WORK
Home and Work
Christena Nippert-Eng's 1996 University of Chicago Press landmark — the book that introduced 'boundary work' as an analytical concept and established the material, ethnographic framework this volume applies to the AI age.
Home and Work: Negotiating Boundaries through Everyday Life (University of Chicago Press, 1996) is the founding text of the boundary-work tradition. Through meticulous ethnographic observation of laboratory scientists, machinists, and other workers, Nippert-Eng demonstrated that the work-home boundary is not a fixed wall but a daily practice built from physical artifacts and social agreements. The book introduced the segmentation-integration continuum, the concept of boundary objects in domestic sociology, and the ethnographic method of reading ordinary objects (key rings, calendars, photographs) as diagnostic instruments for invisible boundary architectures. It has become a foundational reference across organizational sociology, work-family research, and — now — the analysis of AI's effects on daily life.
In The You On AI Field Guide
The book's method is as consequential as its concepts. Nippert-Eng did not theorize the work-home boundary; she went and watched it being constructed. She watched workers sort mail, change clothes, manage calendars, carry keys. From these observations, she built a framework that