Waiting for the Barbarians

Disciplinary devices on Metro de Santiago

Bibliographic Data

ID20500695
AuthorsSebastián Ureta (0000-0003-3169-4992, Alberto Hurtado University, corresponding author)
Year2013
Volume20
Issue4
Pages596-614
Publication date2013-07-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueOrganization (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1350-5084 • E-ISSN: 1461-7323
PublisherSAGE Publications (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1177/1350508412452623
OpenAlexW2143309078
LanguageEN
Citations received15
References cited37

Bodies are currently recognized as central to organizations. However, until now certain kinds of bodies have remained largely outside the concerns of organization studies, especially the ones of the human beings who use the products/services provided by organizations. Using a conceptual framework that mixes elements of Foucault’s developments on discipline and science and technology studies, this article attempts to contribute to filling this void by proposing to see the management of these bodies as a matter of performing disciplinary devices, understanding them as sociotechnical devices designed with the explicit aim of disciplining users’ bodies in accordance with certain predetermined programs or plans. In order to explore the empirical validity of this conceptualization, the article will study the performance of disciplinary devices by Metro de Santiago, Santiago de Chile’s underground railway, during preparations for a substantive increase in the number of daily users. Making a historical genealogy based on interviews with involved actors and document analysis, the article demonstrates disciplinary devices as always existing in a double way: as inscriptions of future users that the involved actors develop during the design phase and as incorporations when human beings have to start behaving in certain ways to deal with the organization. In the daily management of such disciplinary devices, never absent of conflict and resistances, lies a central way in which organizations exerts power over human bodies

Actor–network theory · Conceptualization · Discipline · Engineering ethics · Knowledge management · Political science · Public relations · Social science · Sociology · Sociotechnical system · Computer Science · Engineering · Information Systems Theories and Implementation