Stanley A. Deetz is Professor of Communication at Rutgers University. He is co-author of Managing Interpersonal Communication, and currently edits the Communication Yearbook series.

"This book is sophisticated, powerful, lucid, and pointed in style and organization. In a field where general theoretic development is relatively rare, this book will certainly become a foundation for later research and theoretic argument." — Robert D. McPhee, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee"The topic is extremely important and timely. The book makes a significant contribution to the current debate about the place of discursive practices in social institutions by focusing on work organizations and relationships. It fills a gap in research on social institutions and human emancipation by centering communication as a way of understanding/conceptualizing the institutions and social relations under investigation." — Stephen P. Banks, University of Idaho

• Preface Introduction 1. Corporate Colonization of the Life World 2. Communication and the Politics of Everyday Life 3. The Role of Communication Studies 4. The Historical Relation of Communication and Democracy 5. Language and the Poltics of Experience 6. Participation as a Normative Ideal for Democracy and Communication 7. Systematically Distorted Communication and Discursive Closure 8. The Rise of the Modern Corporate Form 9. The "Subject" and Discourse of Managerialism 10. Disciplinary Power and Discursive Formations at Work 11. The Imaginary World of Work: Reproblematizing the Oblivious 12. Workplace Democracy as a Responsive Micropractice Bibliography Name Index Subject Index