------WITH APOLOGIES FOR CROSS-POSTING------
Dear colleagues,
Those with an interest in territoriality, territorialization or
deterritorialization in any of its organizational forms are invited to submit a
short paper to our subtheme (Sub-theme 22: The Territorial Organization , EGOS
Colloquim in Gothenburg, Sweden, July 7 - 9, 2011)
See full call for papers below for information (to be accessed at:
http://www.egosnet.org/jart/prj3/egosnet/main.jart?rel=en&reserve-mode=active&content-id=1277261035067&subtheme_id=1277261035021)
Submission deadline: January 16, 23:59:59 CET
Looking forward to receiving your contributions.
Kind regards,
Garance, Steve and Iain
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Sub-theme 22:
The Territorial Organization
Convenors:
Garance Maréchal, University of Liverpool, UK
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Stephen Linstead, University of York, UK
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Iain Munro, University of Innsbruck, Austria
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Call for Papers
"The act of interpretation involves creating maps or representations that
simplify some territory in order to facilitate action." (Weick, 1993: 361)
Although the activity of mapping has received sustained attention in the
context of organizational design or the social psychology of organizing, the
concept of territory remains relatively unexplored. In this stream we wish to
invite consideration of both material and symbolic aspects of the territorial
characteristics of organizing. Karl Weick's "anecdote of the map" cited above
is based on a geographical metaphor transposed into organizational theory in
order to highlight the representational processes of simplification at work in
processes of organizing. These maps act as heuristics to facilitate
organizational action and are instrumental in purpose. In this stream we wish
to pay greater attention to the production of such assemblages, but consider
them as extending beyond organizational boundaries.
Robert Ardrey in The Territorial Imperative (1966) synthesized a mass of
contemporary biological and evolutionary evidence to argue that it was the
natural instinct to territorialize that had helped humans to dominate the
animal kingdom, and his work influenced the interpretation of human activities
as diverse as the taming of the American West, the building of the Berlin Wall,
the behaviour of aristocratic elites, and NASA putting a man on the moon. With
a more parochial if global cultural scope, Geert Hofstede domesticated the
concept by linking national cultures with anthropologically arbitrary
geopolitical boundaries, ignoring diversity and cultural striations within
those boundaries. We believe the human territory of territorialization lies
somewhere between the two.
Lash (1999: 59-61) argues that there is a tension between ground and
groundlessness, expressible as the difference between roots and routes. Roots
imbricate and transform the materiality of the ground through the
immaterialities of time, culture and affect. Routes refer to ways of
representing or 'marking' space, invoking different metaphors: grid or map
(providing cognitive and psychosocial security), and labyrinth or rhizome
(exploratory and allowing multiple simultaneous and spontaneous connections
with heterogeneous others). Organizational activity cannot generate 'routes'
without fully considering 'roots' aspects of territoriality, and vice versa.
The concept of terroir can be used to explore aspects of territoriality still
unaddressed in organizational research. Recently, the word has evoked a 'sense
of place', associating social and cultural practice and place, with
connotations of roots and origin, tradition and heritage (Maréchal, 2009).
Deleuze and Guattari (1987) understand the concept in terms of psychophysical
as well as geospatial territory. Terroirs are not material sites of cultural
origins but spaces where and how concepts and representations – capital, words,
things – are culturally realized and acquire qualities, taste, aroma or savour,
the constructed outcomes of cultural processes of territorialization and
deterritorialization. Every social assemblage is territorial and is organized
according to these processes which follow lines of flight or escape. Property
deterritorializes the relation between people and the earth, but being nomad
escapes such constraints, evading them without being "rooted" in opposition. De
Certeau et al. (1988) introduce the idea of "discursive terroir" which roughly
corresponds to indexical and untranslatable elements in a discourse, such as
cultural allusions and idiosyncratic expressions. Terroir can thus have
significant symbolic and discursive connotations.
How do humans negotiate terroir, through processes that are both symbolic and
material and cut across the boundary between nature and culture? For Deleuze,
it is through producing assemblage which is
a multiplicity which is made up of heterogeneous terms and which
establishes liaisons, relations between them, across ages, sexes and reigns –
different natures. Thus the assemblage's only unity is that of a
co-functioning: it is a symbiosis, a "sympathy". It is never filiations which
are important, but alliances, alloys; these are not successions, lines of
descent, but contagions, epidemics, the wind (Deleuze & Parnet, 2002: 69).
For this stream, we invite explorations of this viral and liquid scenario in an
organizational context: the organizational anthropology, sociology and
psychology of terroir and assemblage. Contributions may consider, but are not
limited to
* The terroir effect (the material influences of terroir on the character
of the organization) deploying the micro-focus of terroir in combining the
micro-material and the micro-symbolic within a conceptualisation of dynamic and
interconnected wholes.
* Studies of microprocesses in creating new organizational forms, such as
meshworks
* Developing De Landa's attempt to produce an assemblage sociology
* Use Hardt and Negri's notion of assemblage and other associated Deleuzian
concepts to critique the control society and its organs, especially the idea of
multitude
* Empirical studies of organizational multiplicities, network cultures,
liquid and viral cultures
* The role of bodies with and without organs, in and as assemblages
* "Nomad science" – circulation of knowledge through community via
itinerant/migrant/mobile workers, open source information architecture.
* The reterritorializing New Regionality (e.g. Slow Food) vs.
deterritorializations of McDonaldization
References
Ardrey, R. (1966/1997): The Territorial Imperative: A Personal Inquiry into the
Animal Origins of Property and Nations. New York: Kodansha Globe
De Certeau, M., L. Giard & P. Mayol (1988): The Practice of Everyday Life. Vol.
2: Living and Cooking. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press.
De Landa, M. (2006): A New Philosophy of Society: Assemblage Theory and Social
Complexity. London: Continuum.
Deleuze, G. & F. Guattari (1987): A Thousand Plateaus. London: Athlone.
Deleuze, G. & C. Parnet (2002): Dialogues. New York: Columbia University Press.
Lash, S. (1999): Another Modernity: A Different Rationality. Oxford: Blackwell.
Maréchal, G. (2009): "Terroir." In: A.J. Mills, G. Durepos & E. Wiebe:
Encyclopedia of Case Study Research. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
Weick, K. (1993): "Organizational Redesign and Improvisation." In: G.P. Huber &
W.H. Glick (eds.): Organizational Change and Redesign. New York: Oxford
University Press, 346-382.
Dr Garance Marechal
Lecturer
The University of Liverpool Management School
