DOI10.1068d341 The region in the boot mobilising lone subjects and multiple objects

Introduction:issues and methods

Locating the company in its geography The sales region may appear as a map you see pinned to the wall if you visit a transnational company at its headquarters to do an interview with one of its managers:a map of key locations where this company's operations are conducted or to which they are directed,perhaps with thick lines drawn to mark its edges and subdivisions.With some delight you think:`Aha!A representation of the company region.Just what I was looking for'.When no one is looking you scan the map for clues,for signs that could be decoded,parts of a hidden ideological construction of space.Then,after hanging around at headquarters for a while,you notice that the members of the company largely ignore the map.They talk a lot about various places,which you realise have pins stuck in them,although often they do not even mention the names on the map but,rather,refer to the names of the people from these places.They talk about personalities,they talk about promotions,they talk about turnover,and they talk about where the company's products go.Y ou found the company easy enough at headquarters,but where,you wonder,is the geography of its region to be found if not on the map?In a tactical manoeuvre familiar to cultural geographers,critical theorists,and sociologists of scientific knowledge,we want to move away from elaborate readings of the map,away from the boardroom overview,down to the ground-level organisational labour required to make the company region happen.We want to shift out of the central office to observe some of the work as it is done by those whose daily business it is to manage a company's region or regions.This shift to find out what happens outside of headquarters is not just about looking for `where the action is'(Goffman,1969),it also follows a shift in the practices of other service-sector workers (Laurier and Philo,1998),The region in the boot:mobilising lone subjects and multiple objects

Eric Laurier,Chris Philo Department of Geography and Topographic Science,University of Glasgow,Glasgow G128QQ,Scotland;e-mail:elaurier@https://www.doczj.com/doc/1815064951.html, ,cphilo@https://www.doczj.com/doc/1815064951.html, Received 26June 2001;in revised form 5July 2002

Environment and Planning D:Society and Space 2003,volume 21,pages 85^106

https://www.doczj.com/doc/1815064951.html,pany regions are forms of space busy with the sorting and distributing of objects from one location to another.We argue here,in sympathy with actor-network theory and nonrepresentational theory,that space is formulated by and formulative of its objects in mutually elaborating occasions and chains of action.The handling of objects that produces regions requires not simply that they are put in a place,but that they are put in a relevant place.Finding the relevant where is bound to the relevant when in the sense that the uses of objects are bound to sequential considerations of the kind:what happens next?Regions are cultural,social,political,and sometimes theoretical entities for economists,geogra-phers,and other professional social scientists,but they are also topics of concern to regional managers of business companies,who are unavoidably and pervasively involved in the practical activities of spatial organisation.In this paper we are pursuing the situated replication of sociospatial technologies,or,in other words,how the same thing is done over and over again by local employees,with both the materials that they have at hand and the contingent circumstances in which they locate themselves.In pursuing our analysis we follow one particular mobile worker as she goes about her daily work of managing her region.What we attempt to excavate from our ethnographic material is the order that is endogenous to those activities.It is an everyday order that does not turn on spectacular technologies but turns,rather,on mundane ones such as stacking cardboard boxes,arranging items in the boot of a car,and driving around a city.

DOI:10.1068/d341

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who increasingly suggest that their companies are ever more urgently pushing managers out of their central offices and into their regions.(1)Company policy from one transna-tional corporation(TNC)recommends that in the average five-day week as many as three days should be spent visiting clients on site.Regional managers who spend all day at their desks are criticised for losing touch with their clients.In the case study reported on here the company had removed traditional office facilities for its regional managers entirely and expected them to use their cars as offices.

In what follows we will focus upon a workplace where the traditional central office environment has been emptied out and merged into the work sites of its dispersed customers.Or,to put it another way,some of the workers from the office have been sent out in their company cars with newly available mobile technologies(mainly tele-phones but also portable computers)to do more on-site service work with their clients. At this point we do not wish to speculate on the implications of these workers becoming more mobile,we wish instead to examine elements of what this form of spatially dispersed labour entails:

``Life at work is a staple in our conversations,but we rarely talk about what we really do in the doing of a job.This omission extends to the professional literature on work:most such literature is not concerned with work as practice,by which I mean that these writings do not focus on what is actually done in accomplishing a given job.Instead,most are centred on work as the relation of employment or on work as a source of the worker's identity.Although such writings are inevitably based on assumptions about practice,practice itself is usually taken for granted, and the basis of the assumption remains implicit''(Orr,1996,page1).

Our investigation is akin to a`shop-floor'description of work practices,except that for mobile workplaces there is no`shop floor'.Nevertheless,their work practices remain reflexively tied to spaces,and for the kind of workers with whom we are concerned here work practices are tied to the spaces of their regions.Moreover,the activities here are the`behind the scenes'aspects of service work,unseen by clients,yet without which sales performances(inasmuch as they are at all theatrical)could not be done.

We will follow only one mobile worker,but what our study lacks in extensivity it makes up for in the intensivity of bringing into view the myriad practical aspects of making regions.To extend our findings would involve further ethnographies of regional work of the kind we are doing here,not only for similar kinds of companies but also for other workers who have to do their work across regional spaces.By describing the practical activities of producing a sales region,we hope to show the lack of inevitability in the production of regions as spatial forms,underlining that they are likely to be quite precarious material accomplishments,locally established pockets of order in the changing arrangements of each and every company(see also Thrift,1996).Further-more,in line with arguments about regarding institutions as ongoing,mutable,and indeed reversible achievements(Philo and Parr,2000),we suppose that the company region is itself an achieved spatial order needing constant attention,repair,and hetero-geneous labours.(2)A company region,once of interest to an older version of industrial (1)The need to be out on the road visiting clients,dispersed colleagues,and customers has been a lifelong element of many jobs,but our fieldwork suggested that it is becoming a more important aspect of jobs not previously characterised by such a mobile existence.This view from our partici-pants is supported by statistics gathered by the ESRC(Economic and Social Research Council) Transport Studies Unit(Goodwin et al,1995),who suggest that the percentage of journeys that are work-related has grown to a figure of70%;thus they are now by far the commonest type of car trip.

(2)Following Crang(2000),amongst others(Du Gay,1996),we are widening the senses of labour to include not just physical activity but also emotional,dramaturgical,conversational,technologi-cal,and other activities;and relatedly,with Crang,we agree that there are then different forms of `surplus value'to be extracted from each kind of action.

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geography,is clearly a quite specific form of region?an artificial and constructed one?but we are proposing that our ethnographic descriptions of`managing'a com-pany region can inform broader debates about geographical regions less as pregiven `natural'entities and more as fabricated`social'entities(Allen et al,1998;Thrift,1994). Of transporting objects

We are in no doubt that the mobility of people and materials is centrally implicated in making company regions.This claim is hardly an exceptional one,but we hope that how we elaborate its implications may have some novelty,and it has underlain our joint research on the lives,experiences,and practices of car-based mobile workers,a corner of which we will present here.(3)Our car-based mobile workers,mostly individ-uals who`go out into the field'(4)to promote products and/or to offer services to established or potential clients,can be envisaged as occupying places in motion during working hours.Their cars are their places,and they function as office,storage,and delivery vehicles,repeatedly criss-crossing a defined,if changing,territory of opera-tions.Mobile workers spend hours in transport systems,sitting on trains,buses,tubes, driving,and walking.Only occasionally do they come to rest at meetings with clients in the clients'workplaces(their offices,premises,workshops)or with fellow workers at agreed rendezvous points(a motorway service station,a known restaurant,coffee shop,cafe,or bar).(5)A few of these mobile workers are in business for themselves, but most of them are employees of larger companies with fixed headquarters.The immediate and simple counterfactual is that were the mobile workers not regularly and routinely`out there in the field',moving and meeting,there would eventually be no company region:the region would cease being maintained and reproduced on a daily basis,and the map on the boardroom wall would gradually become a historical artefact with little associative power beyond its two-dimensional lines,blobs,and spaces (Law and Hetherington,1999).Clients would be stolen by other TNCs,and headquarters would have a weaker and weaker awareness of what is happening outside its walls.

The mobile workers do not move across their regions in the form of,as it were, `naked subjects'.They travel with a complex assembly of equipment,some of it high tech and much of it not.Their`product'is not a`naked object'either,and appears as a complex topical assembly of packaging,documentation,advertising,contracts,and so on.The practical problem faced by mobile workers is how much of their equipment can they transport and how can they get the`product'to the clients'distant places? Hindmarsh and Heath,in their paper on a restoration control office for a telecoms network,put the tie between objects and workplaces very nicely,as they study:

``how personnel within a complex working environment refer to and examine objects and,through their interaction,constitute the occasioned sense and relevance of particular features of those objects within the course of their workplace activities.

In this way,we use the term objects very loosely,as a way of glossing a diverse range of(features of)tools;technologies and materials;paper documents such as

(3)See also:on talk,Laurier(2001a);on travel,Laurier(2001b);and on driving,Laurier(2001c).

(4)The resonance between their knowledge of`the field',even of`the region',and that of most academic geographers is intriguing;it would probably warrant further comment,which we provide to a limited extent below.

(5)Our mobile workers were at different levels in company hierarchies,with some participants in our project,like a human-resources officer(`Penny',in Laurier and Philo,1998),being quite senior (having her own nonmobile office and secretarial support)but with others,like Marge,being much more junior.For other work on contemporary nomadic workers and new technologies,see the computer-supported cooperative work collections Brown et al(2001)and Dix and Beale(1996).For a history of traveling salespeople which shows the long lineage of the car-based worker,see the delightful Spears(1995).

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logbooks and manuals;digital displays of text;diagrams and images;and artifacts such as pens,keyboards,telephones and the like''(2000,page527).

Akin to Hindmarsh and Heath,we are pursuing not`objects'per se,but rather the relevance of particular varieties of objects as they are implicated in practices that are sometimes about representing but are as often involved in a richer weave of packing, loading,dropping off,picking up,and marking(as in marking`for the attention of', and very often in announcing the impending or current work of managing a sales region:see also Kawatoko,1999).This point about the`spatial announcement'of objects within such practices will be elaborated in our later description and analysis.

The shift by Latour,Thrift,and others toward taking`the agency of things'seri-ously has raised questions about the extent and form of social agency that might be attributed to specific kinds of nonhumans(Laurier and Philo,1999).In other work we have teased out aspects of the lifeworld of animals in cities and in society more generally(Laurier et al,2002;Philo and Wilbert,2000).Though we have taken inspira-tion from Latour's widened sense of the social constituency as including all manner of things,from engineers,via seatbelts as nonmaterial couplings,to domestic cats,we are wary about making too easy an equivalence between humans and nonhumans or indeed between the very many kinds of nonhumans.The social agency which we can find for each and every thing requires not only its close description as a historical entity,living,dead,or inanimate,but also attention to which of its aspects are made relevant on any occasion of its use.

In this paper we are wanting to take objects seriously in how they are implicated, and even assist,in forms of social action.Moreover,we are suspending what we might call the distracting glitter of certain kinds of objects?say,diamonds or space shut-tles?to allows us to build criteria which do not exploit the pregiven value of the objects in question.In so doing,all manner of quite humble and mundane objects swim into focus;there are exemplary studies inspiring us in this respect,such as Latour's(1992)description of a self-closing hinge,Polanyi's(1958)study of a blind person's walking stick,even Foucault's(1987)remarkable excavation,inspired by Raymond Roussel,of the``small objects...taking on the appearance of flashing beacons''(page102)within the``infinitely chatty landscapes''(page115)so lovingly detailed by Roussel.One commonality in these contemplations on the place of objects in human activity is to register that they are historically fashioned tools or equipment always tied to complexes of technology and practice.In what follows we will investigate elements of a mobile worker's day that involve handling,moving,and orienting to such `grey'and apparently uninteresting items as cardboard boxes,plastic bags,and shrink-wrapped bottles.We are specifically examining the reflexive tie between such objects as they get used in organising space and the spatial arrangement of these objects them-selves,the latter of which is integral to how situated agents makes sense of said objects. All of this endeavour on our part will display how the practices of mobile workers, when transporting,packing,and unpacking the likes of boxes,bags,and bottles, encapsulates a suite of previously hidden but arguably indispensable region-building practices.

Brief remarks on our practice as researchers

In keeping with policies of ethnomethodological studies,we have been committed to explicating the methods by which competent members get things done(where`mem-ber'can stand for any agent categorically tied to activities).Ethnomethodological studies are distinct from most social and cultural approaches by virtue of not propos-ing that the formalised methodologies of the social sciences be administered upon research settings to deliver results.Instead,the methods and methodologies of the

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social sciences are taken as one field amongst many fields of practical action that ethnomethodologists have studied.(6)As Lynch and Bogen(1996)recommend for their study of courtroom practice,we have used an`underbuilt methodology'.

In our project Laurier followed six different mobile workers(only one of whom we will report on here),all in the service sector,talking,taking fieldnotes,seeing as much of the action as he could and where possible recording it on video for reviewing later. What is purposefully absent from our present account is`war stories'(Orr,1996)of the mobile workers stuck between clients and headquarters,many instances of which Laurier overheard and,indeed,was told during his time spent with mobile workers `in the field'.Such talk is an important component of the daily work and of region-building(see Laurier and Philo,1998),but in this paper we borrow a distinction made by Lynch(1985)in his studies of laboratory work.The divergence he pointed toward was between talk that speaks about the work and talk occurring as part and parcel of the work as it happens.Talk about the work is often part of having`the tour'of the workplace as a visitor,and it leads to the more common description of work in the social sciences.It is akin to what you might get if you interviewed someone about his or her job,where he or she will offer comments of the kind that anticipate what a social researcher might like to know about identity,power relations,gender,and the like.Talk which occurs in the work and is the work is what we are more interested in here(such as,`pass me the blue form',`I can't give you figures because the system is down').Talk about the work is not only offered to visiting social researchers,it is also used to introduce new employees to the job and is then entwined,assembled,and made sense of within a growing corpus of on-the-job instructions,tips,or war stories which lead to accomplishing the job.When Laurier first joined each driver,he would be told about certain aspects of the job,and these comments inform the description we are providing of`Marge's'job,(7)but our concern now is not to give readers`the tour'but, rather,to use some detailed descriptions of parts of Marge's work to bring you into the situated nature of that work as an embodied and sequential course of conduct.This may mean that the text is hard to follow in places,as Marge's activities cannot be grasped immediately if they are to be learned and appreciated for what they do.

A problem that has beset ethnographers since the`textual turn'is whether they can ever truly represent the voices and experiences of the people they research,and we are not about to ignore the fact that we,too,are using practices that render original phenomena into textual or pictorial formats to produce written documents which inevitably let slip details of what they purport to describe.The reason why nonrep-resentational theory,actor-network theory,and ethnomethodology have argued against privileging texts and speech as representation,and getting caught in writing as endless textual play,is because when researchers write something they are not only doing `representation'.They do their activities not only in the sense of political representa-tion,nor as always referring to something.They are writing as a practical embodied activity just like any other practical embodied activity,and to say that it is all doing representing is to miss the detail of whatever we are engaged in,as when a person finds a parking warden writing them a parking ticket and sees her or him writing something that really does not`represent'their Irish-American identity properly.The parking warden is not wrestling with a text to make a just and honest or critical`representa-tion',he or she is writing a parking ticket.We are not always writing about something;

(6)On administering questionnaires see Suchman and Jordan(1990),on the coding of a transcript see Garfinkel(1964),on ethnography see Sacks(1992)and Wieder(1974),on using video see Macbeth(1999)and Goode(1994).

(7)Names of individuals,companies,and cities are changed throughout for the sake of confidentiality.

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in fact,we are usually writing something specific with purposes and motives that are part and parcel of the writing.

Hence,the writing in this paper might be called an`exhibit',in that we are trying to `show'our argument.Along the way we will also make reference to video material, though it is of interest here only inasmuch as it makes available in unanticipated detail just how certain tasks were done.We will leave serious consideration of using video for another paper,and note only that its use as a technology for observing during fieldwork(and after)does not found any new discipline or provide objective data. Moreover,its analysis was not disengaged from it``being part of the work of produc-ing,for colleagues,a practically adequate demonstration that something is the way the researcher says it is''(Livingston,1985,page63).Video does not only provide for observing,and the material it produces should not be mistaken for the embodied activities without which it could not be produced.Our use of video is in order to get technical access to the detail of practical embodied activities in situ;there are other ways,though none of them carries any special imperative in their access to social phenomena.

Our initial sweeping references to the processes used by a company to organise its regions will remain until we proceed to look at some of their specifics,``a gloss over a lively context whose ways,as a sense assembly procedure,we found no need to specify'' (Garfinkel and Sacks,1986,page164).By avoiding specifying in advance exactly what is the region we risk appearing somewhat contrary in character.It is a risk worth taking,we believe,as the danger of offering precise definitions from the outset of a paper is that at best they catch readers'interests and at worst they lead to stipulative treatments of social practices.Our ambitions are to show by the end of this paper how a particular region is routinely constructed out of numerous car trips,the unpacking of boxes,and looking in car boots.Our attention is on practical actors,whose work``is never,not even`in the end'available for saying in so many words''(page164):it just is what it is that they are doing.Paraphrasing Garfinkel and Sacks still further,we do not mean that mobile workers do not know what they are doing;rather,they know what they are doing in the ways that they do it.

Talk is one of the ways in which they do it,yet talk is all too often attended to at the expense of what else is occurring.Some access can be gained to what they are doing,as we have suggested above,by asking them explicitly`what are you doing?'and related elicitory questions.These questions will be tolerated by busy people doing their job,with the expectation that at some point you,the questioner,will work it out. Getting the point of what anyone is saying at the time is not resolved by transcription and coding of what is said,and yet it is routinely done.Deciding the correspondence between an informant's verbal formulations of their activities and the activities them-selves cannot be achieved by merely quoting their talk about the work.Responses to questions offered as explanatory talk to visiting ethnographers``become a part of the selfsame occasion of interaction''and thereby``becomes another contingency of that interaction''(Garfinkel and Sacks,1986,page165).Moreover,whilst talk can extend and endlessly elaborate the activities which it is telling,it is also made sense of by members as part of the preceding,current,and consequent situation which it is contextualising,and it is open to further elaboration by members for further purposes. This active sense of talk as contextualising is a move similar to that of Thrift's non-representational theory in reminding us that context``is not an impassive backdrop to situate human activity''(1996,page3),and that the activity of contextualising is an indexical and open-ended one,settled only by and for practical purposes.

If we are to be genuinely surprised by what we hear and see in the field,then we must patiently listen to and look at the counting,measuring,evaluating,and decisionmaking as

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it actually occurs,rather than looking with a clever coding matrix already in hand for the `interesting'bits of our fieldwork that seem to fit the code(Harper et al,2000).Thrift thus flips over`participant observation'to`observant participation'to emphasise engagement rather than distance in theory,and for him nonrepresentational theory is about taking mundane matters seriously and thereby changing the avant-garde style of much work that passes as social and cultural geography.As Thrift puts it in his suggestions for what nonrepresentational theory might be:

``this is not a new theoretical edifice that is being constructed,but a means of valuing and working with everyday practical activities as they occur.It follows that this style of work is both anti-cognitivist and,by extension,anti-elitist since it is trying to counter-act the still prevalent tendency to consider life from the point of view of individual agents who generate action by instead weaving a poetic of common practices and skills which produce people,selves and worlds''(Thrift,2000,page216).

Where we break stride with nonrepresentational theory and push off somewhere else is in not pursuing performance as an apt metaphor either to organise our investigations or to position it as any kind of contemporary structure of feeling.Our engagement with regional work did not lead us to prioritise its performative elements.It is an obvious point,yet we might as well reiterate it:we found a workplace whose orders of action, entitlements,and material arrangements did not carry over into other settings(such as opening a present at a romantic meal for two or feeding bears at the zoo).We did not find someone doing a performance of work or a performance at work.It seems to us that some of the dangers of overrating performance,just as much as overrating representation,is that we would miss just what it is that is going on in the here and now of a workplace.Or worse,without a commitment to some local practitioners doing the amazing yet ordinary and unnoticed work that they do,we would find ourselves sliding back into the realms of theatre,dance,and the elitist attitude of high culture from which we shifted a moment ago when we accepted that language is not primarily a means of representation.

Marge at work

A lone employee in the company region

In the following three exhibits we would like to direct readers'attention to the relative absence of coworkers from Marge's workplace.These single-worker scenes provide a striking contrast to studies by ethnographers of organisations,who are familiar with offices and with watching how teams of workers collaborate,share tasks,and mutually find and solve problems in centres of calculation or coordination(see also Brown, 2001;Harper et al,2000;Luff et al,2000;Suchman,2000).In histories of traveling salesmen(Spears,1995)and ethnographies of taxi driving(Davis,1950;Psathas and Henslin,1967),the lone-agent nature of such work has been highlighted and is not one that has entirely changed for Marge and her kind(even with the benefit of a mobile telephone).(8)Marge is still relatively new to her job,and this prevalent feature of her mobile workplace was an issue for her.She spoke of how she missed the sociable environment of working in the open-plan office where she had previously been an accountant at a metal-casting factory.When Eric was finishing his fieldwork with her,she commented on how she would miss his company during the day,and her comments were echoed by all of the car-based workers that Eric accompanied.

Although it certainly should be noted that loneliness is one of the problems of traveling salespeople and mobile service-sector employees,we are not seeking to critique that feature of the job,as our commitment is to displaying the distinctive ways in which such a job,where someone works alone,has to be organised.We might

(8)See also the remarkable online history of taxi driving at https://www.doczj.com/doc/1815064951.html,/cowboy.htm.

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note that there are other jobs which share this feature?those of lighthouse keepers, sports professionals,park wardens,security officers,homeworkers,taxi drivers,novelists, parking wardens,and teleworkers of various kinds.Occupational category does not determine lone working,as sometimes these jobs are done by a team of workers and equally there can be situations where an occupation that would normally involve work-ing in a group only has one person working rather than a team.Even for Marge,there were sociable elements to her job:meeting up with her team in specific cafe s and bars at certain times of day[the title of our project,``Meet you at junction17'',was based on this kind of meeting place off the motorway(Laurier and Philo,1998)].Mobile telephones have also become a key resource for shoptalk(see Laurier,2001a;2001b),playing their part in helping workers to maintain an ongoing awareness of the location of other members of their dispersed work team,what they are doing,where they are going next, and whether their paths might cross.T o bond their workers further and build their team spirit in an otherwise dispersed work space,meanwhile,Marge's firm,the``Big Drinks Company''(BDC),organises a lot of nights out at clubs,promotional events,weekends away,and training weeks.

Marge's work,as defined by her employers,was as an`area manager'with respon-sibilities for liaising with clients and promoting existing and new brands of drinks. However,her job title and its official description did not cover in any adequate way a description of what her day-to-day work involved.(9)To gain competence in the job she had to learn from carefully watching and listening to her coworkers,all of whom were constantly giving her tips,pointers,stories of good and bad ways of working,and embodied displays of the everyday conduct of this particular bunch of promotional and sales staff.

The largest part of Marge's time was spent traveling around by car and on foot in order to pay visits to a host of public houses,clubs,and other establishments which sell her company's range of drinks products.Intermittently,alongside her core venues,she also visited venues that did not use BDC distribution but might be persuaded to do so. For all of her clients,she outlined new products and new initiatives which were designed to attract customers(competitions,holidays,T-shirts,compact discs,and the like).Part of her role in the company,as she explained it to Eric,was to maintain the loyalty of establishments to BDC and its products,checking that the company was properly meeting BDC's expectations in terms of delivery,quality,and price.She did her best to extend the consumer base within current outlets,the range of BDC drinks ordered by such outlets,and also the numbers of outlets ordering from BDC.During her on-site encounters in pubs and bars,she went over their sales figures and promoted branded products to her clients.Her promotion involved some guidance for them in the uses and display of numerous promotional objects such as posters,miniatures, competitions with prizes,free-drinks offers,and so on.The promotional work was a collaborative task inasmuch as her clients knew very well,and sometimes better than Marge,how to promote various drinks to their customers.Much of her legitimacy in the bars was secured on describing the latest promotions from her company and, crucially,when passing over new and/or requested promotional objects to clients.The `giveaway'of posters and T-shirts,as Brown(forthcoming)notes for the`take away'of brochures and maps in tourist information centres,was key in the organisation of her interactions with her clients.In Brown's study,the setting is one where mobile clients come to visit a fixed service provider,whereas for Marge the reverse is true.In each case a considerable store of objects is kept that can be handed over,allowing for several things which we cannot detail but will mention briefly.Relevant features of (9)Brown(2001)looks at the particular agreed-upon parts of a job that are recorded for the purposes of keeping an accurate and accountable time sheet.

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the objects can be brought to the receiver's attention by the giver;on the basis of seeing and handling the object,the receiver can ask questions immediately;and the objects can be annotated,adapted,or rejected as inappropriate to the receiver's plans.Finally, the`give away'allows for the management of the timing of the encounter through either quickly handing over the objects or keeping them back.

Regions,as they were dealt with by Marge and her coworkers,were key spatial categories which provided for the allocation of tasks to employees,the distribution of goods,the monitoring of performance,the journeys,and the means of journeying of the workers.Regions were marked for Marge and her coworkers on maps,with clear spatial boundaries;they did not have clear temporal beginnings and ends,as,say,`project'work has(see Lynch,1985on setting of a time span for projects).The spaces did change through time,with the TNC merging regions,or the TNC merging with other TNCs and adopting their regional arrangements.As a unit in the business of the team to which Marge belonged,a region might require temporary management by another member of a team if its manager was sick or left the company.As Lynch(1985)notes with the temporalisation of scientific practices in laboratory work,extensive courses of inquiry are produced as part of the social ordering of tasks in the immediate setting of the laboratory.Taking a geographical approach,we are noting that the organisation of the extensive nature of TNC's business is characterised by its regionalisation.For each and every manager of a region his or her daily job proceeds not only through what to do next(questions of serial ordering),but also through where to go next.A spatialisation of materials is here used in and as the formulation of these pressing matters. Packing for the car

The`dry store',which we will look at more closely below,was where Marge and her team kept all of their nonliquid materials,chiefly promotional items such as umbrellas sporting brand logos,posters and t-shirts,and cardboard cut-out figures used to advertise certain drinks lines.The BDC`wet store',on the edge of the city,was a dedicated warehouse where all of the drinks products were stored,having been trans-ported there from their points of production throughout the United Kingdom and across the globe.Marge was part of the service interface between the logistics of the high volumes of boxed BDC-branded drinks and the slower rhythms of a conversa-tional,form-filling,and promotional-material handling encounter between her and each and every client.

To get a sense of just what a normally obscure yet essential part of the job involved, we will look at Marge's work in the dry store a little more closely(see box1on page96).It is a simple point:Marge had to walk amongst the piled boxes to get at the items that she will pack into her car boot for`today'.The boxes,in their sheer quantity and spatial arrangement as stacks with passages between,required Marge to walk the unappreciated distances of a snooker player around a snooker table.The boxes are,on the whole,unrecognisable at a glance and required Marge to read their labels up close,so she had to get close enough to various piles to read their labels and to select the appropriate box of stuff.Another simple point:they need opening.With all the ease that standardised boxes give logistics in terms of handling quantities of goods,at the end of the delivery chain there are unavoidable hours devoted to breaking them down into their usable units.The trolley gave shape to her gathering of the promotional material for`today'.Alongside allowing her to move a large load of boxes, plastic-wrapped goods,cardboard cut-outs,and other paraphernalia,the trolley served as a useful proxy for her car interior(see boxes2and3on page97).

As we noted earlier,Marge travels the interface between the uniformity of mass production and the bespoke tailoring of flavourings,T-shirts,posters,glasses,ice

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coolers,etc.She elaborates the spaces of her region with these objects as she unpacks brown boxes(repeating box1,lines1^4)when each time she has to find the right box and extract quantities of items to fit roughly the number of clients who she will see on this day.She keeps working away at unpacking the boxes and stacking the contents on the trolley until the trolley is full.Whilst order exists at all points, correspondingly,ordering needs to be done at all points by those available with what is available.For Marge,working for BDC,her company does not provide a purpose-built structured space that she can use,although it does provide an endless supply of boxes.She and her coworkers use the orderliness of the local buildings,the history of the box stacks,the order of where they have to go today,what they have at hand,and still other cues as well,to continue unrelentingly to produce more organisation that they and others can recognise.

Stacking boxes has sequenced aspects in terms of what gets packed on top of what,or below what,or in front of or behind what.What is`first put down'tends to be`last picked up',as new boxes get piled on top of old.Such a process can accumulate trouble for the accessors of stacked boxes if the products inside have expiry dates.In Kawatoko's(1999) seafood-warehouse study,the boxes that needed moving urgently as their contents approached their expiry date tended to be at the bottom of stacks.The problem was resolved in the seafood warehouse by the stackers using front and back spread,and left and right spread,whilst the accessors extracted boxes from the stack in reverse(see Kawatoko,1999for more details).In the BDC dry store,matters are less pressing,as the stock will not go off and most of it is of low per-item financial value.Because of the constant cycles of product promotion much of it becomes junk fairly fast and so needs to be disposed of when products change or promotions end.In fact the pressure for its disposal comes more from the push of the constant arrival of more boxes of material than from the pull of client demand.Nevertheless,stacking the boxes,like retrieving the boxes from Marge's car boot,was implicated in the organisation of what objects go to where,and when.The piles were used to prepare Marge(or whoever else might be doing her job)for moving or opening any of these boxes.

To switch away from Marge for a moment longer,Kawatoko(1999)discusses how, in the high-speed and highly staffed space of the seafood warehouse,the loads of frozen seafood brought into the warehouse are spatially arranged by the warehouse workers according to information provided by written labels on`packages'and`tags' which tell them whether the fish is for sale in local markets or for factory processing. These labels also reveal relevant aspects of intended customers,the likely timings of deliveries to different customers,the types of fish,and their varying`seasonableness' relative to where it is destined,and so on.As Kawatoko(1999,page237)deduces, ``The workers use both the arrangement of goods and the tags and marks indicating the kind of food to make inferences about what is going to happen'',and the`resource workers'?the more senior warehouse workers?complete complex calculations,written and then left on display to those who need to know on a blackboard,to ensure that the loads are spatially assembled in the most efficient manner(packing the space most fully but leaving loads easily accessible in the right order).Spatial replacements and temporal sequences here dovetail,and Kawatoko proposes that this example demonstrates how: ``...diverse spatial resources are not contained within fixed boundaries but require `occasional'arranging....The workers'use of space in the refrigerated warehouse demonstrates that the arrangement of space is[an]ongoing and occasioned accom-plishment with various resources,and simultaneously that arranged space becomes part of the resources for making projected actions visible''(page330). Moreover,Kawatoko refers to the spatial disposition of loads in the warehouse as a `representation',a spatial announcement of what the different loads represent in terms

The region in the boot95

of both their at-a-glance indication of big,medium,and small quantities of different fish products and,more unusually,the future of`projected actions'to be conducted on and with these loads,notably as they are removed from the warehouse to be distributed to different sites for processing or marketing(`exchange').This displacement of the term`representation'to such mundane spaces is germane to our study of Marge's regional organisation.It echoes Lynch's(1994)``exploded view''of representation, ``examining what people do when they engage in an activity that makes one or another `representation'perspicuous''(page149).In both our case and in Kawatoko's case,the ongoing piling of boxes to form shapes and dispositions provides an embodied record of past actions and a shaping-up of future actions.We therefore follow Kawatoko's move in deconstructing`representation'as a monological concept.In mentioning representation,we are not implying a picture that refers to an inaccessible reality,or a sign corresponding to a meaning or an interior cognitive mental map that forms an inner picture of the outer world of the warehouse.We are simply raising the possibility of regarding this mundane,box-busy,spatially and temporally elaborated workplace as endlessly formulating`representations'in the flow and direction of reception,storage, and delivery labour linked to the arranging of the warehouse,yet we would not wish to say that the seafood factory is`doing representation'.

Marge was no novice in piling her boxes in relation to and as part of her work for the day nor was she starting from scratch each day.She knew through looking at the piles, and doing her travels from venue to venue how the organising of her boxes in her bay was implicated in the organising of her region.Indeed,although she worked alone in the store more often than not,she did so with her coworkers in mind,as we see in box1(frames and lines5^9)when she borrowed some boxes from her boss.The store was an asyn-chronously shared workplace presenting an interesting set of coordination problems managed through the placement of artefacts in space.Like tying a knot in a hanky, some boxes were left open?flaps akimbo?or brought to the front to serve as reminders that these items should be noticed.Sometimes people did this as reminders to themselves and at other times as reminders to their coworkers for whenever they were handling the boxes.The placement of boxes or their status as open or closed provided additional spatial announcements akin to those mentioned by Kawatoko(1999).

Marge was concerned,like most of us,to avoid hassle if at all possible,and so she did her packing and subsequent unpacking with an economy appropriate to the excess of promotional material that was constantly flooding the store.Her packing and unpacking were economical in the sense that we could imagine much more formal and elaborate ways of matching items to venues,involving detailed relabeling on arrival,maps,labeled shelving,colour-coded boxes,and the like.Instead,Marge did what she could in the time that she had available to do it by stacking items into more permanent piles by types of item and size of box.She and her coworkers also exhibited and found their work visible as spatially organised work by using the zones in the store: arrivals,the four bays,and the trolley for taking things to the car.In other words,a lot could be inferred about a plain brown box merely by where it was currently placed, where it had been placed before,and whether it was open or closed.

In her walking back and forth with the cardboard boxes,Marge can be seen as `thinking'space(see Latour,1986)or,as Ryle might put it,she was using the space intelligently(see also Kirsh,1995;Latour,1986).Without rushing,falling,dropping, breaking her materials,she made an orderly spatial arrangement of the boxes,the promotional materials,from which she concurrently and subsequently selected items for giving to clients.It was also a practically reasoned matter of piling objects by their qualities as fragile,robust,flat,round and square,and their impending destinations.In box1(frame and line9),Marge shows Eric her dirty hands:aside from the joke that she

is making,she is also showing where work is .In describing the `ways of the hand'on a piano keyboard required to make jazz,Sudnow makes an observation applicable to Marge's less glamorous but equally embodied making of her region.Sudnow's looking at his hands traveling across the keyboard,like Marge's hands on her boxes,``is party to a kind of imaginary conceiving of various aspects of the territory in which I was moving''(1978,page x).(10)Moreover,our description of the dry store provides an interesting alternative to computer-supported cooperative work studies of workplaces joined in the same temporal frame by computer technologies,where virtual environments

Box 1.Dry store (accompanying text on page 98).

This activity takes a good twenty minutes.Before Marge enters the dry store she has checked over the list of items that she needs for `today'.The unpacking takes place in a large underground room (see above)crowded with boxes,entailing four purpose-built storage bays and one improvised one.There are also a few filing

cabinets.

Frames:1234

5

678

9

(10)

Sudnow's phenomenological investigation of jazz-piano playing is particularly pertinent as he is concerned,as part of his making music through the play of his fingers on the keyboard,with ``finding the way''.Indeed,he compares it to finding the way from one house to another via various means (1978,page 148).96E Laurier,C Philo

are used to articulate work tasks (Hindmarsh et al,2001).In our study we have a shared `real'space where the workers make asynchronous visits and manage tasks through the spatial arrangement of artefacts (see also Brown,forthcoming).The placement of boxes,plastic packs,and so on is usually accompanied by talk either during coffee meetings or over their mobile telephones:``I left the flavourings for Blue Bar out for you''.Delivering things In all of the hours that Eric spent sitting in the passenger seat with mobile workers like Marge,he almost never witnessed them using a conventional map.Occasionally they used an `A to Z'when they had time to park to check an address and work out a route to get there.Much more common was their voicing of route directions (Psathas and Henslin,1967;see also Psathas,1991;Schegloff,1972)either to themselves or when checking over the mobile telephone with other mobile workers,nonmobile

employees 6789

10

Box 2.Looking speculatively in the boot (accompanying text on page 98).

In a car park full of pot holes,with a CCTV camera surveying it from above and the blank backs of several buildings surrounding it,Marge is at work.We have called in at one of the bars she visits infrequently.It is in a fairly poor neighbourhood,has a low turnover of her branded spirit drink,and buys a lot of its drink from other cheaper distributors.Marge says all of this as part of explaining to me why she gives it the attention that she does.

Frames:1234

5

Box 3.Looking confidently in the boot (accompanying text on page 99).

Parked just off a busy street in the city centre,Marge is about to make one of her regular visits to a style bar which is part of a club.

Frames:12345

678

9

The region in the boot 97

98E Laurier,C Philo

Box1.Dry store.

Lines:

(1)Marge checks the labels on a wall of boxes in an adjoining bay(that is,not her assigned

one).

(2)She opens a large box,and pulls out a handful of postcards.

(3)Marge walks across the room.She transfers them to an open box on her trolley,walks

back,

and looks at the labels on the boxes.

(4)She opens another box.She pulls out some glasses from a box in her bay,walks with

them over to the trolley,and walks back.

Whilst I am asking her a question about which boxes belong to who,it reminds her that she has swapped some items with her boss and is to take with her some of her boss's promotion material.

(5)Marge walks over to her boss's improvised bay.

(6)She picks two boxes from the top of a high pile,which requires her to stretch up for

them.

(7)She walks with the boxes(they are clearly lightweight,if big).

(8)She adds the boxes to her bay.

(9)Marge walks back showing me the palms of her hand as a joke about how dirty the job is.

(10)She picks up another box,and carries it over to her bay.

Box2.Looking speculatively in the boot.

Lines:

(1)Marge opens the boot,and bends forwards so that her line of sight is directly into the

boot.

(2)Looks in and pulls out a white cardboard box of glass tumblers(unopened).She places

the white box out of the way on the parcel shelf,and pushes down the protruding lid of a large brown cardboard box so that she can reach right to the back of the boot.

(3)Pulls out an eight-pack of miniature bottles sealed in transparent plastic shrink-wrap.

As she stands upright,she holds the eight-pack slightly away from her body.As she does this she says:

Marge:(staring at eight-pack)``Oh excellent,I've got some.''

Eric:(from behind camcorder)``What's that,is it flavouring?''

Marge bends down again and reaches toward the same dark nook in which she found the eight-pack.

(4)She pulls out a single miniature,turns her head slightly in the direction of Eric and the

camera,waggles the pack,then puts it down on parcel shelf.

Marge:``Y eah,it's flavours.''

Eric:``So they do flavoured vodkas.''

(5)Marge places the single bottle onto the parcel shelf,``Yup''.Continues to search in boot

for a few seconds.

(6)As she explains to Eric about the history of vodka flavourings in Russia she tears open

the shrink-wrap.From the eight-packs she takes two bottles,and puts them with the single one.

The remaining bottles in flared plastic wrap of box(now open)are put to the back of the parcel shelf.

(7)Marge looks in the back of the boot.Repacks,and the medium-sized unopened white

box is packed first.Leaves the opened pack of concentrates to the front.

(8)Marge closes the boot.

Marge:``...and it's all fruit flavours like plum and apple and cranberry and black-currant''.

She opens the rear door of the car.

(9)Pulls out a box of T-shirts with a logo(unopened).

(10)She closes the door and then walks away with the box in her arms,bottles in her

fingers,to the bar.

at head office,or even clients being visited.As Marge drove across her region,she used her acquired local geography of the roads.The geographical knowledge that Marge was calling upon was,once again,not a `mental map';it was,rather,the occasioned use of what she knew from driving these roads many,many times and at this moment being on this road,at this junction,waiting to taking this exit,or this third turn on the left.Her step-by-step consulting of a visible road system gave her only a handful of ways ahead,ways that were bound to the course that she took.Marge's `map'of the region's roads ?if indeed we can all it this,and we have our doubts ?was therefore less an abstract concept in her head,(11)and more a series of embodied engagements with hands and feet,upon wheels,buttons,and levers in response to her looking ahead at the roads she traversed.Her car,in the controls that it offered and on the paths that it can take,gave her a `flatland'-like simplified route as an ongoing sequence of prompts to practical actions (Lynch,1993).Thinking further about Marge's use of her car to deliver things,we would argue that distinctive to being a car-based worker was her ability to use the car as much more than just something for getting from A to B.The car also had to be part of the local arrangement of a large organisation ?a link in the chain of its production,as Latour (1992;1999)so often remarks ?and it had to function as actor and as network.In combination with more directly related driving tools that her vehicle possessed to move around the city ,Marge's car had to double as an operational work space,full of the different sorts of equipment and documents rendering it a `mobile office'as well as a delivery vehicle.T o serve these purposes her car became a tightly packed storage space,full of diverse kinds of objects.In its sequential position between the warehouse and the bars and clubs,the interior space of her car was thoroughly bound up in the organisation of her region.From the trolley (see box 1)at the warehouse loading bay,Marge divided her items into the front seat,back seat,and boot of the car,always with storage and swift retrieval in mind.The front-seat area,aside from being her driving position,was most closely tied to her office activities of telephoning,checking over documents,and (11)

We follow Ryle (1949)and Wittgenstein (1953),among others such as Coulter (1983),Latour (1999),and Garfinkel (1991),in rejecting ?via an ordinary language critique ?a Cartesian version of mind.In our view,Marge does not carry around a `mental'minimap inside her head which a `mental'mini-Marge consults behind her eyes.Box 3.Looking confidently in the boot.Lines (1)Marge opens the boot.(2)Pulls out the white box of tumblers (unopened)from left.(3)Lifts out bottle of new branded spirit line.(4)Places it on parcel shelf.(5)From the right of the boot,in a large brown cardboard box (opened),pulls out small shot glasses wrapped in loose transparent plastic (unopened).Places the shots glasses in a heap beside the spirit bottle.(6)Marge pulls out a medium-sized brown box containing a base for rotating and illu-minating the bottle of new branded spirit.(7)Places it on the parcel shelf,opens it,and checks the contents.(8)Leaves the car in order to feed the parking meter.(9)Returns to the car,opens the back door,and picks up contact sheets to check if the club had requested any other items.Marge:``Fine''Closes the door.Picks up the box,bottle,and glasses from parcel shelf.Closes the boot.Walks away from the car towards the bar.

The region in the boot 99

100E Laurier,C Philo

typing up on her laptop whilst sitting.The back seat had a mix of additional less-relevant documents,clothing,and usually some of the more fragile promotional items(such as polystyrene and plastic cutouts),that could be accessed,albeit not without considerable bodily contortion from the front seat.The boot was only acces-sible when the car was stationary and Marge could get out to do certain tasks there. This fact had certain implications for the arrangements of her tasks,as obviously Marge could not check the contents of the boot while in transit.Although a great deal could be said about Marge's use of the front and back seats,we are going to concentrate now on the work that she does at the car boot during two contrasting client calls.We have selected the work around the boot as it is an almost unnoticed(by researchers)zone of the car,and it is the place where the objects from the BDC store go to next before finally arriving at their destination in a pub or bar(see box2).

In the talk that occurs during Marge's rooting around in the boot,we can find the distinction between talk that is in the work and talk about,in this case,`the product'.In the short history and listing of flavourings,which we have left largely untranscribed, Marge instructed Eric in some parts of the`lore'of the product,mentioning its origins in Russia and so on(Cook et al,1998).Before Eric elicited this response,Marge was visibly busy and involved in rooting around in her car boot.Even as she tolerantly ran through some on-the-spot`interviewing'about flavourings,she remained engaged in trying to do what she was doing before she was interrupted.Her back was turned to Eric;she kept pulling boxes in and out,searching in the interior of the car,and her talk did not inform,shape,or otherwise than very loosely formulate what she was doing in the car.Marge's first words,``Oh excellent I've got some'',are nonetheless character-istic of talk as part of the work.Not only was the`some'pronoun only sensible through reference to the shrink-wrapped eight-pack of miniature bottles that she held in her hands,as Eric's``what's that?''query shows,but it was also only sensible to those who do Marge's job.Without video material to check back to,the audio transcript would be frustratingly indecipherable,leading an analyst to ask`some of what?'.And without the analyst having an employee's competence in BDC products,what she found`some of' would remain fairly incomprehensible.

Her declaration on finding the eight-pack was not secondary to the silent work that she was doing as she rooted around in the boot.It was located in the timing of her activities:it arrived as the eight-pack was displayed,and it formulated what she had been doing as an uncertain search.``There they are''at the same point would have been heard as saying that she came to the car feeling certain that the flavourings were there. Y et,her formulation provided something else:there are some objects that Marge is well aware she has in the car and others that might or might not be there.T o find out about these objects that might not be there she has to consult the boot,in much the same way that we might hunt around in our kitchen cupboards to find out if we have a particular ingredient for a recipe.Marge did not search the whole boot,she proceeded quickly, knowing that if the flavourings were there then they would be at the back.By compar-ison with kitchen cupboards again,Marge has put certain objects into certain zones within the boot and could thereby locate them without turning the whole boot over.Her searching was implicated in the spatialisation of the objects as the older and unused boxes get pushed to the back by the arrival of new and immediately relevant boxes. In the latter part of the description in box2,as Marge replaced items from the parcel shelf back into the boot,we saw this process in action.The most recently used box of now-opened concentrates was packed toward the outside.By its replacement it was made immediately available to Marge on the next occasion when she opened the boot.Her awareness of which objects are in the boot has been assembled in the acts of packing and repacking.The flavourings,for example?as a result of this occasioned search of

The region in the boot101

the boot?have switched from possibly in the boot to definitely in the boot.Should Marge's next client not request flavourings,nor the next after that,the objects which are pulled out for use and then repacked will gradually push the flavourings to the back of the boot again.From what is going on in the boot we can then build toward how it is that when Marge is talking with a client,on being asked for some item,she would say:``I have them with today,I'll go get you some'',or,``Hmm,I'm not sure,let me go check''.

What is beginning to come out is the kind of organising that goes on each and every time Marge went to the boot.We are showing some of the ways that the work at the boot is predominantly silent work with objects.When Marge said things aloud,it assisted the ethnographer by highlighting a significant moment in what she was doing when she would otherwise stay silent.It further formulated her activities to someone who could not be expected to share her perspective on her task fully.Just what Marge might be talking about she makes clear by her posture,by her brief pause to take what was an extended look at the bottle,which thereby emphasised that this was an object of her concern.By way of comparison,the white box went straight from the boot to the parcel shelf without Marge stepping back and taking that kind of look at it.

In her discovery that there were definitely some miniatures in the boot,and in their subsequent placement to the front of the boot space,we see her doing a little bit of spatial arranging that would leave things in a prospective order for the rest of the day.In other words the daily accumulating repackings of objects in the boot fed consequentially into the preceding and subsequent business interactions of her day.

In box3Marge was at work and beside her car again.It was later on in the day from the previous visit to a bar.She characterised this visit as a`drop-in',and had told Eric that she dropped in to this bar several times in a week and sometimes more than once a day.She knew these clients well,and they were important clients.Not only did they have a high turnover of BDC's products,they also had a close relationship to the marketing of current and new products.As Marge put it,they had a more fashion-conscious clientele who are willing to try new products and are a test bed for launching new products.If products do not sell in these venues then they may be delayed for a while and remarketed.

Marge did not have to pull boxes out of the way this time when she was accessing the boot as all the items that she needed were in the top layer,where they could be picked up quickly.They were spread out across the top of the stuff in the boot from left to right, making a spatial announcement of just which items were to be delivered to this venue.The danger,for instance,of leaving an item for this delivery in the back seat would be that it would be forgotten by Marge and left behind.In this practical way Marge visualised for herself all of the promotional parts of the product that needed delivering here today.One of Marge's dilemmas as a lone worker was that reminding cannot easily be shared out to anyone else on her team.She had to remind herself constantly through the use of these spatial announcements about which items were needed in which places as she traveled. Packing played an integral part in providing such prompts or announcements from which she could make inferences later in the day when unpacking and repacking.The success of her reminders consisted not only in the`things to do'she could remember standing alone, but was secured in the representation that she regularly assembled in the variety of items packed and repacked as the deliveries and spares today.

If we now return to Marge,to unpack swiftly and confidently the right things for the right place required careful preparation earlier in the day.Her objects were not in her boot simply to be seen as a variety of objects,for each one was an accountable artefact.They are accountable in the sense that we could ask Marge why each object was there,and she would be able to provide an account such as``Blue Bar asked me for six packs of branded tumblers'',or as earlier when she explained to Eric about the

102E Laurier,C Philo

bottles of flavourings,or the occasion shown in box3when she explained that she was delivering the display equipment for the new product.

What the parcel shelf offered was a sequentially related spatial zone(see Evergeti, 2000;Hindmarsh and Heath,2000)in which to get the glasses,bottle,and base ready by placing them upon it in clear view(box3,frames7^9).A parcel shelf allows car users the possibility of leaving items there while they are doing something else,as in Marge's case when she had to feed the parking meter.Although the items are still`on hold'on the parcel shelf,she returned to her contact sheet for this client to double check whether there was anything that she still had missed.She announced``Fine'' aloud:once again it might have been said silently to herself,or not at all,were Eric not standing by with a camcorder.Whatever,it marked the end of the task of gathering stuff from the boot.This time her gathering of items from the boot was different:it was less speculative,more confident.She had packed items earlier in the day,to be taken out now,on the basis of preexisting requests from the style bar.To get the task done for this time required unpacking?the shots glasses being moved from the boot to the shelf,as was the bottle of spirits.The base unit was quickly inspected to see if it had all its parts.Unpacking for this place was untroubled and relatively routine compared with the previous venue.She displayed the work as such in her busy involvement with it,only briefly saying``Fine''as a gloss over the untroubled progress of her work in the boot.Even though it is routine,the clever counter-top promotional display for the product does not pop-up at the style bar whole;rather,it arrives in small boxes and plastic wrappers,which will need further assembly in situ by the bar staff.

What emerges in this second description of Marge getting items out of the boot of the car is that each finding of materials,and each repacking afterwards,has its spatial and temporal existence as`this time'and`this place'.Even though`finding the flavour-ings'and`unpacking the display'are seemingly good examples of what she was doing, they were also unique efforts to find what she needed there and then,which were consequentially related to the organisation completed earlier,as well as making some provision for what she would do later.

Surely the work could be a little more exciting?

``Now I adopt what is in a way a counter-strategy to the issue of`interesting'and that is that I'm specifically picking utterly uninteresting data.Things which do not have for us any special lay interest.That means that in order to find its inter-estingness we have to find that whatever it is that's interesting about it is what we can say about it.And we can then develop criteria of interestingness where we're not exploiting kinds of things we`want to know about'?scandalous topics,gossip etc.Things like an exchange of greetings are kind of ideal rather than,say,the discourse of kings or salon conversations,where we know in the case of the latter that it's important and interesting,and it's very hard in the first instance to ignore `what they say',which you have to do.''Sacks(1992,page293)

Part of our tactic when looking in detail at the activities that happen with really rather dull anonymous cardboard boxes was to wait to see what it would give us of interest, rather than,as Sacks notes,exploiting a kind of thing that might be taken to be interesting already,like`big decisions'at headquarters.(12)The sales performance is (12)As Bowker and Star warn of pursuing the uninteresting:``There are many barriers to this exploration.Not least among them is the barrier of boredom.Delving into someone else's infra-structure has about the entertainment value of the yellow pages of the phone book.One does not encounter the dramatic stories of battle and victory,of mystery and discovery that make for a good read''(1999,page322).This apt warning comes from their book on the histories and current

The region in the boot103

another one of those more spectacular occasions in the making of a company region, and in no way do we wish to deny its importance,yet we would suggest that it has also perhaps hidden from researchers other constitutional elements of service-sector work.(13)Somewhat counterintuitively for cultural geographers,we have pushed our-selves away from events that resembled performances.With further restraint we have made ourselves look away from the maps on the walls of headquarters in order to observe where and with what else the company space is being organised.Hopefully there is some surprise in the fact that we found cardboard boxes playing a key role in the spatial organisation of a company region.

In this paper we have sought to bring into focus the unnoticed work of mobilising diverse objects through activities that are spatially reflexive:in that just as the objects are used in practically ordering the space so it is that the space is used to order the objects for all practical purposes.As Thrift(1996;1999)urges,in his nonrepresenta-tional theory of time^space,we have dwelt on the objects involved in region-making. We have shown how they form an equipmental complex for both managing a region and doing promotional work.Although we have been wary of suggesting that these kinds of objects have a life of their own,we have shown how they become useful in a particular form of life.Moreover,we have brought out their agency in the joint field of action where a human subject is clearly not a naked agent(our particular subject was in danger of being lost among the abundance of materials that her job involved).As it turned out, our mobile worker was visiting the sites in her region in order not just to have the richness of face-to-face contact,but to hand over the particular parts of the company product for which she was responsible.In terms of their topology,the places that she and her work materials moved between connected up in a horizontal sequential order,where the workplace of the warehouse fed into the workplace of the car parked beside the venue, which then fed into both face-to-face meeting and future occasions of`boot work'. Marge's spread-out workplace did not provide her with a permanent and stable overview; each task proceeded in a step-by-step arrangement shaping up the possibilities for what could happen next.In explicating these matters,we have tried to study the organisation of a region in concretia as an ordinary matter of transportation and its technologies.

The selective extracts from our research,in boxes1^3,hopefully offer the reader some grasp of the minutely ordered actions required for the management and servicing of a region.These local methods were indefinitely more diverse,rich,and complex than those summarised in handbooks given to the TNC's regional managers or during their training sessions or throughout other written guides to management.The labour of service was never simply the enactment of scripts,or technical instructions,or the advice of bosses,or other members of the team.It relied on numerous commonsense competences with the materials at hand,such as selecting items to carry for each `today',stacking boxes,checking items against lists,and so on:

``...how do we pack the world into words?...I want to show that there is neither correspondence,nor gaps,nor even two distinct ontological domains,but an entirely different phenomenon:circulating reference''(Latour,1999,page24). Our work also might add something to Latour's(1999)excellent study of a botanist, pedologist,and geographer at work gathering data in the field where the earth of the (12)(continued)

workings of official classification schemes.Their study has strong affinities with ours,not only in its choice of fairly dry subject matter,but also as it spells out some elements of the endless work done everywhere locally by whoever is available,and responsible,to index and to elaborate upon the seemingly abstract and objective classifications of standardised codes(see also Brown,2001,on `time sheets').

(13)Indeed,part of our research has emphasised aspects of this face-to-face work,as well as showing how a kind of`face work'also occurs over the telephone(see also Laurier,2001a).

104E Laurier,C Philo

Boa Vista is to be mapped and analysed.He studied the scientists'practical activities of progressive selection of quadrats for gathering samples,sampling,labeling,transporta-tion,boxing,counting,and eventual writing-up as a research report.Whereas Latour was revealing both how science is grounded in practical activities and how those activities are arranged in chains of tasks with particular methods and apparatuses, we are following a shorter section of a chain traveling in the opposite direction from centre of calculation to regional space,to reveal how business,rather than science,is grounded in practical activities(see also Boden,1994).For Latour,what was important was how referencing was stretched out,how it was stabilised even as it was trans-formed,for the practical purposes of making accountably objective`samples'small enough and light enough to ship them from South America to Europe.We might say that he too,like Lynch,was exploding out scientific representation into myriad actual activities with objects:labeling a branch,filling out a logbook,filing photographs in a cabinet,comparing soil to a Munsell code chart.In comparison,we have looked at the far end of a commercial chain from the companies'centres of calculation,and here on the dispersed work floor of the company region we have documented the unpacking of boxes:the work of matching particular places to mass-produced promotional items. Our concerns have been to investigate how a region is tied to this circulation of products as a practical embodied activity with boxes,hands,car boots,and more.

As a final reflection,it occurs to us that`unpacking'is often used metaphorically by ourselves for the objects of our discipline:dense terms or arguments that require explication,as in unpacking ideological baggage.In considering some actual unpacking as an ordinary method,we have noted how it is the laying out of objects in space that formulates the space in terms of its current state while also shaping up future actions. Unpacking,then,offers a way of displaying and collecting things for current and later use.In unpacking we find what we have from a collection wherein we did not necessarily know with certainty all that we had,and we also discover what has been left behind.We may shape-up what we have for where it has to go next in our handling and laying out of the objects,with an eye to where we intend finally to put them(Bu scher,2001).An unpacker's work is in resolving if something,in a collection of items,that might be there,is really there.It can be approached with or without a list,with or without an intended findable item(there are items that could not be found through unpacking).In tracing how the packing relates to the work that we have to do,we can look confidently or speculatively into just what our vehicles contain.Taking our text as a vehicle,we have packed it fairly tightly and now hand the burden of unpacking it over to you. Acknowledgements.Thanks to referee A for five pages of really inspiring and challenging com-ments on and criticisms of this paper,it is as much yours now as it is ours(sorry!).We gratefully acknowledge the receipt of ESRC funding(ESRC Award reference number R000222071)for``Meet you at junction17:a socio-technical and spatial study of the mobile office'';Marge and our other mobile workers for their tolerance,good humour,and willingness to put up with a passenger-seat ethnographer;and Erin Sheehan and Pete Merriman for organising the session on transport at the New Y ork AAAG2001,where a first version of this paper was presented;the staff at Glasgow University's Media Services and Mike Shand must also be thanked for their assistance with video and image processing,and Barry Brown for allowing us to borrow the quote which he borrowed from Julian Orr about`work'.Final thanks to Lucy Hawkes for her careful editing. References

Allen J,Massey D,Cochrane A,1998Rethinking the Region(Routledge,London)

Boden D,1994The Business of Talk(Polity Press,Cambridge)

Bowker G,Start S L,1999Sorting Things Out,Classification and its Consequences(MIT Press, Cambridge,MA)

Brown B A T(forthcoming),``Tourist centres'',https://www.doczj.com/doc/1815064951.html,/

Brown B A T,2001,``Unpacking a timesheet:formalisation and representation''Computer Supported Cooperative Work10293^315

The way常见用法

The way 的用法 Ⅰ常见用法： 1)the way+ that 2)the way + in which（最为正式的用法） 3)the way + 省略（最为自然的用法） 举例：I like the way in which he talks. I like the way that he talks. I like the way he talks. Ⅱ习惯用法： 在当代美国英语中，the way用作为副词的对格，“the way+ 从句”实际上相当于一个状语从句来修饰整个句子。 1)The way =as I am talking to you just the way I’d talk to my own child. He did not do it the way his friends did. Most fruits are naturally sweet and we can eat them just the way they are—all we have to do is to clean and peel them. 2）The way= according to the way/ judging from the way The way you answer the question, you are an excellent student. The way most people look at you, you’d think trash man is a monster. 3）The way =how/ how much No one can imagine the way he missed her. 4）The way =because

The way的用法及其含义(二)

The way的用法及其含义（二） 二、the way在句中的语法作用 the way在句中可以作主语、宾语或表语： 1.作主语 The way you are doing it is completely crazy.你这个干法简直发疯。 The way she puts on that accent really irritates me. 她故意操那种口音的样子实在令我恼火。The way she behaved towards him was utterly ruthless. 她对待他真是无情至极。 Words are important, but the way a person stands, folds his or her arms or moves his or her hands can also give us information about his or her feelings. 言语固然重要,但人的站姿,抱臂的方式和手势也回告诉我们他(她)的情感。 2.作宾语 I hate the way she stared at me.我讨厌她盯我看的样子。 We like the way that her hair hangs down.我们喜欢她的头发笔直地垂下来。 You could tell she was foreign by the way she was dressed. 从她的穿著就可以看出她是外国人。 She could not hide her amusement at the way he was dancing. 她见他跳舞的姿势，忍俊不禁。 3.作表语 This is the way the accident happened.这就是事故如何发生的。 Believe it or not, that's the way it is. 信不信由你, 反正事情就是这样。 That's the way I look at it, too. 我也是这么想。 That was the way minority nationalities were treated in old China. 那就是少数民族在旧中

(完整版)the的用法

定冠词the的用法： 定冠词the与指示代词this ,that同源,有“那(这)个”的意思,但较弱,可以和一个名词连用,来表示某个或某些特定的人或东西. (1)特指双方都明白的人或物 Take the medicine.把药吃了. (2)上文提到过的人或事 He bought a house.他买了幢房子. I've been to the house.我去过那幢房子. (3)指世界上独一无二的事物 the sun ,the sky ,the moon, the earth (4)单数名词连用表示一类事物 the dollar 美元 the fox 狐狸 或与形容词或分词连用,表示一类人 the rich 富人 the living 生者 (5)用在序数词和形容词最高级,及形容词等前面 Where do you live?你住在哪? I live on the second floor.我住在二楼. That's the very thing I've been looking for.那正是我要找的东西. (6)与复数名词连用,指整个群体 They are the teachers of this school.(指全体教师) They are teachers of this school.(指部分教师) (7)表示所有,相当于物主代词,用在表示身体部位的名词前 She caught me by the arm.她抓住了我的手臂. (8)用在某些有普通名词构成的国家名称,机关团体,阶级等专有名词前 the People's Republic of China 中华人民共和国 the United States 美国 (9)用在表示乐器的名词前 She plays the piano.她会弹钢琴. (10)用在姓氏的复数名词之前,表示一家人 the Greens 格林一家人(或格林夫妇) (11)用在惯用语中 in the day, in the morning... the day before yesterday, the next morning... in the sky... in the dark... in the end... on the whole, by the way...

“the way+从句”结构的意义及用法

“tｈｅwａｙ+从句”结构的意义及用法 首先让我们来看下面这个句子: Ｒead the foｌloｗｉnｇpassagｅａnd talkａbout ｉt wi ｔh your classmaｔes．Try tｏｔeｌl whaｔyｏu thiｎk ｏf Tom aｎd ｏｆｔhe ｗay the chiｌｄrenｔrｅated ｈim. 在这个句子中，ｔhe waｙ是先行词,后面是省略了关系副词that或in whｉch的定语从句。 下面我们将叙述“the ｗaｙ+从句”结构的用法。 1.tｈe wａy之后，引导定语从句的关系词是tｈat而不是hoｗ,因此，<<现代英语惯用法词典＞＞中所给出的下面两个句子是错误的：Ｔhｉs is ｔｈeｗayｈowｉtｈａppened. This is the way how he ａlwａｙs treats me. 2．在正式语体中,thaｔ可被in which所代替;在非正式语体中，ｔhat则往往省略。由此我们得到theｗay后接定语从句时的三种模式：1) tｈe ｗaｙ＋ｔhａt-从句２）the way +ｉn whiｃh－从句3) the ｗay +从句 例如：Ｔｈe way(in whiｃh ，thａt) ｔhｅｓｅｃomｒade ｓloｏｋａｔｐrobｌems is wrong．这些同志看问题的方法

不对。 Ｔｈｅｗａy(that ,ｉn ｗhiｃh)yoｕ’ｒe doinｇit is comple ｔeｌy crａzy.你这么个干法,简直发疯。 Wｅａdmiｒｅd him for thｅｗay ｉｎｗhｉch he fａｃeｓdiｆficultieｓ． Waｌlａｃe ａｎd Ｄarwiｎｇreed ｏn the way ｉｎwhi ｃh ｄｉfｆｅrｅnt forms ｏf life had ｂegｕn.华莱士和达尔文对不同类型的生物是如何起源的持相同的观点。 Thｉs is ｔｈe ｗaｙ（tｈａｔ) hｅdｉd it. I lｉkeｄｔhe waｙ(ｔhat) ｓｈeｏｒganized ｔhe ｍeetｉng． 3.theｗay(tｈat)有时可以与hｏw(作“如何”解）通用。例如： That’s tｈe ｗaｙ(tｈaｔ) shｅspoke. = Tｈat’s how shｅspoke.

way 用法

表示“方式”、“方法”，注意以下用法： 1.表示用某种方法或按某种方式，通常用介词in(此介词有时可省略)。如： Do it (in) your own way. 按你自己的方法做吧。 Please do not talk (in) that way. 请不要那样说。 2.表示做某事的方式或方法，其后可接不定式或of doing sth。 如： It’s the best way of studying [to study] English. 这是学习英语的最好方法。 There are different ways to do [of doing] it. 做这事有不同的办法。 3.其后通常可直接跟一个定语从句(不用任何引导词)，也可跟由that 或in which 引导的定语从句，但是其后的从句不能由how 来引导。如： 我不喜欢他说话的态度。 正：I don’t like the way he spoke. 正：I don’t like the way that he spoke. 正：I don’t like the way in which he spoke. 误：I don’t like the way how he spoke. 4.注意以下各句the way 的用法： That’s the way (=how) he spoke. 那就是他说话的方式。 Nobody else loves you the way(=as) I do. 没有人像我这样爱你。 The way (=According as) you are studying now, you won’tmake much progress. 根据你现在学习情况来看，你不会有多大的进步。 2007年陕西省高考英语中有这样一道单项填空题： ——I think he is taking an active part insocial work. ——I agree with you_____. A、in a way B、on the way C、by the way D、in the way 此题答案选A。要想弄清为什么选A，而不选其他几项，则要弄清选项中含way的四个短语的不同意义和用法，下面我们就对此作一归纳和小结。 一、in a way的用法 表示：在一定程度上，从某方面说。如： In a way he was right.在某种程度上他是对的。注：in a way也可说成in one way。 二、on the way的用法 1、表示：即将来(去)，就要来(去)。如： Spring is on the way.春天快到了。 I'd better be on my way soon.我最好还是快点儿走。 Radio forecasts said a sixth-grade wind was on the way.无线电预报说将有六级大风。 2、表示：在路上，在行进中。如： He stopped for breakfast on the way.他中途停下吃早点。 We had some good laughs on the way.我们在路上好好笑了一阵子。 3、表示：(婴儿)尚未出生。如： She has two children with another one on the way.她有两个孩子，现在还怀着一个。 She's got five children，and another one is on the way.她已经有5个孩子了，另一个又快生了。 三、by the way的用法

The way的用法及其含义(一)

The way的用法及其含义（一） 有这样一个句子：In 1770 the room was completed the way she wanted. 1770年，这间琥珀屋按照她的要求完成了。 the way在句中的语法作用是什么？其意义如何？在阅读时，学生经常会碰到一些含有the way 的句子，如：No one knows the way he invented the machine. He did not do the experiment the way his teacher told him.等等。他们对the way 的用法和含义比较模糊。在这几个句子中，the way之后的部分都是定语从句。第一句的意思是，“没人知道他是怎样发明这台机器的。”the way的意思相当于how；第二句的意思是，“他没有按照老师说的那样做实验。”the way 的意思相当于as。在In 1770 the room was completed the way she wanted.这句话中，the way也是as的含义。随着现代英语的发展，the way的用法已越来越普遍了。下面，我们从the way的语法作用和意义等方面做一考查和分析： 一、the way作先行词，后接定语从句 以下3种表达都是正确的。例如：“我喜欢她笑的样子。” 1. the way+ in which +从句 I like the way in which she smiles. 2. the way+ that +从句 I like the way that she smiles. 3. the way + 从句(省略了in which或that) I like the way she smiles. 又如：“火灾如何发生的，有好几种说法。” 1. There were several theories about the way in which the fire started. 2. There were several theories about the way that the fire started.

way 的用法

way 的用法 【语境展示】 1. Now I’ll show you how to do the experiment in a different way. 下面我来演示如何用一种不同的方法做这个实验。 2. The teacher had a strange way to make his classes lively and interesting. 这位老师有种奇怪的办法让他的课生动有趣。 3. Can you tell me the best way of working out this problem? 你能告诉我算出这道题的最好方法吗？ 4. I don’t know the way (that / in which) he helped her out. 我不知道他用什么方法帮助她摆脱困境的。 5. The way (that / which) he talked about to solve the problem was difficult to understand. 他所谈到的解决这个问题的方法难以理解。 6. I don’t like the way that / which is being widely used for saving water. 我不喜欢这种正在被广泛使用的节水方法。 7. They did not do it the way we do now. 他们以前的做法和我们现在不一样。 【归纳总结】 ●way作“方法，方式”讲时，如表示“以……方式”，前面常加介词in。如例1； ●way作“方法，方式”讲时，其后可接不定式to do sth.，也可接of doing sth. 作定语，表示做某事的方法。如例2，例3；

the-way-的用法讲解学习

t h e-w a y-的用法

The way 的用法 "the way+从句"结构在英语教科书中出现的频率较高, the way 是先行词, 其后是定语从句.它有三种表达形式:1) the way+that 2)the way+ in which 3)the way + 从句(省略了that或in which),在通常情况下, 用in which 引导的定语从句最为正式,用that的次之,而省略了关系代词that 或 in which 的, 反而显得更自然,最为常用.如下面三句话所示,其意义相同. I like the way in which he talks. I like the way that he talks. I like the way he talks. 一.在当代美国英语中,the way用作为副词的对格,"the way+从句"实际上相当于一个状语从句来修饰全句. the way=as 1)I'm talking to you just the way I'd talk to a boy of my own. 我和你说话就象和自己孩子说话一样. 2)He did not do it the way his friend did. 他没有象他朋友那样去做此事. 3)Most fruits are naturally sweet and we can eat them just the way they are ----all we have to do is clean or peel them . 大部分水果天然甜润,可以直接食用,我们只需要把他们清洗一下或去皮.

way的用法总结大全

way的用法总结大全 way的用法你知道多少，今天给大家带来way的用法，希望能够帮助到大家，下面就和大家分享，来欣赏一下吧。 way的用法总结大全 way的意思 n. 道路,方法,方向,某方面 adv. 远远地，大大地 way用法 way可以用作名词 way的基本意思是“路,道,街,径”,一般用来指具体的“路,道路”,也可指通向某地的“方向”“路线”或做某事所采用的手段,即“方式,方法”。way还可指“习俗,作风”“距离”“附近,周围”“某方面”等。 way作“方法,方式,手段”解时,前面常加介词in。如果way前有this, that等限定词,介词可省略,但如果放在句首,介词则不可省略。

way作“方式,方法”解时,其后可接of v -ing或to- v 作定语,也可接定语从句,引导从句的关系代词或关系副词常可省略。 way用作名词的用法例句 I am on my way to the grocery store.我正在去杂货店的路上。 We lost the way in the dark.我们在黑夜中迷路了。 He asked me the way to London.他问我去伦敦的路。 way可以用作副词 way用作副词时意思是“远远地,大大地”,通常指在程度或距离上有一定的差距。 way back表示“很久以前”。 way用作副词的用法例句 It seems like Im always way too busy with work.我工作总是太忙了。 His ideas were way ahead of his time.他的思想远远超越了他那个时代。 She finished the race way ahead of the other runners.她第一个跑到终点,远远领先于其他选手。 way用法例句

the_way的用法大全教案资料

t h e_w a y的用法大全

The way 在the way+从句中, the way 是先行词, 其后是定语从句.它有三种表达形式:1) the way+that 2)the way+ in which 3)the way + 从句(省略了that或in which),在通常情况下, 用in which 引导的定语从句最为正式,用that的次之,而省略了关系代词that 或 in which 的, 反而显得更自然,最为常用.如下面三句话所示,其意义相同. I like the way in which he talks. I like the way that he talks. I like the way he talks. 如果怕弄混淆，下面的可以不看了 另外，在当代美国英语中,the way用作为副词的对格,"the way+从句"实际上相当于一个状语从句来修饰全句. the way=as 1)I'm talking to you just the way I'd talk to a boy of my own. 我和你说话就象和自己孩子说话一样. 2)He did not do it the way his friend did. 他没有象他朋友那样去做此事. 3)Most fruits are naturally sweet and we can eat them just the way they are ----all we have to do is clean or peel them . 大部分水果天然甜润,可以直接食用,我们只需要把他们清洗一下或去皮. the way=according to the way/judging from the way 4)The way you answer the qquestions, you must be an excellent student. 从你回答就知道,你是一个优秀的学生. 5)The way most people look at you, you'd think a trashman was a monster. 从大多数人看你的目光中,你就知道垃圾工在他们眼里是怪物. the way=how/how much 6)I know where you are from by the way you pronounce my name. 从你叫我名字的音调中,我知道你哪里人. 7)No one can imaine the way he misses her. 人们很想想象他是多么想念她. the way=because 8) No wonder that girls looks down upon me, the way you encourage her. 难怪那姑娘看不起我, 原来是你怂恿的

the way 的用法

The way 的用法 "the way+从句"结构在英语教科书中出现的频率较高, the way 是先行词, 其后是定语从句.它有三种表达形式:1) the way+that 2)the way+ in which 3)the way + 从句(省略了that或in which),在通常情况下, 用in which 引导的定语从句最为正式,用that的次之,而省略了关系代词that 或in which 的, 反而显得更自然,最为常用.如下面三句话所示,其意义相同. I like the way in which he talks. I like the way that he talks. I like the way he talks. 一.在当代美国英语中,the way用作为副词的对格,"the way+从句"实际上相当于一个状语从句来修饰全句. the way=as 1)I'm talking to you just the way I'd talk to a boy of my own. 我和你说话就象和自己孩子说话一样. 2)He did not do it the way his friend did. 他没有象他朋友那样去做此事. 3)Most fruits are naturally sweet and we can eat them just the way they are ----all we have to do is clean or peel them . 大部分水果天然甜润,可以直接食用,我们只需要把他们清洗一下或去皮.

the way=according to the way/judging from the way 4)The way you answer the qquestions, you must be an excellent student. 从你回答就知道,你是一个优秀的学生. 5)The way most people look at you, you'd think a trashman was a monster. 从大多数人看你的目光中,你就知道垃圾工在他们眼里是怪物. the way=how/how much 6)I know where you are from by the way you pronounce my name. 从你叫我名字的音调中,我知道你哪里人. 7)No one can imaine the way he misses her. 人们很想想象他是多么想念她. the way=because 8) No wonder that girls looks down upon me, the way you encourage her. 难怪那姑娘看不起我, 原来是你怂恿的 the way =while/when(表示对比) 9)From that day on, they walked into the classroom carrying defeat on their shoulders the way other students carried textbooks under their arms. 从那天起,其他同学是夹着书本来上课,而他们却带着"失败"的思想负担来上课.

The way的用法及其含义(三)

The way的用法及其含义（三） 三、the way的语义 1. the way=as（像） Please do it the way I’ve told you.请按照我告诉你的那样做。 I'm talking to you just the way I'd talk to a boy of my own.我和你说话就像和自己孩子说话一样。 Plant need water the way they need sun light. 植物需要水就像它们需要阳光一样。 2. the way=how（怎样，多么） No one can imagine the way he misses her.没人能够想象出他是多么想念她！ I want to find out the way a volcano has formed.我想弄清楚火山是怎样形成的。 He was filled with anger at the way he had been treated.他因遭受如此待遇而怒火满腔。That’s the way she speaks.她就是那样讲话的。 3. the way=according as （根据） The way you answer the questions, you must be an excellent student.从你回答问题来看，你一定是名优秀的学生。 The way most people look at you, you'd think a trash man was a monster.从大多数人看你的目光中,你就知道垃圾工在他们眼里是怪物。 The way I look at it, it’s not what you do that matters so much.依我看，重要的并不是你做什么。 I might have been his son the way he talked.根据他说话的样子，好像我是他的儿子一样。One would think these men owned the earth the way they behave.他们这样行动，人家竟会以为他们是地球的主人。

way的用法

一．Way：“方式”、“方法” 1.表示用某种方法或按某种方式 Do it (in) your own way. Please do not talk (in) that way. 2.表示做某事的方式或方法 It’s the best way of studying [to study] English.。 There are different ways to do [of doing] it. 3.其后通常可直接跟一个定语从句(不用任何引导词)，也可跟由that 或in which 引导的定语从句 正：I don’t like the way he spoke. I don’t like the way that he spoke. I don’t like the way in which he spoke.误：I don’t like the way how he spoke. 4. the way 的从句 That’s the way (=how) he spoke. I know where you are from by the way you pronounce my name. That was the way minority nationalities were treated in old China. Nobody else loves you the way(=as) I do. He did not do it the way his friend did. 二．固定搭配 1. In a/one way：In a way he was right. 2. In the way /get in one’s way I'm afraid your car is in the way， If you are not going to help，at least don't get in the way. You'll have to move－you're in my way. 3. in no way Theory can in no way be separated from practice. 4. On the way (to……) Let’s wait a few moments. He is on the way Spring is on the way. Radio forecasts said a sixth-grade wind was on the way. She has two children with another one on the way. 5. By the way By the way，do you know where Mary lives? 6. By way of Learn English by way of watching US TV series. 8. under way 1. Elbow one’s way He elbowed his way to the front of the queue. 2. shoulder one’s way 3. feel one‘s way 摸索着向前走；We couldn’t see anything in the cave, so we had to feel our way out 4. fight/force one’s way 突破。。。而前进The surrounded soldiers fought their way out. 5.. push/thrust one‘s way（在人群中）挤出一条路He pushed his way through the crowd. 6. wind one’s way 蜿蜒前进 7. lead the way 带路，领路；示范 8. lose one‘s way 迷失方向 9. clear the way 排除障碍，开路迷路 10. make one’s way 前进，行进The team slowly made their way through the jungle.

the way的用法大全

在the way+从句中, the way 是先行词, 其后是定语从句.它有三种表达形式:1) the way+that 2)the way+ in which 3)the way + 从句(省略了that或in which),在通常情况下, 用in which 引导的定语从句最为正式,用that的次之,而省略了关系代词that 或in which 的, 反而显得更自然,最为常用.如下面三句话所示,其意义相同. I like the way in which he talks. I like the way that he talks. I like the way he talks. 如果怕弄混淆，下面的可以不看了 另外，在当代美国英语中,the way用作为副词的对格,"the way+从句"实际上相当于一个状语从句来修饰全句. the way=as 1)I'm talking to you just the way I'd talk to a boy of my own. 我和你说话就象和自己孩子说话一样. 2)He did not do it the way his friend did. 他没有象他朋友那样去做此事. 3)Most fruits are naturally sweet and we can eat them just the way they are ----all we have to do is clean or peel them . 大部分水果天然甜润,可以直接食用,我们只需要把他们清洗一下或去皮. the way=according to the way/judging from the way 4)The way you answer the qquestions, you must be an excellent student. 从你回答就知道,你是一个优秀的学生. 5)The way most people look at you, you'd think a trashman was a monster. 从大多数人看你的目光中,你就知道垃圾工在他们眼里是怪物. the way=how/how much 6)I know where you are from by the way you pronounce my name. 从你叫我名字的音调中,我知道你哪里人. 7)No one can imaine the way he misses her. 人们很想想象他是多么想念她. the way=because 8) No wonder that girls looks down upon me, the way you encourage her. 难怪那姑娘看不起我, 原来是你怂恿的 the way =while/when(表示对比) 9)From that day on, they walked into the classroom carrying defeat on their shoulders the way other students carried textbooks under their arms.

“the-way+从句”结构的意义及用法知识讲解

“the way+从句”结构的意义及用法 首先让我们来看下面这个句子： Read the following passage and talk about it with your classmates. Try to tell what you think of Tom and of the way the children treated him. 在这个句子中，the way是先行词，后面是省略了关系副词that 或in which的定语从句。 下面我们将叙述“the way+从句”结构的用法。 1．the way之后，引导定语从句的关系词是that而不是how,因此，<<现代英语惯用法词典>>中所给出的下面两个句子是错误的：This is the way how it happened. This is the way how he always treats me. 2. 在正式语体中，that可被in which所代替；在非正式语体中，that则往往省略。由此我们得到the way后接定语从句时的三种模式：1) the way +that-从句2) the way +in which-从句3) the way +从句 例如：The way(in which ,that) these comrades look at problems is wrong.这些同志看问题的方法不对。

The way(that ,in which)you’re doing it is completely crazy.你这么个干法，简直发疯。 We admired him for the way in which he faces difficulties. Wallace and Darwin greed on the way in which different forms of life had begun.华莱士和达尔文对不同类型的生物是如何起源的持相同的观点。 This is the way (that) he did it. I liked the way (that) she organized the meeting. 3.the way(that)有时可以与how(作“如何”解)通用。例如： That’s the way (that) she spoke. = That’s how she spoke. I should like to know the way/how you learned to master the fundamental technique within so short a time. 4．the way的其它用法：以上我们讲的都是用作先行词的the way，下面我们将叙述它的一些用法。

定冠词the的12种用法

定冠词the的12种用法 定冠词the 的12 种用法，全知道?快来一起学习吧。下面就和大家分享，来欣赏一下吧。 定冠词the 的12 种用法，全知道? 定冠词the用在各种名词前面，目的是对这个名词做个记号，表示它的特指属性。所以在词汇表中，定冠词the 的词义是“这个，那个，这些，那些”，可见，the 即可以放在可数名词前，也可以修饰不可数名词，the 后面的名词可以是单数，也可以是复数。 定冠词的基本用法： (1) 表示对某人、某物进行特指，所谓的特指就是“不是别的，就是那个!”如： The girl with a red cap is Susan. 戴了个红帽子的女孩是苏珊。 (2) 一旦用到the，表示谈话的俩人都知道说的谁、说的啥。如：

The dog is sick. 狗狗病了。(双方都知道是哪一只狗) (3) 前面提到过的，后文又提到。如： There is a cat in the tree.Thecat is black. 树上有一只猫，猫是黑色的。 (4) 表示世界上唯一的事物。如： The Great Wall is a wonder.万里长城是个奇迹。(5) 方位名词前。如： thenorth of the Yangtze River 长江以北地区 (6) 在序数词和形容词最高级的前面。如： Who is the first?谁第一个? Sam is the tallest.山姆最高。 但是不能认为，最高级前必须加the，如： My best friend. 我最好的朋友。 (7) 在乐器前。如： play the flute 吹笛子

Way的用法

Way用法 A:I think you should phone Jenny and say sorry to her. B:_______. It was her fault. A. No way B. Not possible C. No chance D. Not at all 说明：正确答案是A. No way，意思是“别想！没门！决不！” 我认为你应该打电话给珍妮并向她道歉。 没门！这是她的错。 再看两个关于no way的例句： （1）Give up our tea break? NO way! 让我们放弃喝茶的休息时间？没门儿！ （2）No way will I go on working for that boss. 我决不再给那个老板干了。 way一词含义丰富，由它构成的短语用法也很灵活。为了便于同学们掌握和用好它，现结合实例将其用法归纳如下： 一、way的含义 1. 路线

He asked me the way to London. 他问我去伦敦的路。 We had to pick our way along the muddy track. 我们不得不在泥泞的小道上择路而行。 2. （沿某）方向 Look this way, please. 请往这边看。 Kindly step this way, ladies and gentlemen. 女士们、先生们，请这边走。 Look both ways before crossing the road. 过马路前向两边看一看。 Make sure that the sign is right way up. 一定要把符号的上下弄对。 3. 道、路、街，常用以构成复合词 a highway（公路），a waterway（水路），a railway（铁路），wayside（路边）

way与time的特殊用法

way/time的特殊用法 1、当先行词是way意思为”方式.方法”的时候,引导定语从句的关系词有下列3种形式： Way在从句中做宾语 The way that / which he explained to us is quite simple. Way在从句中做状语 The way t hat /in which he explained the sentence to us is quite simple. 2、当先行词是time时,若time表示次数时,应用关系代词that引导定语从句,that可以省略; 若time表示”一段时间”讲时,应用关系副词when或介词at/during + which引导定语从句 1.Is this factory _______ we visited last year? 2.Is this the factory-------we visited last year? A. where B in which C the one D which 3. This is the last time _________ I shall give you a lesson. A. when B that C which D in which 4.I don’t like the way ________ you laugh at her. A . that B on which C which D as 5.He didn’t understand the wa y ________ I worked out the problem. A which B in which C where D what 6.I could hardly remember how many times----I’ve failed. A that B which C in which D when 7.This is the second time--------the president has visited the country. A which B where C that D in which 8.This was at a time------there were no televisions, no computers or radios. A what B when C which D that