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Short abstract:

This paper explores the role of sociomaterial entanglements in everyday waste work. Based on and contributing to practice theories, we analyze intersections between the ‘doings and sayings’ of German waste workers and digitalization’s material forms.

Long abstract:

Similar to other areas of work, waste collection in Germany is increasingly being digitized. This includes ideas of dynamic route planning and mobile order management, in which sociomaterial assemblages (e.g. sensor technology, tablets and SAP systems), as well as agendas of sustainability and work facilitation play a key role. In the context of everyday working environments, however, waste workers follow, contest or re-define the scripts of specific technologies in order to complete their work tasks and to reach their goals. This paper explores how sociomaterial entanglements (Orlikowski 2007), in the sense of co-constituted knowledge, objects and routines in everyday manual and embodied work experiences, intersect with (big and little) work futures. More specifically, our ethnographic analysis of digitalized work in a German public waste collection enterprise focuses on the 'doings and sayings' of company employees in that it considers specific forms of practices and (tacit) knowledge as crucial for the transformation of work. Theoretically and empirically our paper seeks to make contributions to practice theory’s role in examining materiality in digital work: how do the imagined digital forms of work and related technology assemblages shape the often enduringly manual and embodied work experiences of company employees, and vice-versa?