Forgive me for  blurting  and stumbling in here - this has been a really
thought provoking  discussion -  and I hope this is not an interruption or
a  spoke in the wheel of sorts.

I have been  following this thread of discussion this week, and wondering
at the workplace writing that is done by mainly service sector workers
which would not be considered "professional" but nevertheless has powerful
economic, social,  medical and political  implications for the  writers and
the "objects" or subjects of the writing, and yet is not considered elite,
high status or qualifies for US VISA status -- this  writing is highly
literate, is situated in complex  social and human contexts,  I am thinking
of the writing that is done by  child-care workers, youth workers, lay
mental health  workers, street workers, transitional house workers etc. -
many of these occupations require a considerable amount of
reading/reporting documenting/summarizing in a deeply situated manner as
well as interacting/ negotiating/ advocacy with  hierarchical "regulating
bodies" which supply the "official" genres and technical and literate
authority about official  textual accounts of things.  It seems to me  that
most of the workers in these occupations are mid-aged women, or younger men
and they may typically hold  a BA or some other semi-professional
certificate.

 I wrote my MA thesis on the workplace  writing that was done by mental
health workers in a community mental health boarding home, ( I think I fell
into the job because my artist friend Polly said it would give me "flex
hours so I could do my  "real" writing as a "poet", this thesis was based
on my own experience as a mental health worker and in it I tracked  eleven
years of daily documentation in a massive archive we called the daily log.
most of us "nonprofessional"  mental health workers were reasonably to
highly educated folks, with backgrounds in the arts, community based
education , theatre, and social activism, advocacy, etc.  - and in our
workplace we wrote daily progress notes in the day to day care of adults in
transition from total institutions of the  psychiatric  warehouses of the
late 70's early 80's to "independent living"/ abandonment in the community
.

I think one of the most remarkable findings for me was to realise the
degree of literate practice that went on in the day to day maintenance of
our community, but which remained almost entirely taken for granted -
invisible, as a form of consciously acknowledged "writing"  - "its not real
writing"  it's  just log  notes!!!"  I remember someone declaring, but
others of us wondered at this writing that was so vital to  our daily care
of  others, so powerful and evocative of the  lives  lived within the walls
of our  community - that we kept writing in a particular
"fieldnotes/anecdotal" manner because we  felt it was a better way to
provide  care for our residents --  despite having institutionally and
finally forensically mandated edicts to write in a medical model progress
notes  style.

when the workers in the house unanimously decided to  maintain two  sets of
texts,  one to satisfy the licensing board and the  forensic authorities,
and the other in order to  remain connected as a  community and workplace,
because it seemed a more accurate, "safer" and ethical form of writing,  I
knew  we were onto to something quite profound.  .

Perhaps at the university and elsewhere - we lose sight of the immense
privilege that our particular writing/reading practices hold, ( for example
now I sometimes laugh a wee bit ironically perhaps,  when I talk about my
'work" when it means I must devote the weekend to some reading and
writing), meanwhile as I settle in at my desk to do this work  - somewhere
over the other side of town - someone else is sitting down to read  twenty
pages of hand written progress notes about what happened in the community
boarding home that week, and after  she reads this text she will be faced
with "understanding"  the subjects of this writing,  providing care, food,
crisis management, medical supplements, dinner and social interaction to
fifteen psychiatrically marginalized adults for the next 8 - 12 hours -
after which she will sit down and write an account of "what happened" in
order to communicate sometimes life-critical details to her  fellow workers
coming onto the next shift later that day/week --  her work is highly
literate, textually sophisticated and yet she is paid slightly about
minimum wage and is not considered "technical, academic, or professional"


So  to answer in a kind of rambling  way - professional writing is the kind
of writing that  certain people  do where the focus of their labour becomes
a recognised textual product that has cultural capital in some form,
because the text can be seen as a active agent of some kind -- also there
seems to be a conscious apprenticeships where this  genre of writing is
refined


 whereas other people's  workplace writing is not  defined as professional
- and the writing is done as a part of the work that is done -  it is
perceived as instrumental -  a means to an end,  and  I  suspect  that
learning the writing of the workplace is part of  learning  how to become a
"mental health worker"  - much as Lave  and Wenger  speak of in "Situated
Learning" --  therefore  this form of writing does not have status or
capital value mainly because the labour falls into that mediated space
where the focus in upon the services of the body ( even when that service
in for the care and welfare and comfort of  many other people) and the
textualization of that labour is rendered invisible in the services of the
bodies.  I imagine that pay equity legislation will begin to draw attention
to the textual and literate practices of this invisible but essential
sector of under-valued workers.

For anyone interested -- I think Dorothy Smith has made a huge
contribution to this "curious eclipse"  about the differences between
"professional" texts and what she calls documentary text in her writing
about "the active text"  and the "textual relations of ruling" in her two
books -  The Conceptual Practices of Ruling  -- and Texts, Facts and
Femininity: Exploring the Relations of Ruling.

cheers

kathryn


**********************************************************
People with great passions, people who accomplish great deeds,
people who possess strong feelings even people with great minds
and a strong personality, rarely come out of good little boys and girls
L.S. Vygotsky

Kathryn Alexander ( a now redeemed formerly recalcitrant child)
Doctoral Candidate, Faculty of Education,
Simon Fraser University
Burnaby, B.C.  V5A 1S6
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