Object-oriented sociology and organizing in the face of emergency

BrunoLatour,GrahamHarman and the material turn

Bibliographic Data

ID5609595
AuthorsDean Pierides (0000-0003-0876-9909, Department of Management and Marketing University of Melbourne), Dan Woodman (0000-0003-2893-5222, School of Social and Political Sciences University of Melbourne)
Year2012
Volume63
Issue4
Pages662-679
Publication date2012-12-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueBritish Journal of Sociology (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0007-1315 • E-ISSN: 1468-4446
PublisherWiley (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1111/j.1468-4446.2012.01431.x
PMID23240837
OpenAlexW1515137202
LanguageEN
Citations received19
References cited26

This paper explores the material turn in sociology and the tools it provides for understanding organizational problems highlighted by theRoyalCommission into the 2009 'BlackSaturday' bushfires during which 173 people died in theAustralianState ofVictoria. Often inspired byBrunoLatour's material-semiotic sociology of associations, organization scholars employing these tools focus on the messy details of organization otherwise overlooked by approaches assuming a macroscopic frame of analysis. InLatour's approach no object is reducible to something else - such as nature, the social, or atoms - it is instead a stabilized set of relations. ALatourian approach allows us to highlight how theRoyalCommission and macroscopic models of organizing do unwitting damage to their objects of inquiry by purifying the 'natural' from the 'social'. Performative elements in their schemas are mistaken for descriptive ones. However, a long standing critique of this approach claims that it becomes its own form of reduction, to nothing but relations.GrahamHarman, in his object-oriented philosophy develops this critique by showing that a 'relationist' metaphysics cannot properly accommodate the capacity of 'objects' to cause or mediate surprises. Through our case of theVictorianBushfiresRoyalCommission, we argue that a purely relational model of objects loosens a productive tension between the structural and ephemeral that drives sociological analysis. By drawing on elements ofHarman's ontology of objects we argue that it is necessary for material-semiotic sociology to retain a central place for the emergence of sociological objects

Assemblage (archaeology · Epistemology · Metaphysics · Nothing · Object (grammar · Sociology · Artificial Intelligence · Computer Science · Ecology · Information Systems Theories and Implementation · Management and Organizational Studies · Management Theory and Practice · Philosophy

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