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1995. Ethnography and Organizational Learning: In Pursuit ofearning at W ork. In Organizational Learning and Technologicalhange. S. Bagnara, C. Zucch erm aglio, and S. Stucky, eds. Nework & Berlin: Springer-Verlag.

. 1996. Talking About Machines: An Ethnography of a ModernIthaca, NY: ILR P ress.rr , Julian E v and Norman C. Crowfoot. 1992. Design by Anecdote:

The Use of Ethnography to Guide the Application of Technology to

Practice. Proceedings of PDC '9 2: The Participatory Design C onfence, Cambridge, MA.Rethinking Wo rk. 1994. Business Week. 1 7 Oct., pp. 74-11 7.Suchman, Lucy. 1987. Plans and Situated Actions: The ProblemHuman-Machine Communication. New York: Cambridge UniversPress.W il l iams, Raymond. 1988. Keywords: A Vocabulary of Culture aSociety. London: Fontana Paperbacks.

The Symbolic Narrative of "Anti-Management" or How Managers-to-be ExpressTheir Resistance to the New Forms of WorkAngela ProcoliLaboratoire d'Anthropologie SocialeCNRS, College de France, Paris

In a Stream of Continuous Change

In a recent book, sociologist Richard Sennett explains howflexibil ity imposed by the new capitalism deeply modifiesthe rules of the game in the making of a career:

Flexible capitalism has blocked the straight roadway ofcareer, divertin g employees suddenly from one kind of wo rkinto another. (Sennett 1998: 9).Workers now have to be permanently adaptable to thefluctuations of the jo b m arket. Sennett is extrem ely con vinc ingwhen he shows how recu rring changes erode persona lity, eventhough he could be crit icize d for having limited his observa-tions to some profess ional aspects.1 W hile in the past a workermanaged his career "a lon g a straight line " (he wo rke d hard, heaccumulated expe rienc e, he cou ld plan his future), today there

is no such a thing as settling down; such a balance as he hasachieved is perpetually threatened. In our flexible, re-engi-neered econ om y, Sennett asserts that we are unan chored fromour pasts, our neighbors, and ourselves. "Time's arrow isbroken; it has no trajectory in a continually reengineered,routine-hating, short-term polit ical econom y (98)."Sennett shows the superficiality to wh ich m odern indiv idu -als are doo me d, u nable as they are to grasp the sense of things.However, his essay leaves a question open: how can modernpeople survive in a system that imposes such discontinuities?This is a question that necessarily puzzles an anthropologistwho has always been taught that continuity and transmissionare necessary ingre dients for a society to exist. So I decided topenetrate the heart of continuous change. I did my fieldw orkin a group of trainees in personnel management, i.e., peoplewh o are allegedly, m embers of the "global and mob ile elite."Learning to Be Flexible

Today, against the background of a changing professionalwor ld , much has been said about "professional training." Forinstance, the French expression formation professionnelle,Angela Procoli is an anthropologist at the Laboratoired'Anthropologie Sociale at the College de France, Paris.

which translates as professional training, emphasizes tconcept of human transformation (akin to the forming character), while this connotation may be absent from tEnglish training, where stress is laid on instruction. Apart frothe fact that in French formation an d transformation derifrom the same root, the concept of hum an transformation datback to the educational thoug ht of the French En lightme nt"life-long education" was thoug ht to be necessary to beco ma "good cit izen" of a State in which everybody, and even the first time the poorest, could have access to knowledge.the writ ings of Condorcet, who was a key figure among tintellectuals of the French revolution,2 the enl ightened cit izis the one w ho, training himself continually, breaks out from tslavery to which ignorance dooms him (Condorcet 198Condorcet's idea of human progress re-emerges two centurlater as a law that institutes, for the first time in France, the righ tworkers to take time off for professional training. This law datback to 1971 and states that professional train ing aims at e nsing "the forming and development of every individual, all hlife long, allowing him to acquire all the knowledge, all tintellectual and manual skil ls directed toward personfulf i l lment, as well as the cultural, economic and socprogress of s ociety."

But during the next two decades, the meaning of train ichanges: it is more and more lim ited to the professional f ieThe changes in the world economy (deregulation and globization affecting market, trade and labor) that took p lace in t1970s and 1980ssometimes referred to as a new phasecapitalism called "disorganized capitalism" (Lash and Ur1987)resulted in the emergenc e of mass unemployment aprecarious work.3In the crit ical context of spiraling unemployment, profsional training becomes in polit ical cum media speech"shield", a defensive weapo n against the ups and down s of emp loyme nt situation. Life-long professional re-training allopeople to escape from th e m ost negative effects of re-eng ineing and mass lay-off. Parallel to this defensive reasoniflexibility is presented in a more favorable light (it is a chlenge). In a global economy, people must not fear uncertaithey will take up the challenge of being adaptable to any

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professional (or cultural) co ntext (this essentially concern-

g has, beyond do ubt, undergone a deep transformation.

o are adaptable w ill survive in the professional worl d., however, econom ic conditions only produce a small e7/te of

Fie ldworkFor an anthropologist, a key issue is the meaning offor people who are training themselves.

ntended to be a kind of university for any worker, technician

initiate d to the most recent techniques ap plyin g to the tools ofhis trade. Nowadays, two centuries later, CNAM looks for a{omnes docet4)

in the 1970s, the Conservatoire, where people tradi-

e open to techn ical personnel or the une mp loyed, or

itiona l trainin g is separated from the new mode of training.f selection. While evening courses are free, day classes arearticu larly exp ensive and em ployers cover the expenses. Thent is kn ow n as "leave with pay for trainin g"; the law

d in July 19 71 . W hile evening courses are open not onlyhose w ho have a jo b. These are mid dlesenior executives (they are 35-45 years old) and they com eN AM intending to turn to a new employm ent or a promo-To them , daytime training has a good brand image; theyire "comp etence" to become adaptable5 Com petence is guaranteed by(between w orkplac e and training institution). This isrtunity to adapt the theoreti-

lly, the s election of trainees separates an e"//te (those wh o

are well-situated in the professional wo rl d, that is, executivesmeant to become the "high performers," from the other onesthe "low performers" according to the expression used in thofficial discourse (of adm inistration and coaches alike), that is"young people who do not have any professional experiencor people who are already excluded from the professionaworld" (i.e., housewives or the unemployed).But, as we shall see further on, the opposition"performer/non-performer," a basic tenet for the institution, cabe challenged precisely by those wh o are supposed to be paof an e7/te. In fact, those concerned may not condone thidiv is ion, because they often blur the line be tween ev enin g anday training. For example, those who are not entitled to daclasses manage nevertheless to join them (it is the case ounemployed people whose leave for training is paid for btheir former employer or by themselves); or those who are inday classes extend training time by going to evening coursesI wi ll refer here more spec ifically to a group I joi ne d from1992 to 1994. This group of about forty people was followinthe day classes, a week per month during two years, t

become managers of human resources. Thus, during that tim eI followed trainees inside the training institution and outsidewhere I met them in their domestic and professional livestrying to understand how people who have very differenprofessional histories (I met social wo rkers , people wor kin g ihospitals, executive staff in state and private firms, in ministries) club together in Conservatoire to form a real groupframed in a well defined space and time, that of professionatraining. This group comes together as the result of a mo de otraining whereby trainees are continually encouraged toverstep family and professional patterns and to take a stepaway from the outer world (i.e., the wo rld outside the traininf ield). The purpose is to become a "new man": only thostrainees who have learned to change themselves will be ablto change the Other (the one who will be managed) and toinvolve him in the plans of the f i rm. This stands out clearlwhen training sessions are being analyzed.Trainees spend most of the week locked in wha t they ca"atelierdeproduction" (production workshop) wh ere, in a kinof role play, they create the new and flexible individual whwill be able to adapt quickly to any alteration of the markePossessing the data of a real f i rm, they break up into varioucomponents the profile of a ficticious character's performancin order to select those skills that wi ll be developed d uri ng hitraining. They are taught to distinguish "jobs at risk" (d oometo disappear) from "good prospect jobs" (with a chance tdevelop). The first they w ill fail to me ntion altogether; they w imake the second evolve in the direction wanted by the f i rmFinally, what is asked of a manager is to be able to evaluatconstantly the gap between today's competence and the onrequired tomorrow .The workshop is preceded and followe d by two "guidancesin which trainees learn how to formulate their professionaproject. While the method (re-construction/de-constructionremains the same, it is no longer a question of working on ficticious other, but on a real persononeself. Indeed, thmanagement of human resources is learned via some kind o

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guid-looks back at the time he has spent in the firmlvem en t, as if it were some one else's experience.to dev elop his capacity for self-evaluation. The profes-ience , required w hen the trainee joins the session,

by the grou p, under the very discreet control of the

Specific views are given up for the sake of a collectiveess of this operation w il l depe nd on one'sthe gap separating a personal vie w o f reality from

h now encompasses a reflection on training andf. H is (hi-)story is then analyzed in its globality , and theer leads h im on , become secondary. As a collective story

Life Stories and the A ccou ntof a Col lect ive Narrat iveThe trainees' representations and practices observedweeks lie with in a far-ranging social f ield

aspect emerged from a collective discourse that was

ividua l discourses in all their diversity.Encouraged by this training method, trainees often talk

rs against the wishes of her fam ily. This was in

er. Today, ta lkin g ab out that tim e, she says:I've made a lot of blunders, such as living in a comm unityaccording to the custom of that time. But, finally, when I'veunderstood that I needed stability, I left [the commun ity].Coming back to Paris, she lived on different odd jobsng no qual i f icat ion. Meanw hile, she resum ed her studies

6 got married again and divorced a fews later. Toda y, she lives alone w ith her thirteen-year-old son.Discontinuity can be taken in the context of a familyf up roo ting . This is the case of another trainee from a

Forains are uneducated peo ple, rustics, and really a ttachedto their fairs, to their beliefs and to their speech.She was born in France, where her family arrived after mawanderings. Throughout her childhood, she lived a very nmadic life. Her parents move all over France with their merrgo-rounds. She admits today that she did not like that n om ad

life; she was made to suffer wh en at school she was c onsid ereto be a gypsy girl. She protests: "Forains and gypsies, it's nthe same thing at all." Man y of the choices she made in her liwere m otivated by her wil l to f ind roots somewhe re, to escapfrom the nomadic life that means poverty and very modesocial origins. To continue one 's studies and to fin d a job is thway out. Like many people coming from poor families, shtook a job as a nurse in a psychiatric hospital, where she s tworks today. The hospital, to her, is a fam ily h ome wi th a lof friends.In the hospital we were all uprooted people.... The hospitalrecruited people coming from rural backwaters or from themost disadvantaged sections of the population and whochose to study nursing because it was paid.

Professional train ing makes it possible for her to go on study i nfor years and fina lly graduate to head nurse.Even if not all trainees are familiar with professiontraining, they stil l attempt to justify their current choice training session by evoking a trauma tic event that took placshortly before joini ng the trainin g courses. This can be a breaup in family l ife (a close parent's death, a divorce, a lonperiod of emotional deprivation) or a step taken away from aideology such as former trade-unionist who becomes manager, or a brutal lay-off putting an end to a long career the same f i rm. This is also the case of another trainee wharrived at C N AM one year after the death of her ten-year-oson. As she tells the story of her life: "I haven't begun thtraining session by chance. I started it two years ago; whatnow fear is the end of it."This is also the case of another trainee who, formerlystock jobber, was fired after twenty years as the Stock Echange was re-patterned. And finally, there is the case another trainee, an ex-trade-unionist, wh o came to the train insession in a mome nt of big changes in his l ife. After div orc inhis wife, he decided to leave the trade-union where he habeen active for twenty years. Today he plans to becomthrough the professional training experience, a manager in thf i rm. For all these trainees, training experience is a "fiescape" where they seek asylum from a world too finebalanced in order to gather strength and stability.Statements switch over, signif icantly, from the individuto the collective. While the individual seeks to emphasisome fundamental britt leness that has to be cured by tr ain inthe collective (the group of trainees) takes over the model the "broken life line" and makes it clear that the "restorationidentity" is the main goal of their professional re-de ploym enFormulated along the way as the actors advance in thetraining, the collective narrative appears like the acc ount o f"my th," as it is exemplary (it founds a new order) and gene(specific features of individual histories are erased). Everyo

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in the group takes over the myth of the loss to be recouped,and he no longer sets a claim to account for his ow n indiv idua lexperience. It does not matter whether the loss is real orimaginary. Thus, even those who did not lose their job andwho will not lose it, at least during the training period, speakand act as if they were already laid off. If trainees say, andrightly so, that at CN AM the former stock jobber "m ourns hisprevious o ccu pation ," they use the same expression (mourn-ing) for those who have lost their job. For everyone, trainingbecomes a place "to mourn their previous occupation," tospeak about their "professional death" (Procoli 1999).

This is the case of a wom an wh o is a social worke r co mingto C N AM wi th the pro ject of turning to another profession. Butthe further she advances in the training program, the moreuneasy she feels in her job. Finally, she begins to speak as ifshe were un em ploye d. "I 'm nowhere, I 'm shedding my skin asa social worker.... I 'm mourning my profession."This is also the case of another trainee, a social worke r atthe Paris police headquarters, where she deals with theprofessional and family problems of policemen. After a verymobile career (in her administration, executives have tochange periodically their workplace), she feels very t ired.Today she wants to leave public administration. Her discourseabout her professional re-deployment becomes a discourseabout her professional death and it takes a mythical form thatevokes myths about the end of history.This profession [social workers in the police force] is onewhere we engineer our own disappearance. Once theproblems are solved, we vanish because, in general terms,we are no longer needed. The same with cops: when theyhave reached their ultimate goal, when everyone is safe andorder prevails, they are no longer needed.In the context of a mode of training whereby trainees arecontinually encouraged to overstep family and professionalpatterns, the notion of "mo urnin g" stresses the breakdown w iththe past or with the world outside training. Family life outsidemust not interfere w ith training, especially w ith the new bondsset up in this context. The story of a trainee who, during histraining experience, had his second son, is exemplary. Hebecame the target of his mates' jokes as he had transgressed afundamental rule at CNAM: never do anything likely toim ping e on the life of the cycle. That is to say: "family life mustno t interfere w ith tr ain ing life ." But fina lly his transgression wasforgiven when all his mates created a symbolic bond byproc laiming themselves "godfathers" to the baby.In another form of expression, I wo uld describe as "sponta-

neous plays,"7 trainees express their feelingsfriendship,attraction or lovewhich arise with the passing of trainingweeks. These plays can appear, in the eyes of an observerlooking from outside, as spectacular. In the so-called "loveplays," they give emphasis to new sentimental bonds calledupo n to replace old er on es. In the eyes of the trainees, the newcouples are exem plary, even though, generally speaking, thesebonds do not last beyond the training period. As a "genuineproduct" of training itself, these bonds emphasize that trainingis , in the group's imagery, a self-contained space in which a

new family emerges. Sometimes, bonds set up during ttraining period can deeply modify the course of a life. Thatwhat happened in the context of the most spectacular evethat took place in the life of this group.The protagonists of the event are a man w ho e mb odie s,the view of others, domestic stability and a successful care(he appears as an "achiever"), and who becomes the und

puted leader of the training group. As soon as he enters thtraining group, he takes under his protective wing a youwoman, made frail, as the group sees her, by being undsevere professional and emotio nal pressure. Between the twa strong bon d of friendsh ip and solidarity b uilds up . By helpiher to obtain a trainee job in his own f i rm, he gives herchance to take a step away from her regular place of work, least for a short tim e. O ne d ay, to the great surprise of al l, falls i ll , loses his job a nd disappears from train ing, w hi le shehired by his ex-firm and replaces him in his position. No oin the group knows exactly what happened (why was he wfired while he was waiting for a promotion) and nobody darto comm ent on this event in derogatory tones . The very factbeing destabilized, in other words to be "deprived of" (wofam ily, etc.) acquires a positive value in terms of the co llectinarrative. The strong one, the stable one, goes without hriches (career etc.) in order to make it possible for the unstab(the low performer) to be we ll trained an d, consequently, restore her identity and find a new stability. The hardships bears have much in common with relinquishment of earthpossessions as a mystical sacrifice. He, who is a paragon stability, to which everyone aspires, accepts his owdestabilization. This self-denial will make it possible for hand the others (the unstable) successfully to "reshape."This story, more so than any other, points to the gbetween the way trainees account for such matters and tmanagerial ideology they were supposed to absorb. It stanout, inasmuch as it denies the dichotomy "achiever/ noachiever," w hic h is at the root of the reputation the day trainis seeking to acquire. The collective narrative is the exaopposite of managerial thinking , according to whic h the loperformers, not the achievers, are the ones to be sacrificeThe sacrifice of the "performer" shows with great clarity ththe meaning of the professional projec t (to becom e a managis com pletely subverted. There is then no cause for surpriseat the end of his training session, the unemployed former stojobber reformulates the responsibilities of a manager who, he says, "has the power to make a profession sink or swimand finally adds that his ow n purpose is to see that kn ow -hosurvive. "M y respon sibility is to see to it that trades are hand

down, " he says, and that is the reason why he chose become a manager. The latter attitude comes clearly inconflict w ith the m ain task of a manager, which is to measuthe gap between the old ab ilities and the new ones, useful the future of the f i rm, wh ich are to be acquired. Paradoxicathe narrative repudiates what is meant by performance in tmanagerial language: it is not any longer a question of chaning oneself to become a "f lexible man," adaptable to aprofessional or personal context and, consequently, able mold the Other.

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The resistance against the conventional Ideology is noterate conservation of old k now -how doom ed to disappear.

8 in the search for roots even though these rootsors, whe re one has really never l ived.

ConclusionComing back to the question brought up at the beginning

evers from non-achievers and the necessity of adap tability

anti-manage-narrative. Ma y this paradox be on ly apparent?The trainees' narrative is produced in a place founded,omnes docet princip le,ich aims at the enlightenment of the cit izen throughout hisObjectively, this principle is violated by the teachingm-oriented. Skilled and flexible employees are trained,

he trainees succeed in re-ap propriating som ethingdocet principle, when they reject the social

The imperative of continual change is imposed far beyond thef ie ld, especially in the domestic f ie ld, the family hasPhilosopher, mathematician and politician (1743-1794). He wroteles of political eco nomy. As a deputying at a reform of the

educa tional system (1792). Arrested and imprisoned d urin g the Terrhe was sentenced to death. He took poison rather than go to thgui l lot ine.3. Whereas in 1970 the number of une mploye d workers in France wca 300,000, this number increased to one m il l ion in 1 976. From thyear on unem ployment continuously increased, being now stabi l izeat 2.5 mill ion (February 2000), which corresponds to circa 10.5% the workin g po pulation. The appearance of mass unem ploym ent wafelt to be a source of grave concern to all those involved in societproblems, so much so that the French translation of Jeremy Rifkinbook "The End of W ork" was a bestsel ler, with a preface by a formPrime Minister.4. Latin for "it teaches everybody."5. In day courses including groups of forty-five or fifty students at ma xim um , the coach monitors his trainees at close range wh ile this not possible in university type evening courses where the professaddresses ex cathedra an audience of one hundred to three hundrestudents which he seldom knows individual ly.6. The state-owned electric power producer.7. By "spontaneous plays" I mean those events which express concrete terms the logical patterns of the collective discourse anwhich escape the control of the session leader, overstepping thtraining method or divert ing i t .8. A testimony of the search of entrenchment is very frequentexpressed by such metaphors as " to fo llow the training courses is likto put down one's luggage after a long journey."ReferencesApplebaum, H. 1992. The Concept of Work. New York: StaUniversity of New York Press.Condorcet, 1989. Ecrits sur ^instruction publique, Paris: Edilig, t.lGodel ier, M.1986.The Mental and the Materia. London: Verso.Grignon , C. 1976. L'art et le metier. Ecole parallele et petite bou rgeosie. Actes de la recherche en Sciences sociales 4 : 21-46.Lash, S. and Urry, J. 1987. The End of Organized Ca pitalism. OxforPolity Press.Procoli, A. 1999. De la violence symbolique a la reparation : le cad'uneformation en ressources hu maine s au Conservatoire national dArts et Me tiers. In Franchise He ritier. De /a violence, t. II, Paris: Od iJacob.Rifkin, J. 1995. The End of Work: The Decline o f the Global LabForce and the Dawn of the Post-Market Era. New York: Tarcher/G.P. Putnam's Sons.Sennett, Richard. 1998. The Corrosion of Character. London and NeYork: W.W.Norton & Company.

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