Boris H J M Brummans
Datos Biográficos
| ID | 648643 |
|---|---|
| NOMBRE | Boris H J M Brummans |
| NOMBRES | Boris H J M |
| APELLIDO | Brummans |
| FIRMA | BRUMMANS B H J M |
| AFILIACIONES | Université de Montréal |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-2921-119X |
| VERIFICADO | Sí |
| TOTAL DE OBRAS | 30 |
| TOTAL DE CITAS | 117 |
| TOTAL COMO AUTOR | 30 |
| TOTAL COMO EDITOR | 0 |
| PRIMER AÑO DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2003 |
| AÑO MÁS RECIENTE DE PUBLICACIÓN | 2026 |
| ÍNDICE H | 5 |
Modes of dialogic communication, modes of reality
What if dialogue didn’t begin with individuals trying to connect, but with a deeper connectedness already unfolding? This theoretical essay explores that question by introducing two modes of dialogic communication, each expressing the ground of experience in a distinct way. Drawing on Buddhist philosophy, particularly Dzogchen, process philosophy, and traditions of dialogic thought, it proposes awaring as the emergent process through which the gr…
Expression and reality
What happens when process philosophy meets communication theory? This article takes up that question through a dialogic inquiry that unfolds in three movements. First, it examines the premises of process philosophy, engaging philosophers such as Whitehead, Simondon, and Deleuze, who conceptualize reality as a dynamic, multifaceted becoming. Next, it develops a process philosophical view of communication and delves into its role in constituting so…
Composing with the terra fluida of interaction
Purpose For more than 20 years, research on the communicative constitution of organizations (CCO) has drawn on interactional data to offer novel explanations of how organizational phenomena emerge, change, and stabilize in and through communication. Accordingly, the idea of “never leaving the terra firma of interaction” has become a tenet of CCO research, guiding scholars’ theorizing, data collection, and analysis. The aim of this paper is to ref…
Travels of a Buddhist Mind
On July 12, 2012, I traveled to Tso (Lake) Moriri in Ladakh, the highest altitude plateau region of India, which crosses part of the Himalayas (see Rizvi, 1996), where I was continuing my ethnographic fieldwork on everyday interactions in a Buddhist monastery by living with monks in the remote monastery of Rizong, participating in their life, and increasingly experiencing my mind as traveling within itself (see also Brummans, 2007, 2009, as well …
Communiquer, c’est s’organiser. Une anthologie des écrits de James R. Taylor
James R. Taylor – que tou·te·s appelaient Jim – est surtout connu pour avoir développé, avec son épouse et co-autrice principale Elizabeth Van Every, une théorie originale proposant que la communication soit constitutive des organisations. Pour lui et elle, communiquer, c’est avant tout s’organiser. Comme Jim l’explique en entrevue, « ce qui m’intrigue dans la communication, c’est qu’elle est une façon de se structurer » (Chaput et Basque, 2010, …
Tracer des chemins en conversant avec un ethnographe de la communication organisationnelle néerlando-canadien
Cette entrevue trace des chemins de Boris Brummans, ethnographe en communication organisationnelle, dans une conversation avec Marie-Claude Plourde
Laying Down Paths in Talking with a Dutch Canadian Organizational Communication Ethnographer
Cette entrevue trace des chemins de Boris Brummans, ethnographe en communication organisationnelle, dans une conversation avec Marie-Claude Plourde
Modes of Relational Agency among Welfare-reliant Mothers
How do welfare-reliant mothers enact their agency in relationships with social workers and social services? The present article addresses this question by investigating how twenty Israeli welfare-reliant mothers expressed different modes of human agency in in-depth interviews. Results show how research participants enact agency through (i) expressing anger, (ii) seeking help, (iii) resisting and (iv) engaging in non-action. By highlighting the mu…
The work of conflict mediation
Mediation is a widely used form of third-party conflict management for which research has primarily focused on the role of mediators. But how are the relations between disputing parties constituted in communication involving written texts, such as official letters or medical reports, during mediation sessions? To gain deeper insight into the communicative dynamics through which third-party disputes are created, sustained, and resolved, this artic…
Recycling Stories
Religious non-governmental organizations (RNGOs) are becoming powerful organizational actors, but how are these organizations enacted through the communicative practices of their members? To address this question, this article offers a conceptual framework for investigating how the terse retelling of an inspirational organizational story, encapsulated in a mantra, contributes to materializing a Buddhist NGO’s ethos and worldview. The value of thi…
At the Junction Between Subsistence and Reference
This paper presents a view of interaction analysis that departs from the intersubjectivist assumptions that underlie its ethnomethodological tradition. Adopting a pragmatist perspective, we propose to treat phenomena as being composed of relations; that is, as being constituted by passing through various things and beings. Extending Latour’s work on modernity, we argue that interaction analysts aim to capture social phenomena at the junction betw…
La culture en tant que cultivation
Bien que le lien entre organisation, culture et communication soit établi de longue date, de façon surprenante, hormis quelques exceptions, peu de chercheurs semblent avoir étudié la culture organisationnelle en train de se re-produire, à partir d’une perspective résolument communicationnelle. La plupart des études qui ont tenté de le faire se sont surtout basées sur des entrevues, et non pas sur l’analyse d’interactions qui aurait permis de comp…
Home is what we make it
PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to question and reflect on the spatial metaphors that inform Mats Alvesson's (2009) conception of an organizational home in his description of at-home ethnography. (Cultural) hybridity is proposed as an alternative metaphor because the concept of hybridity can be used to highlight the complex nature of the relationships between an at-home ethnographer and the people she or he studies as they are produced during…
Dialoguing with the Unborn, the Unconscious, and the Dead
Based on a brief autoethnographic account of my interactions with persons whose responsiveness is questionable, this essay offers a critical reflection on the challenges of trying to dialogue with those who are not interlocutors in the strict sense of the term and thus provides further insight into the mysterious nature of dialogic communication
A Two-Step Teaching Strategy for Coping With Textualization Fever in Ethnography
Ethnography is grounded in the belief that we can produce sensible knowledge about a social collectivity by carefully textualizing its members' lived experience, which is inextricably linked to our own. Yet how can we teach students the skills necessary to inscribe everyday life without instilling in them an obsession with writing that propels them out of the very life they're trying to investigate? In this article, we reflect critically on this …
Transnational immanence
Information and communication technologies are often cited as one major source, if not the causal vector, for the rising intensity of transnational practices. Yet, extant literature has not examined critically how digital media appropriation affects the constitution of transnational organizations, particularly Chinese spiritual ones. To address the lack of theoretically grounded, empirical research on this question, this study investigates how th…
Communication as Ventriloquism
Tension-centered analyses are increasingly popular in organizational communication studies. Hence, how tensions emerge and are dealt with by organizational members in their work activities are key issues of debate in our field. The purpose of this article is to develop a ventriloqual approach for investigating how organizational tensions (whether expressed in the form of contradictions, dilemmas, paradoxes, or situational ironies) are communicati…
Notes from the field on organizational shadowing as framing
Purpose Shadowing is becoming an increasingly popular method in management and organization studies. While several scholars have reflected on this technique, comparatively few researchers have explicated the specific practices that constitute this method and discussed their implications for research on processes of organizing. The purpose of this article is to address these issues by offering a conceptual toolbox that defines shadowing in terms o…
Reading/Writing Complicities
The more uncertain I have felt about myself, the more there has grown up in me a feeling of kinship with all things. In fact it seems to me as if that alienation which so long separated me from the world has become transferred into my own inner world, and has revealed to me an unexpected unfamiliarity with myself
Communication as Incarnation
What Goes Down Must Come Up
In this essay, I conceptualize incarnation from a communicative point of view by juxtaposing it with the concept of transcension. Subsequently, I reflect on the potential value of studying these concepts for communication research. I kindly thank François Cooren and Jennie Hwang are kindly thanked for their helpful comments on earlier versions of this text. Notes 1. William Blake, "Auguries of Innocence," in The Pickering Manuscript (Whitefish, M…
Tzu Chi's Organizing for a Compassionate World
Scholars have recently begun to reflect on the potential benefits of “Buddhist organizing” for organizational theory and practice. However, relatively few scholars have empirically studied what people actually do to put a Buddhist philosophy into organizational action. To address this issue, this study examines how Mahayana (Madhyamaka) Buddhism is translated into everyday organizing practices by investigating the interactions in which people eng…
The calculation of business, or the business of calculation? Accounting as organizing through everyday communication
This article examines the language of numbers as it is used in talk within a contemporary organization to provide a better understanding of the ways speech acts, performed during the construction of accounts, contribute to the process of organizing. Based on an in-depth case study of the site budgetary control process in a French construction firm, it shows that the business of doing calculations through talk generates respective obligations and,…
Travels of a Buddhist Mind
On July 26, 2006, I left Ladakh, the highest altitude plateau region of India, which crosses part of the Himalayas and is situated in the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir (see Rizvi, 1996). This region is also known as "Little Tibet" because of the close geographic and cultural proximity between Tibet and Ladakh. Accordingly, many Ladakhis study and practice, to more or lesser extent, Tibetan Mahayana Buddhism. For two months, I conducted ethnog…
Making Sense of Intractable Multiparty Conflict
Intractable multiparty conflict is omnipresent in social life, but how do individuals in this type of dispute make sense of their situation and therefore enact it in a particular way? The current study investigated this question by examining how disputants from different stakeholder groups framed conflict situations in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, and Texas that revolved around environmental issues. Qualitative and quantitative analyses of inte…
The coproduction of organizational presence
In this article, we develop an analytical perspective to examine how an organization's mode of being is constituted and experienced through ongoing processes of communication. To show the use and implications of this perspective, we analyze how members and partners of Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF, a.k.a.`Doctors Without Borders'), a renowned humanitarian organization, coproduce and problematize the presence of their organization in the Democrati…
Making Sense of Intractable Multiparty Conflict
Intractable multiparty conflict is omnipresent in social life, but how do individuals in this type of dispute make sense of their situation and therefore enact it in a particular way? The current study investigated this question by examining how disputants from different stakeholder groups framed conflict situations in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, and Texas that revolved around environmental issues. Qualitative and quantitative analyses of inte…
Communication as Ventriloquism
Tension-centered analyses are increasingly popular in organizational communication studies. Hence, how tensions emerge and are dealt with by organizational members in their work activities are key issues of debate in our field. The purpose of this article is to develop a ventriloqual approach for investigating how organizational tensions (whether expressed in the form of contradictions, dilemmas, paradoxes, or situational ironies) are communicati…
Death by Document
This nonanthropological poetry was brought to life by tracing the agency of my father's euthanasia declaration through a reconstruction of its confessions. I follow the poetry with reflections on the role of this textual agent in the unfolding of my father's last days
The calculation of business, or the business of calculation? Accounting as organizing through everyday communication
This article examines the language of numbers as it is used in talk within a contemporary organization to provide a better understanding of the ways speech acts, performed during the construction of accounts, contribute to the process of organizing. Based on an in-depth case study of the site budgetary control process in a French construction firm, it shows that the business of doing calculations through talk generates respective obligations and,…
Travels of a Buddhist Mind
On July 26, 2006, I left Ladakh, the highest altitude plateau region of India, which crosses part of the Himalayas and is situated in the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir (see Rizvi, 1996). This region is also known as "Little Tibet" because of the close geographic and cultural proximity between Tibet and Ladakh. Accordingly, many Ladakhis study and practice, to more or lesser extent, Tibetan Mahayana Buddhism. For two months, I conducted ethnog…
The work of conflict mediation
Mediation is a widely used form of third-party conflict management for which research has primarily focused on the role of mediators. But how are the relations between disputing parties constituted in communication involving written texts, such as official letters or medical reports, during mediation sessions? To gain deeper insight into the communicative dynamics through which third-party disputes are created, sustained, and resolved, this artic…
Communication as Incarnation
What Goes Down Must Come Up
In this essay, I conceptualize incarnation from a communicative point of view by juxtaposing it with the concept of transcension. Subsequently, I reflect on the potential value of studying these concepts for communication research. I kindly thank François Cooren and Jennie Hwang are kindly thanked for their helpful comments on earlier versions of this text. Notes 1. William Blake, "Auguries of Innocence," in The Pickering Manuscript (Whitefish, M…
Home is what we make it
PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to question and reflect on the spatial metaphors that inform Mats Alvesson's (2009) conception of an organizational home in his description of at-home ethnography. (Cultural) hybridity is proposed as an alternative metaphor because the concept of hybridity can be used to highlight the complex nature of the relationships between an at-home ethnographer and the people she or he studies as they are produced during…
Reconstructing Opa
This anthropological poetry was brought to life by reconstructing my grandfather's last diary accounts. I follow the poetry with reflections on reconstructing my grandfather through writing, reading, and numerous dialogues with him and a "model reader" (Eco, 1992, 1994
Modes of Relational Agency among Welfare-reliant Mothers
How do welfare-reliant mothers enact their agency in relationships with social workers and social services? The present article addresses this question by investigating how twenty Israeli welfare-reliant mothers expressed different modes of human agency in in-depth interviews. Results show how research participants enact agency through (i) expressing anger, (ii) seeking help, (iii) resisting and (iv) engaging in non-action. By highlighting the mu…
Tzu Chi's Organizing for a Compassionate World
Scholars have recently begun to reflect on the potential benefits of “Buddhist organizing” for organizational theory and practice. However, relatively few scholars have empirically studied what people actually do to put a Buddhist philosophy into organizational action. To address this issue, this study examines how Mahayana (Madhyamaka) Buddhism is translated into everyday organizing practices by investigating the interactions in which people eng…
Travels of a Buddhist Mind
On July 26, 2006, I left Ladakh, the highest altitude plateau region of India, which crosses part of the Himalayas and is situated in the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir (see Rizvi, 1996). This region is also known as "Little Tibet" because of the close geographic and cultural proximity between Tibet and Ladakh. Accordingly, many Ladakhis study and practice, to more or lesser extent, Tibetan Mahayana Buddhism. For two months, I conducted ethnog…
Preliminary Insights into the Constitution of a Tibetan Buddhist Monastery through Autoethnographic Reflections on the Dual/Nondual Mind Duality
In this autoethnographic essay, I reflect on my brief personal experiences of conducting field research on ways in which way a small group of Tibetan Buddhist monks enact a monastic total institution in Ladakh, India. More specifically, I analyze my experiences in view of the relationship between dual and nondual mind, as discussed byHenry Vyner (2002)in Anthropology of Consciousness, and use this analysis to develop preliminary insights into the…
Reconstructing Opa
This anthropological poetry was brought to life by reconstructing my grandfather's last diary accounts. I follow the poetry with reflections on reconstructing my grandfather through writing, reading, and numerous dialogues with him and a "model reader" (Eco, 1992, 1994
Travels of a Buddhist Mind
On July 26, 2006, I left Ladakh, the highest altitude plateau region of India, which crosses part of the Himalayas and is situated in the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir (see Rizvi, 1996). This region is also known as "Little Tibet" because of the close geographic and cultural proximity between Tibet and Ladakh. Accordingly, many Ladakhis study and practice, to more or lesser extent, Tibetan Mahayana Buddhism. For two months, I conducted ethnog…
Death by Document
This nonanthropological poetry was brought to life by tracing the agency of my father's euthanasia declaration through a reconstruction of its confessions. I follow the poetry with reflections on the role of this textual agent in the unfolding of my father's last days
Making Sense of Intractable Multiparty Conflict
Intractable multiparty conflict is omnipresent in social life, but how do individuals in this type of dispute make sense of their situation and therefore enact it in a particular way? The current study investigated this question by examining how disputants from different stakeholder groups framed conflict situations in Ohio, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, and Texas that revolved around environmental issues. Qualitative and quantitative analyses of inte…
The coproduction of organizational presence
In this article, we develop an analytical perspective to examine how an organization's mode of being is constituted and experienced through ongoing processes of communication. To show the use and implications of this perspective, we analyze how members and partners of Médecins Sans Frontières (MSF, a.k.a.`Doctors Without Borders'), a renowned humanitarian organization, coproduce and problematize the presence of their organization in the Democrati…
Preliminary Insights into the Constitution of a Tibetan Buddhist Monastery through Autoethnographic Reflections on the Dual/Nondual Mind Duality
In this autoethnographic essay, I reflect on my brief personal experiences of conducting field research on ways in which way a small group of Tibetan Buddhist monks enact a monastic total institution in Ladakh, India. More specifically, I analyze my experiences in view of the relationship between dual and nondual mind, as discussed byHenry Vyner (2002)in Anthropology of Consciousness, and use this analysis to develop preliminary insights into the…
Travels of a Buddhist Mind
On July 26, 2006, I left Ladakh, the highest altitude plateau region of India, which crosses part of the Himalayas and is situated in the Indian state of Jammu and Kashmir (see Rizvi, 1996). This region is also known as "Little Tibet" because of the close geographic and cultural proximity between Tibet and Ladakh. Accordingly, many Ladakhis study and practice, to more or lesser extent, Tibetan Mahayana Buddhism. For two months, I conducted ethnog…
Tzu Chi's Organizing for a Compassionate World
Scholars have recently begun to reflect on the potential benefits of “Buddhist organizing” for organizational theory and practice. However, relatively few scholars have empirically studied what people actually do to put a Buddhist philosophy into organizational action. To address this issue, this study examines how Mahayana (Madhyamaka) Buddhism is translated into everyday organizing practices by investigating the interactions in which people eng…
The calculation of business, or the business of calculation? Accounting as organizing through everyday communication
This article examines the language of numbers as it is used in talk within a contemporary organization to provide a better understanding of the ways speech acts, performed during the construction of accounts, contribute to the process of organizing. Based on an in-depth case study of the site budgetary control process in a French construction firm, it shows that the business of doing calculations through talk generates respective obligations and,…
Communication as Incarnation
What Goes Down Must Come Up
In this essay, I conceptualize incarnation from a communicative point of view by juxtaposing it with the concept of transcension. Subsequently, I reflect on the potential value of studying these concepts for communication research. I kindly thank François Cooren and Jennie Hwang are kindly thanked for their helpful comments on earlier versions of this text. Notes 1. William Blake, "Auguries of Innocence," in The Pickering Manuscript (Whitefish, M…
Notes from the field on organizational shadowing as framing
Purpose Shadowing is becoming an increasingly popular method in management and organization studies. While several scholars have reflected on this technique, comparatively few researchers have explicated the specific practices that constitute this method and discussed their implications for research on processes of organizing. The purpose of this article is to address these issues by offering a conceptual toolbox that defines shadowing in terms o…
Reading/Writing Complicities
The more uncertain I have felt about myself, the more there has grown up in me a feeling of kinship with all things. In fact it seems to me as if that alienation which so long separated me from the world has become transferred into my own inner world, and has revealed to me an unexpected unfamiliarity with myself
Communication as Ventriloquism
Tension-centered analyses are increasingly popular in organizational communication studies. Hence, how tensions emerge and are dealt with by organizational members in their work activities are key issues of debate in our field. The purpose of this article is to develop a ventriloqual approach for investigating how organizational tensions (whether expressed in the form of contradictions, dilemmas, paradoxes, or situational ironies) are communicati…
Transnational immanence
Information and communication technologies are often cited as one major source, if not the causal vector, for the rising intensity of transnational practices. Yet, extant literature has not examined critically how digital media appropriation affects the constitution of transnational organizations, particularly Chinese spiritual ones. To address the lack of theoretically grounded, empirical research on this question, this study investigates how th…
Dialoguing with the Unborn, the Unconscious, and the Dead
Based on a brief autoethnographic account of my interactions with persons whose responsiveness is questionable, this essay offers a critical reflection on the challenges of trying to dialogue with those who are not interlocutors in the strict sense of the term and thus provides further insight into the mysterious nature of dialogic communication
A Two-Step Teaching Strategy for Coping With Textualization Fever in Ethnography
Ethnography is grounded in the belief that we can produce sensible knowledge about a social collectivity by carefully textualizing its members' lived experience, which is inextricably linked to our own. Yet how can we teach students the skills necessary to inscribe everyday life without instilling in them an obsession with writing that propels them out of the very life they're trying to investigate? In this article, we reflect critically on this …
Home is what we make it
PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to question and reflect on the spatial metaphors that inform Mats Alvesson's (2009) conception of an organizational home in his description of at-home ethnography. (Cultural) hybridity is proposed as an alternative metaphor because the concept of hybridity can be used to highlight the complex nature of the relationships between an at-home ethnographer and the people she or he studies as they are produced during…
Recycling Stories
Religious non-governmental organizations (RNGOs) are becoming powerful organizational actors, but how are these organizations enacted through the communicative practices of their members? To address this question, this article offers a conceptual framework for investigating how the terse retelling of an inspirational organizational story, encapsulated in a mantra, contributes to materializing a Buddhist NGO’s ethos and worldview. The value of thi…
At the Junction Between Subsistence and Reference
This paper presents a view of interaction analysis that departs from the intersubjectivist assumptions that underlie its ethnomethodological tradition. Adopting a pragmatist perspective, we propose to treat phenomena as being composed of relations; that is, as being constituted by passing through various things and beings. Extending Latour’s work on modernity, we argue that interaction analysts aim to capture social phenomena at the junction betw…
La culture en tant que cultivation
Bien que le lien entre organisation, culture et communication soit établi de longue date, de façon surprenante, hormis quelques exceptions, peu de chercheurs semblent avoir étudié la culture organisationnelle en train de se re-produire, à partir d’une perspective résolument communicationnelle. La plupart des études qui ont tenté de le faire se sont surtout basées sur des entrevues, et non pas sur l’analyse d’interactions qui aurait permis de comp…
Modes of Relational Agency among Welfare-reliant Mothers
How do welfare-reliant mothers enact their agency in relationships with social workers and social services? The present article addresses this question by investigating how twenty Israeli welfare-reliant mothers expressed different modes of human agency in in-depth interviews. Results show how research participants enact agency through (i) expressing anger, (ii) seeking help, (iii) resisting and (iv) engaging in non-action. By highlighting the mu…
The work of conflict mediation
Mediation is a widely used form of third-party conflict management for which research has primarily focused on the role of mediators. But how are the relations between disputing parties constituted in communication involving written texts, such as official letters or medical reports, during mediation sessions? To gain deeper insight into the communicative dynamics through which third-party disputes are created, sustained, and resolved, this artic…
Communiquer, c’est s’organiser. Une anthologie des écrits de James R. Taylor
James R. Taylor – que tou·te·s appelaient Jim – est surtout connu pour avoir développé, avec son épouse et co-autrice principale Elizabeth Van Every, une théorie originale proposant que la communication soit constitutive des organisations. Pour lui et elle, communiquer, c’est avant tout s’organiser. Comme Jim l’explique en entrevue, « ce qui m’intrigue dans la communication, c’est qu’elle est une façon de se structurer » (Chaput et Basque, 2010, …
Tracer des chemins en conversant avec un ethnographe de la communication organisationnelle néerlando-canadien
Cette entrevue trace des chemins de Boris Brummans, ethnographe en communication organisationnelle, dans une conversation avec Marie-Claude Plourde
Sociology (20 obras) · Epistemology (14 obras) · Philosophy (13 obras) · Political science (12 obras) · Philosophy (10 obras) · Social science (10 obras) · Law (9 obras) · Management and Organizational Studies (8 obras) · Psychology (8 obras) · Art (7 obras)