L1D69 (1.3) |
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L1T0 (21%): sense (0%), representations (0%), modern (0%) L1T99 (19%): history (4%) L1T132 (7%): historical (10%), contemporary (5%) L1T101 (6%): theory (11%), his (8%), path_dependence (7%) |
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"Coal [from Colombia] is our life". Bourdieu, the miners (after they are miners) and resistance in As Pontes (2021) 🗎🗎 | We address the question why social identities associated with resource extraction can survive the extraction itself, a question which is highly relevant for devising strategies for economic diversification and community reinvention in many communities. The case of As Pontes, in Galicia, Spain, where a rural community transformed into a powerhouse of coal mining and electricity production, is highly instructive, as it reveals the importance of state planning and a central actor which structured social, political and economic life, and created identities which could not easily be dislodged. We deploy notions from Pierre Bourdieu's sociology of practice to analyze the persistence of identities and associated hopes for an impossible return to the past, giving central place to the idea of symbolic violence, i.e. the internalization of categories, identities and relations initially promoted by a coalition of actors benefiting from this order of the social field. |
Rethinking the meaning of "landscape shocks" in energy transitions: German social representations of the Fukushima nuclear accident (2020) 🗎🗎 | Sociotechnical sustainability transitions are understood to involve changes in cultural meaning, alongside a wide variety of other changes. One of the most popular conceptual models of such change, the multi-level perspective, exogenously locates slow-changing cultural factors in the 'sociotechnical landscape', viewing this landscape as periodically subject to 'shocks' that may support the break-through of niche innovations. Here we emphasise that shock to a sociotechnical system has social psychological dimensions, including meaning-related correlates. Accordingly, we apply social representations theory, as a theory of meaning, to provide a social psychological account of energy landscape shock and associated policy change. For illustration we take newspaper representations of the 2011 German social and policy response to the nuclear accident at the Fukushima Daiichi power plant in Japan. The study illustrates the inter-related role of affect, identity and symbolic meaning-making in the public response to a sociotechnical landscape shock. |
Carceral lock-in: How organizational conditions stymie the development of justice alternatives in a rape crisis center (2020) 🗎🗎 | Many perpetrators of sexual violence are themselves victims of similar crimes. Such "complex victims" do not fit neatly into the dichotomous categories of victim and perpetrator essential to the functioning of the adversarial criminal-legal system. How anti-rape activists attempt to incorporate complex victims into their work illustrates challenges they experience when wrestling with the carceral state more broadly. In this article, I draw on 32 months of participant observation and 40 in-depth interviews to show how organizational conditions-departmental silos and physical infrastructure-prevent activists' treatment of complex victims. Building on the concept of path dependence from organization theory, I argue that carceral understandings of harm become "locked-in" despite activists' anti-carceral attitudes. This article identifies barriers to the treatment of complex victims, further explains feminist activists' simultaneously contentious and coalitional relationship with the carceral state, and introduces the concept of carceral lock-in to help understand impediments to justice alternatives. |
When Organization Studies Turns to Societal Problems: The Contribution of Marxist Grand Theory (2015) 🗎🗎 | Marxist theory, we argue, can be a valuable resource as organization studies turns to the urgent societal problems of our times. In order to address these problems, organizational studies needs greater historical depth and interdisciplinarity. We argue that these imperatives necessitate a return to grand theory. Grand theories provide the frameworks needed for integrating in a systematic as opposed to an ad hoc manner both scholarship across disciplines and middle-range theories within disciplines. We show that marxism offers a particularly fruitful grand theory for organization studies and for the social sciences more broadly, because it affords a platform for integrating various social sciences and because it offers penetrating insight into both the longue duree of history and the political-economic dynamics of capitalism. In making our case, we present and defend the core ideas of marxism, including its theory of modes of production, its distinctive theory of soft technological and economic determinism, its labor theory of value, and its account of the key developmental tendencies of capitalismconcentration and centralization of capital, socialization, and recurrent crises. We illustrate the power of these ideas by showing how they can be used to enrich organizational research on the 2007-8 financial crisis. And we introduce the four articles in this Special Themed Section, which show the capacity of marxist concepts to reframe and enrich research on traditional and emerging topics in organization studies, including organizational learning and communities of practice, knowledge work, teamwork and collaboration, social media and digital capitalism, and organizational routines and path dependence. |
Path Dependence and QWERTY's Lock-In: Toward a Veblenian Interpretation (2011) 🗎🗎 | In "Clio and the Economics of QWERTY," Paul David challenges an overarching, mainstream assumption that market forces should indeed lead toward efficient and optimal outcomes that include technology selection. David seeks to explain the endurance of technologies that his use of historiography judges inefficient and suboptimal. We challenge David's research, arguing that failure to consider the original institutional economics (OIE) tradition limits his grasp of complex processes to reduced notions of "path dependence" based upon a "lock-in." This inquiry offers an alternative account of QWERTY and technology selection based upon Veblenian thinking, further supported by Paul Dale Bush's emphasis upon the ceremonial. |
The structuring and behaviour of organizations is increasingly explained with the help of process theories, taking into account that history and sequencing matter. Among them, the notion of path dependence has gained prominence, in particular when an explanation for the rigidification of organizational routines and strategies is at stake. The distinguishing feature of this concept is its emphasis on self-reinforcing mechanisms when explaining the dynamics of narrowing down the scope of alternative actions in and among organizations. After having presented and discussed the theory of organizational path dependence, the paper highlights commonalities and contrasts between related concepts. Thereafter, the papers of this Special Themed Section will be introduced. | |
Rules and standards are considered to be of vital importance for the functioning not only of organizations but of societies as well. The difficulties and paradoxes associated with the concept of rules and rule-following are analyzed much more frequently in the context of philosophy than of social science. In this paper, I will draw on the writings of Wittgenstein and Derrida to examine four particular characteristics of rules and standards: first, the dependence of their validity and meaning on the practice of rule-following. Second, properties that have led me to describe them as pharmaka in Derrida's (1997) sense, which means medicine or poison and possibly illicit drugs. Third, their dependence on the possibility of rule-breaking, and fourth, their being inevitably subject to drift, which is beneficial in many cases but dangerous in others. I will argue that the drift of rules and standards becomes increasingly dangerous when more processes become path dependent. This paper examines four cases as examples of dangerous drifts in the context of organizations: the drift of environmental standards, the Challenger disaster, a friendly fire case in northern Iraq, and Michael Power's "audit explosion." (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. | |
Why are we growth-addicted? The hard way towards degrowth in the involutionary western development path (2010) 🗎🗎 | By questioning the origins of the inertia facing the degrowth movement, this contribution identifies property as the constitutive institution of capitalism, and property expansion as the dominant socioeconomic process leading world societies to economic path dependence, techno-institutional lock-in and eco-social impasse. Demonstrating why and how property-based economic rationality subordinates ecological and social considerations to capitalist requirements, this paper stresses both the need for an inversion in the hierarchy of social norms and the systemic opposition to such an inversion, which emanates from the capitalist/industrial expansion. The text also brings to light some disregarded processes underlying the current economic crisis, by pointing out the institutional and technological locked-in situation into which the western development path has led our societies. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. |
Reversals of fortune: path dependency, problem solving, and temporal cases (2010) 🗎🗎 | Historical reversals highlight a basic methodological problem: is it possible to treat two successive periods both as independent cases to compare for causal analysis and as parts of a single historical sequence? I argue that one strategy for doing so, using models of path dependency, imposes serious limits on explanation. An alternative model which treats successive periods as contrasting solutions for recurrent problems offers two advantages. First, it more effectively combines analytical comparisons of different periods with narratives of causal sequences spanning two or more periods. Second, it better integrates scholarly accounts of historical reversals with actors' own narratives of the past. |
Talk of safety culture has emerged as a common trope in contemporary scholarship and popular media as an explanation for accidents and as a recipe for improvement in complex sociotechnical systems. Three conceptions of culture appear in talk about safety: culture as causal attitude, culture as engineered organization, and culture as emergent and indeterminate. If we understand culture as sociologists and anthropologists theorize as an indissoluble dialectic of system and practice, as both the product and context of social action, the first two perspectives deploying standard causal logics fail to provide persuasive accounts. Displaying affinities with individualist and reductionist epistemologies, safety culture is frequently operationalized in terms of the attitudes and behaviors of individual actors, often the lowest-level actors, with the least authority, in the organizational hierarchy. Sociological critiques claim that culture is emergent and indeterminate and cannot be instrumentalized to prevent technological accidents. Research should explore the features of complex systems that have been elided in the talk of safety culture: normative heterogeneity and conflict, inequalities in power and authority, and competing sets of legitimate interests within organizations. | |
Divergence, sensitivity, and nonequilibrium in ecosystems (2004) 🗎🗎 | Contemporary theoretical debate in ecology and biogeography is often focused on equilibrium vs. nonequilibrium behavior in ecosystems and on the nature and source of ecosystem dynamics. It is suggested that these debates be recast in terms of the way ecosystems develop and respond to disturbances, rather than in terms of concepts Often imported from mathematics, physics, and other fields. Using nonlinear dynamical systems theory, it is shown that key theoretical implications can be cast in terms of geoecologically significant phenomenologies such as divergent evolution, sensitivity to initial conditions and small disturbances, historical contingency, and path dependence. Examples show these phenomena are widely observed in ecosystems. Ecological and biogeographical theory can be problematized from within geography and ecology rather than fuzzy, abstract concepts such as equilibrium, self-organization, "balance of nature," or chaos. Complexity, sensitivity, variability, nonsteady states, and other concepts Often associated with nonequilibrium or complexity-theory-frame-works have manifestations that are evident in observable ecological phenomena, in addition to theory and models. |
The dynamic implications of increasing returns: Technological change and path dependent inefficiency (1997) 🗎🗎 | This paper addresses the issue of path-dependent selection and inefficiency, counterfactual methods and the empirical evidence employed in this research trajectory. The general message is basically that the theoretical argument to prove path-dependent inefficiency is relatively straightforward, while empirical demonstrations, as well as the analysis of welfare implications are much more difficult. In the first section, we briefly state the basic argument explaining how localized learning leads to an incomplete exploration of the variety distribution of a technology. We then synthesize the most interesting historical studies, which get potential regret results, and ask whether these results suggest a large welfare loss. To try to answer this question, we start from the critical arguments of Liebowitz and Margolis to discuss the theoretical and empirical difficulties of establishing path-dependent inefficiency. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science B.V. |
Global society's actions have created a planetary state whose dynamics are new to human experience-the Anthropocene. One consequence is that alarming climatic, ecological, and public health trends are unfolding with little evidence of abating. This essay argues that the convergence of these trends could lead to a comprehensive crisis where multiple risks materialize in reinforcing ways-the crisis of the Anthropocene. This crisis is likely to occur near the high population point of the demographic transition in progress. Ensuring that the demographic transition is also a transition to sustainability will require conceptualization and planning that internalizes the synergism of threats to society and nature. | |
How deep is incumbency? A 'configuring fields' approach to redistributing and reorienting power in socio-material change (2019) 🗎🗎 | This paper examines a variety of theories bearing on `socio-material incumbency' and explores methodological implications. The aim is to develop a systematic general approach, which builds on strengths and mitigates weaknesses in prevailing analytical frameworks. A particular priority lies in avoidance of self-acknowledged tendencies in existing theory to 'reify' central notions like 'the regime'. Such pictures may overstate the tractability of incumbency to conventional policy instruments and so inadvertently help reinforce it. Based on detailed analysis of ways in which longstanding concepts of structuration apply to socio-material change, a novel 'configuring fields' approach is proposed. Contrasting 'eagle-eye' and 'worm-eye' views are each shown to yield distinctive possible 'topologies of incumbency'. This results in testable hypotheses with potentially important practical implications. Attention can thus extend beyond narrow policy instruments and mixes, to fully embrace broader and deeper kinds of political collective action, culture change and democratic struggle. |
The ontological politics of (in-)equality: a new research approach for post-development (2019) 🗎🗎 | This article aims to add a new line of research to the post-development school of thought. Drawing on the many evident yet rarely noticed parallels between post-development and (post-)anarchism, I develop an understanding of 'anarchistic post-development' as a politics based on what French philosopher Jacques Ranciere calls 'the presupposition of equality'. I further connect this with Arturo Escobar and Marisol De la Cadena's concept of political ontology, suggesting that we can make sense of and analyse both contemporary 'Development' projects as well as anarchistic post-developmental 'alternatives to Development' through the lens of what I call 'the ontological politics of (in-)equality'. To substantiate my points, I will draw on the recent case of a Maori tribe who won a historical legal battle to declare the Whanganui River a living entity. |
The evolution of the law of indirect expropriation and its application to oil and gas investments (2016) 🗎🗎 | While a case-by-case method for the determination of indirect expropriation is a practical method and is somehow the governing method given the inconsistency in arbitral practice, it is argued whether an attempt to set out a clear, consistent and appropriate method must be encouraged by tribunals. Jan Paulsson (and before him G C Christie) correctly emphasize that there is no 'magical formula' or "particular analysis" that can be applied at all times or in all circumstances, but a question arises as to whether there must be a general basis or common method that sets out the minimal requirements of indirect expropriation. Putting to one-side cases which deal with non-discriminatory regulation for public welfare objectives, a number of questions have become critical to the finding of indirect expropriation in light of the recent case law. |
Review essay - Family firms amidst the creative destruction of capitalism (2005) 🗎🗎 | In terms of anthropology's past interests, the study of family firms seems a "natural" way into the ethnography of contemporary capitalism. True, but as Sylvia Yanagisako's rich and sensitive study demonstrates, this is so by productively frustrating central ideas in anthropology like "culture" and "kinship" without resolution in alternative concepts. |
Ignorance as a productive response to epistemic perturbations (2021) 🗎🗎 | This paper argues that ignorance, rather than being a result or representation of false beliefs or misinformation, is a compensatory epistemic adaptation of complex rhetoric systems. A rhetoric system is here defined as a set of interconnected rhetorical elements (beliefs, arguments, commonplaces [loci communes], meanings, and texts) that cohere into a self-organized system that is thoroughly "about" its contexts-meaning that its own boundaries and relations are both constrained and enabled by the contexts in which it exists. Ignorance, as described here, is epistemic management that preserves the boundaries and relations of a rhetoric system, and is a way of dealing with information that runs counter to one's beliefs. Ignorance is also productive, in that it produces new knowledge that works to make rhetoric systems more resistant to potential destabilization. To elaborate these points, the paper examines discourse about the phenomenon of global climate change, which illustrates how individuals productively counter information as a way of preserving beliefs. As the paper argues, ignorance is neither a cognitive nor epistemological failure, but rather is a result of the dynamic and continuous process of enforcing epistemic and rhetorical boundaries. |
"[This] system was not made for [you]:" A case for decolonial Scientia (2021) 🗎🗎 | Background Sylvia Wynter's "recoded" form of science called decolonial Scientia (DS) is grounded in an understanding of humans as simultaneously biological and cultural. DS includes narrative interventions that destabilize Western scientific authority, and address limitations that empirical data collection and analysis place on capturing simultaneous realities. Therefore, Wynter's narrative "languaging" is both scientific critique and grounded in a tradition of Black radical imagining. Aims In this article, I use languaging to destabilize the canonical narrative tied to W. M. Cobb's production of the article "Race and Runners." The standard telling focuses on Cobb's examination of Owens' lower extremities to expose the fallacy of racial differences in athletic ability. Destabilization of the narrative allows for identifying relational complexities between actors involved in the canonical story - and identifying ideologies embedded within it that guide our deconstructions of biological race. My alter(ed)native subjectivity informs my use of languaging to argue that the relationship between narrative and research practices belie Western scientific/unscientific binaries. Materials and methods Audiovisual and documentary sources of the public-facing "Race and Runners" story were subject to comparative analysis to verify the content and order of events in the canonical narrative. Letters focused on race and athletic ability obtained from the W. Montague Cobb Manuscript Collection at Howard University serve as "apocryphal" sources of information. Correspondence between Cobb and a representative member of the public named Howard Duncan took place within a period immediately before, during and after Cobb publishes "Race and Runners" in the Journal of Health and Physical Education. Contents were subject to a systematic analysis that involved reviewing documents to identify statements reflecting scientific practices, human interactions and relationships between race and athletic ability reflected in the canonical narrative. Contents were also examined for statements relevant to the narrative that departed from or added to the canonical story in the same three areas. Details regarding departures and additions were recorded along with the specific part of the narrative to which they corresponded. Narrative departures and additions were articulated with the canonical narrative in the interest of destabilizing it to identify "knots of ideas, histories and narratives that, contrary to Western science, can only be legible in relation to one another" (McKittrick, 2015b p. 2). Results Letters exchanged between Cobb and Duncan reveal dynamics that are obscured in the canonical storyline. For instance, Duncan's ability as a white male to assert himself as Cobb's peer demonstrates how racialized power is enacted through science. This is also reflected in Owens' position in the narrative as a voiceless object of knowledge. Letters also present Cobb's identity beyond being a "pioneer," rendering how he is studying and experiencing racism. This includes how he refuses to engage Duncan as a peer. Discussion More than mere stories, narratives are motivating and instructive forces that shape how we study human biology and use our research to oppose biological notions of race. Correspondence between Cobb and Duncan reveals how Western scientific ideologies that reinforce prescribed roles and boundaries are embedded in narratives. These ideologies can limit the transformative potential of our approaches to contesting biological notions of race. |
Sociology's encounter with the decolonial: The problematique of indigenous vs that of coloniality, extraversion and colonial modernity(1) (2021) 🗎🗎 | How did the process of decolonization reframe the social sciences? This article maps the interventions made by theorists of and from the ex-colonial countries in reconceptualizing sociology both as practice and as an episteme. It argues that there are geographically varied and intellectually diverse decolonial approaches being formulated using sociological theory to critique the universals propounded by the traditions of western sociology/social sciences; that these diverse knowledges are connected through colonial and global circuits and that these create knowledge geographies; that collectively these diverse intellectual positions argue that sociology/social sciences are constituted in and within the politics of 'difference' organized within colonial, nationalist and global geopolitics; that this 'difference' is being reproduced in everyday knowledge practices and is being structured through the political economy of knowledge; and that the destabilization of this power structure and democratization of this knowledge is possible only when there is a fulsome interrogation of this political economy, and its everyday practices of knowledge production within universities and research institutes. It argues that this critique needs to be buffered by the constitution of alternate networks of circulation of this knowledge. |
The Psychology of Leadership Destabilization: An Analysis of the 2016 US Presidential Debates (2021) 🗎🗎 | When contesting for political office, leaders do not only seek to build their own following but also to engage in attacks to destabilize opponent leaders. However, research has yet to explore and explain the nature of attacks that seek to destabilize a leader's influence. Building on the identity leadership model which sees leadership as flowing from a leader's capacity to promote a sense of shared identity with followers, we argue that a leader can be destabilized if followers come to see the leader as defiling, devaluing, dividing, and destroying this shared sense of "us." To explore these ideas, we analyzed the attack rhetoric used by Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump during the 2016 U.S. presidential debates to examine how they sought to subvert each other's leadership. Our analysis supports the proposed model and sheds light on the hitherto underexplored topic of leadership destabilization. Moreover, by helping us understand the ways in which principles of identity leadership can be weaponized to destabilize leadership, the analysis defines an important agenda for future research. |
Thinking Absence: A Discussion of "The Analyst's Necessary Nonsovereignty and the Generative Power of the Negative" (2020) 🗎🗎 | I begin by discussing the nature of the negative in McGleughlin's paper (this issue), offering some examples of my own from the films of Kubrick and Malick. I go on to address how the negative can be a relational conception, as I read McGleughlin to suggest, and the role of destabilization as a clinical process in work with the negative, as well as in work with states of mind that allow representation. I end with a discussion of the application of a controversy over Lacan's conception of the Real to the idea of the negative, and I suggest that analysts need to cultivate, for different kinds of psychic phenomena, both nonsovereignty and creative, expanded sovereignty. |
An exploration of earth system vulnerability in the context of landfills in the Anthropocene (2020) 🗎🗎 | The Anthropocene refers to a geological epoch dominated by humans. Within this epoch atmospheric, geological, hydrological, biospheric and other earth systemic processes change due to human activity and can no longer only be ascribed to nature. The far-reaching effects of human activity lead to vulnerability of the earth system. One of the consequences of human activity that has a profound impact in the Anthropocene and that acts as a catalyst of vulnerability, is waste. In fact, Hecht (2018:111) has described the Anthropocene as the "apotheosis of waste ". Within the context of the Anthropocene this article explores Martha Fineman's vulnerability theory and Louis Kotze 's related and extended framework of earth systemic vulnerability. Both Fineman and Kotze argue for a destabilisation of traditional legal subjectivity Their point of departure is not the Western, liberal autonomous subject, but rather the universal vulnerable subject that demands a responsive state. A responsive state should produce sources of resilience to counteract universal vulnerability. Kotze 's theoretical extension of Fineman universal vulnerability to earth system vulnerability is in step with the nonhuman turn, a movement associated with the late twentieth century, and set on the decentering of humans. Instead, the movement accentuates the agency of nonhumans. By extending the universal vulnerable subject to be more inclusive and encompass the nonhuman subject as well, the vulnerability of other elements of the earth system can also be highlighted. Fineman's response to traditional notions of subjectivity emerged as a critique of formal equality. It is therefore necessary to consider whether the notion of the universal vulnerable subject is relevant in the South African context. The latter is characterised by a human rights approach advocating substantive equality. Although the South African approach to human rights therefore differs from the American one, Kotze highlights other shortcomings of human rights in the Anthropocene. They create space for vulnerability theory to enhance approaches to complex problems associated with the epoch. The concept of the universal vulnerable subject can, for instance, be utilised to question the anthropocentric approach to subjectivity. After establishing that vulnerability theory and earth system vulnerability can contribute to the South African socio-legal discourse on the Anthropocene, the authors explore earth systemic vulnerability of vulnerable subjects in the context of landfills. These vulnerabilities, cautions Kohn (2014:27), are not innate to the vulnerable subject but are produced by relationships between the subjects and their environments. Building on this proviso, the article demonstrates that earth systemic vulnerability is caused by relationships between vulnerable human and nonhuman subjects and the landfill environment on both micro- and macroecological levels. It traces personal, relational and institutional vulnerabilities of both nonhuman and human entities. The article traces nonhuman and human vulnerabilities related to microecological bacterial relationships in the context of waste decomposition in landfills, personal and relational vulnerabilities caused by relationships between waste pickers, other stakeholders and their environment, and eventually global relationships that expose personal, relational and institutional vulnerability of macroecologies. By introducing a broad and expansive universal vulnerable subject inclusive of nonhuman entities, the authors endeavour to contribute to the legal theoretical foundation of waste management by advocating a progressive approach to waste theory. This analysis is analogous to similar work done within the context of climate change. Within the Anthropocene there is room for theoretical work using a wider lens that not only concentrates on the local context, but rather highlights the vulnerability of micro- and macroecologies. Due to scope considerations two other aspects of the vulnerability analysis will be considered in a forthcoming article, in which we will consider how vulnerable subjects use sources of resilience to counter earth system vulnerability and investigate the role of the responsive state in the creation of sources of resilience. |
Ordoliberalism and Neoliberalization: Governing through Order or Disorder (2019) 🗎🗎 | Although both promote a free market and strong state, ordoliberalism is usefully contrasted with neoliberalization. Ordoliberals aim to achieve this goal by creating a juridico-political institutional fix that provides a stable framework for accumulation. Promoters of neoliberal regime shifts pursue it through strategies of destabilization that exploit resulting crises. Ordoliberalism governs through order, neoliberalization through disorder. Further, ordoliberalism corresponds more to an accumulation regime and mode of regulation-cum-governance based on a productivist concept of capital, reflecting the dominance of profit-producing capital in coordinated market economies. But it also has limited conditions of possibility and is relatively rare. In contrast, neoliberalization corresponds more to what Weber described as politically oriented capitalism, especially a finance-dominated accumulation regime, which is aligned with interest-bearing capital. It occurs in many more varieties of capitalism. |
Defrosting concepts, destabilizing doxa: Critical phenomenology and the perplexing particular (2019) 🗎🗎 | A key problem for critical theory is how to problematize the very concepts that undergird its own frameworks once they have become canonical. The more that certain constructs come to dominate an intellectual landscape and train our critical gaze, the more important this task becomes. To address this challenge, I offer a phenomenological approach to concept critique. I propose to consider critical phenomenology, at least in its most radical form, as an experience-near process of concept destabilization. I build upon Arendt's intriguing formulation: thinking is a form of experience that disquiets concepts. She calls this 'defrosting.' I further suggest that perplexing particulars hold this kind of disruptive defrosting potential, helping us awaken our own critical gaze. |
Stable and destabilised states of subjective well-being: dance and movement as catalysts of transition (2015) 🗎🗎 | The pursuit of subjective well-being has become an important object of policy and personal action, which within geography has been engaged largely by those with an interest in health. But to date, geography has given little attention to the ways in which subjective well-being changes and in particular, the ways in which it may be understood as both stable and amenable to change. Similarly, the field of arts and health asserts the value of participation in the creative arts for enhancing subjective well-being, but has also hardly addressed how this may come about. The paper explores stability and change in well-being through a case study of a dance and movement intervention in an English primary school. We draw on Deleuze and Guattari's notions of assemblages and of striated and smooth space to explore how participation in the arts may enable escape from habituated practices. This exploration expands the scope of geographies of health towards capturing the moments and processes through which transitions in subjective well-being may occur. The study indicates the need for greater attention to gentler and gendered forms of transition. |
Things Fall Apart: The Dynamics of Brand Audience Dissipation (2015) 🗎🗎 | Much prior work illuminates how fans of a brand can contribute to the value enjoyed by other members of its audience, but little is known about any processes by which fans contribute to the dissipation of that audience. Using longitudinal data on America's Next Top Model, a serial brand, and conceptualizing brands as assemblages of heterogeneous components, this article examines how fans can contribute to the destabilization of a brand's identity and fuel the dissipation of audiences of which they have been members. This work suggests that explanations focusing on satiation, psychology, or semiotics are inadequate to account for dissipation in the audience for serial brands. Moreover, the perspective advanced here highlights how fans can create doppelganger brand images and contribute to the co-destruction of serial brands they have avidly followed. |
REGRESSION AS A CARDINAL FACTOR IN ORGANIZATIONAL DESTABILIZATION (1993) 🗎🗎 | Leaders and organizations are particularly vulnerable to destabilization during periods of transition, severe frustration, or crisis. The author discusses four theoretical constructs that explain organizational destabilization based on regression. Stabilizing strategies are also presented. |