PurposeThis paper aims to highlight the need to understand the mechanisms of inclusion and exclusion in the workplace which are often embedded in micro‐level work practices. It explores how social networks and the resources contained within them function differentially among workers to reinforce existing patterns of preferential access to the most desirable positions in the labour market.Design/methodology/approachUsing in‐depth interviews of electrical engineers in a case study firm in the IT industry in Cambridge, England, the paper outlines the strong gendered and ethnic patterns of segmentation within the engineering occupation.FindingsThe paper finds significant inequalities in access to, and awareness of, the resources contained within some social networks in the workplace.Originality/valueThe study critiques the extension of social capital theory into the workplace due to its conceptual and methodological focus on positive outcomes.

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This paper is a first attempt at presenting a multi-authored ethnography of e@tm in its second year. It is open to further elaboration through the contributions of readers. It aims to investigate the contradictions inherent in our own practice, as subalterns within an academic institution attempting to create a space for the production of alternative but equally legitimate knowledges. The notions of communitas, and creativity or innovation which the formation of communitas supports, have been used in the past to describe this seminar, but as practices, these can in some instances sit uneasily together. Here their coexistence is found to be rendered problematic through the requirements of legitimisation of the seminar and the form this process takes.