Scarred objects and time marks as memory anchors: The significance of scuffs and stains in organisational life
研究工人如何将地板划痕、桌子破损等被视为微不足道的“带伤疤的物体”转化为记忆锚点，在灵活多变的工作环境中获得嵌入感。基于对43名美发师的9个月观察，提出物质研究新领域。
This article lays the workplace under the microscope to examine how scuffs on floors and battered corners on desks – things we define as ‘scarred objects’ – become material autobiographical archives and are made into memory anchors by workers. We explore how these scarred objects, construed as insignificant by some, become integral to workers’ sense of memory and continuity. These scarred objects become time marks (Walsh, 1992) which provide a sense of embeddedness in an otherwise flexible, transient working world. We draw on material culture and sociological literatures, and the work of Burnett and Holmes (2001), to make sense of scarred objects in terms of their significance to workers as well as their construal of work and relationship to organisation mediated through memory. This article is based on empirical, visual data gathered from a 9-month study involving 43 hairdressers working in hair salons. We offer three contributions: first, we develop a new area of material studies, at a micro-level, that extends our understanding of objects in the workplace; second, we demonstrate how scarred objects anchor workers’ sense of memory; and third, we show the importance of scarred objects in the context of greater flexibility and liquidity in contemporary work.