1st Edition

Change and the Internet An Ethnographic Exploration of Remote Working

By Jens Kjaerulff Copyright 2026
164 Pages 2 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

164 Pages 2 B/W Illustrations
by Routledge

This book explores the significance of new information technology for socio-cultural change and provides ethnographic insight into the early days of remote working. It draws on long-term anthropological fieldwork among people in rural Denmark working from home via the internet. Going back to the late 1990s and early 2000s, the study demonstrates how remote and flexible working was mostly practiced... Read more

1. Change and the Internet: Framing the Issue

2. Revisited: The Wednesday Lunch Group, Comparison and Change

3. Forays in a Village: Modelling Process and Diversity

4. Fieldwork on Remote Working: Unfolding Events, Knowledge, and Traditions

5. Work as a Tradition of Knowledge: Towards Modelling Incremental Change

6. What Motivates Telework? Concerns and Flexibilities

7. A Housewife with a Career: Towards Comparison

8. Probing the Limits: ‘Freedoms’ of Freelancing

9. Concluding Reflections

Biography

Jens Kjaerulff is intellectually rooted in the discipline of social anthropology (BA, MA, PhD). He has held research posts and been teaching anthropology at The University of Manchester (UK), Simon Fraser University (Canada), and Aarhus University (Denmark), among other institutions, and is now doing consultancy work and independent research.

“This extraordinarily dense ethnographic study impresses through the highly sophisticated intertwining of empiric research and anthropological theory. It provides fundamental insights in the three research fields of the anthropology of change, the anthropology of work, and anthropology of technology - an intellectual highlight for each reading list.”

- Gertraud Koch, University of Hamburg, Germany

“Kjaerulff is a pioneer in this field. He was studying this well before remote working became, quite literally, a household notion around the globe. […] Too often commentators and ordinary citizens (including students) will overemphasise novelty at the expense of continuity. Kjaerulff’s book will help students and scholars think about the continuities and changes of remote work in a much more sophisticated way.”

John PostillRMIT University, Australia