterprise (constitutive relations)? Furthermore, the notion of disciplinary power is evocative of how one might theorise the teleworking self as "both-and" (Lather,199 1 : 154)
constituted and constitutive, in and through the discursive configuration of the practices of'home' and 'work' in which they are multiply, fluidly and complexly located.
Practices of the Self
In
taking up this theoretical project in relation to the constituted and constitutive power of discourse, this research is dedicated to an exploration of the possible meaning of telework to the subjectivities andpractices of women and men. In reflecting on Heam's (1996: 208)
point regarding the multiplicity of possible meanings of subjectivities, and their relationship to what people do, this thesis retains a classic sociological interest in practices. Practices such as those associated with work, time, space, money, housework, child care, leisure etc, lie at the heart of the orientation of this thesis toward the question of how people manage the simultaneity of paid work, parenting and partnering in home-based business.
In reviewing these 'practices of the self , there is also something of a 'gap' between the theoretical literature regarding the multiplicity and meaning of subjectivities, and the many sociological studies of the practices of work, parenting, leisure and so on. In relation to the arena of housework and domesticity vis-a-vis employment, for example, some of the 'best'
resear
ch, in tenns of providing detailed, 'empirical' accounts, such as Hochschild's ( 1989) and Apter's (1993), do not engage with the theories of subjectivity which circulate in the feminist literature and are discussed above. And yet despite this lacuna, such research does provocatively allude to the issues of contradiction, fluidity and multiplicity that characterise the poststructuralist position.Such writers have proved for me to be compelling reading in that they detail the practices whereby gendered power traverses households, organisations, subjectivities and indeed everyday life itself,
and
are significant resources for the study of the discursive construction of subjectivity. This study moves between such richly textured 'empirical' accounts of gendered practices and the connection of these to poststructuralist theories of subjectivity. This analysis is offered in a context where telework research has tended to be atheoretical in nature (with some notable exceptions, for example, Mackinnon,199 1 ; Salmi, 1 997) and
often unsatisfyingly 'thin' in regard to the connection between organisational and entrepreneurial subjectivities and practices and those of the home and family. Additionally this thesis links with the on-going conversation regarding the theorisation of subjectivitiesand
practices, by detailing the "specificity of the construction of actual subjectivities in the domain of discursive practices" (Henriques etal, 1984: 204)
in this particular time at the end of the century and in the particular place of the home-based business.It is these teleworking practices, the narratives that 'story' them, and the readings I offer of these stories, which form the basis of this study. The process by which this research pursued these questions methodologically in relation to