Michael Owen Jones's study of chairmaking in southeastern Kentucky focuses on rural woodworker Chester Cornett. Cornett found a sense of security, stability, and self-esteem in the structures of his chairs and the virtuosity of their design. Considering other area craftsmen for comparison, Jones explores why people value aesthetic qualities as well as utilitarian ones in the making of everyday objects. He looks deeper still into the nature of the creative process and the traditions that influence it.

Product Description: Analyzing the way organizations work through the study of the symbols connected to them, this book will be of interest to anyone involved in organization studies. The author discusses the most obvious symbolic aspects of organizations - corporate logos, office sizes, use of titles - as well as focusing on the more subtle aspect of expressive forms of symbolism such as storytelling, institutional jargon and workplace personalization, among others...read more

Product Description: The first book of its kind, Putting Folklore to Use provides guidance to folklorists but also informs practitioners in other fields about how to use folklore studies to augment their own studies. How can acting like a folklore fieldworker help a teacher reduce inter-group stereotyping and increase student's self-esteem? How can adopting a folklore fieldworker's point of view when interviewing patients help practitioners render health care more effectively? How can using folklore research help rural communities survive and thrive? Thirteen folklorists provide answers to these and other questions and demonstrate the many ways folklore can be put to use...read more

Product Description: Jones explores the human impulse to create, the necessity for having aesthetically satisfying experiences, and the craving for tradition. He also considers topics such as making chairs, remodeling houses, using and preserving soda-fountain slang, preparing and eating food, and sculpting lifelike figures out of cement...read more

Product Description: This is the first definitive volume on organizational ethnography, an emerging field in which organizations are studied as human phenomena; unifying the volume is the thesis that organizing is a fundamental human enterprise that is social, symbolic and aesthetic as well as technological and utilitarian...read more

Product Description: Book by Jones, Michael Owen