Maurice Merleau-Ponty (1908–1961)

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Wendelin Kuepers
Keyword(s):  
Gilles Deleuze ◽  
Process Philosophy ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Alfred North Whitehead ◽  
Organizational Practice ◽  
Intellectual Life ◽  
Organization Studies ◽  
Living Body ◽  
Key Concepts ◽  
Philosophical Phenomenology

Maurice Merleau-Ponty’s phenomenology highlights the bodily, embodied dimensions and forms of non- or post-representational knowing for understanding organizational phenomena and realties as processes. In addition, it focuses on a re-embodied organization and a corresponding sense-based organizational practice. This chapter first considers Merleau-Ponty’s biography and intellectual life before discussing the significance of his ideas for process philosophy as well as organizational theory and practice. In particular, it examines some key concepts such as the living body and dynamic embodiment beyond empiricism and idealism, reversible flesh as elemental carnality and formative medium and chiasm, as well as wild being and be(com)ing. It also looks at Merleau-Ponty’s connections with two other process thinkers, Alfred North Whitehead and Gilles Deleuze. Finally, it assesses the significance of his process-philosophical phenomenology and ontology for organization studies.

scholarly journals What can bodies do? Reading Spinoza for an affective ethics of organizational life

Organization ◽  
2014 ◽  
Vol 22 (2) ◽  
pp. 235-250 ◽  
Author(s):  
Torkild Thanem ◽  
Louise Wallenberg
Keyword(s):  
Theory And Practice ◽  
The Other ◽  
Moral Rule ◽  
Organizational Life ◽  
Organization Studies ◽  
Starting Point ◽  
Key Concepts ◽  
Rule System ◽  
Ethics Of Recognition

Recent attempts to develop an embodied understanding of ethics in organizations have tended to mobilize a Levinasian and ‘im/possible’ ethics of recognition, which separates ethics and embodiment from politics and organization. We argue that this separation is unrealistic, unsustainable, and an unhelpful starting point for an embodied ethics of organizations. Instead of rescuing and modifying the ethics of recognition, we propose an embodied ethics of organizational life through Spinoza’s affective ethics. Neither a moral rule system nor an infinite duty to recognize the other, Spinoza offers a theory of the good, powerful and joyful life by asking what bodies can do. Rather than an unrestrained, irresponsible and individualistic quest for power and freedom, this suggests that we enhance our capacities to affect and be affected by relating to a variety of different bodies. We first scrutinize recent attempts to develop an ethics of recognition and embodiment in organization studies. We then explore key concepts and central arguments of Spinozian ethics. Finally, we discuss what a Spinozian ethics means for the theory and practice of embodied ethics in organizational life.

Watercolour

2017 ◽  
pp. 1-18 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pierfranco Malizia
Keyword(s):  
Theoretical Perspective ◽  
Organizational Systems ◽  
Cultural Perspective ◽  
Organization Studies ◽  
Apparent Paradox ◽  
Modern Approach ◽  
Dual Nature ◽  
Real Nature ◽  
Key Concepts ◽  
Bureaucratic Organizations

The present chapter analyses the post-bureaucratic phenomenon, adopting a socio-cultural perspective and post-modern approach. According to the theoretical perspective proposed in this chapter, organizational systems should be considered a specific type of socio - cultural system. The apparent paradox of the dual nature of organizational systems, that may be conceived at the same time as autonomous and as interconnected socio-cultural realities, offers an extraordinary conceptual and methodological challenge for organization studies. The duality of complex organizations dynamics is, according to the theoretical perspective adopted in this chapter, also one of the key concepts to unlock the real nature of post-bureaucratic organization, beyond the dichotomic approach adopted by post-Weberian studies. Moreover, post-bureaucratic organizations, may be seen also as hybrid organizations (Bergquist, 1994), that are characterized by a high agree of cultural variety. This chapter proposes an integrated theoretical framework, aimed to recompose the apparent incoherent picture of contemporary post-bureaucratic organizations. The present chapter analyses the post-bureaucratic phenomenon, adopting a socio-cultural perspective and post-modern approach. According to the theoretical perspective proposed in this chapter, organizational systems should be considered a specific type of socio - cultural system. The apparent paradox of the dual nature of organizational systems, that may be conceived at the same time as autonomous and as interconnected socio-cultural realities, offers an extraordinary conceptual and methodological challenge for organization studies. The duality of complex organizations dynamics is, according to the theoretical perspective adopted in this chapter, also one of the key concepts to unlock the real nature of post-bureaucratic organization, beyond the dichotomic approach adopted by post-Weberian studies. Moreover, post-bureaucratic organizations, may be seen also as hybrid organizations, that are characterized by a high agree of cultural variety. This chapter proposes an integrated theoretical framework, aimed to recompose the apparent incoherent picture of contemporary post-bureaucratic organizations.

scholarly journals How Do You Make Yourself a Theatre without Organs? Deleuze, Artaud and the Concept of Differential Presence

2009 ◽  
Vol 34 (3) ◽  
pp. 243-255 ◽  
Author(s):  
LAURA CULL
Keyword(s):  
Gilles Deleuze ◽  
The Body ◽  
The Self ◽  
Antonin Artaud ◽  
Key Concepts ◽  
Body Without Organs ◽  
Radio Play

This article provides an exposition of four key concepts emerging in the encounter between the philosophical man of the theatre, Antonin Artaud, and the theatrical philosopher, Gilles Deleuze: the body without organs, the theatre without organs, the destratified voice and differential presence. The article proposes that Artaud's 1947 censored radio play To Have Done with the Judgment of God constitutes an instance of a theatre without organs that uses the destratified voice in a pursuit of differential presence – as a nonrepresentative encounter with difference that forces new thoughts upon us. Drawing from various works by Deleuze, including Difference and Repetition, The Logic of Sense, A Thousand Plateaus and ‘One Less Manifesto’, I conceive differential presence as an encounter with difference, or perpetual variation, as that which exceeds the representational consciousness of a subject, forcing thought through rupture rather than communicating meanings through sameness. Contra the dismissal of Artaud's project as paradoxical or impossible, the article suggests that his nonrepresentational theatre seeks to affirm a new kind of presence as difference, rather than aiming to transcend difference in order to reach the self-identical presence of Western metaphysics.

Intersectionality Theory and Practice

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Doyin Atewologun
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Research ◽  
The United States ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Group Differences ◽  
Social Categories ◽  
Organization Studies ◽  
Intersectionality Theory ◽  
The Individual ◽  
Business And Management ◽  
Minority Ethnic

Intersectionality is a critical framework that provides us with the mindset and language for examining interconnections and interdependencies between social categories and systems. Intersectionality is relevant for researchers and for practitioners because it enhances analytical sophistication and offers theoretical explanations of the ways in which heterogeneous members of specific groups (such as women) might experience the workplace differently depending on their ethnicity, sexual orientation, and/or class and other social locations. Sensitivity to such differences enhances insight into issues of social justice and inequality in organizations and other institutions, thus maximizing the chance of social change. The concept of intersectional locations emerged from the racialized experiences of minority ethnic women in the United States. Intersectional thinking has gained increased prominence in business and management studies, particularly in critical organization studies. A predominant focus in this field is on individual subjectivities at intersectional locations (such as examining the occupational identities of minority ethnic women). This emphasis on individuals’ experiences and within-group differences has been described variously as “content specialization” or an “intracategorical approach.” An alternate focus in business and management studies is on highlighting systematic dynamics of power. This encompasses a focus on “systemic intersectionality” and an “intercategorical approach.” Here, scholars examine multiple between-group differences, charting shifting configurations of inequality along various dimensions. As a critical theory, intersectionality conceptualizes knowledge as situated, contextual, relational, and reflective of political and economic power. Intersectionality tends to be associated with qualitative research methods due to the central role of giving voice, elicited through focus groups, narrative interviews, action research, and observations. Intersectionality is also utilized as a methodological tool for conducting qualitative research, such as by researchers adopting an intersectional reflexivity mindset. Intersectionality is also increasingly associated with quantitative and statistical methods, which contribute to intersectionality by helping us understand and interpret the individual, combined (additive or multiplicative) effects of various categories (privileged and disadvantaged) in a given context. Future considerations for intersectionality theory and practice include managing its broad applicability while attending to its sociopolitical and emancipatory aims, and theoretically advancing understanding of the simultaneous forces of privilege and penalty in the workplace.

scholarly journals Documenting the invisible – on the ‘how’ of process research: (Re)considering method from process philosophy

2017 ◽  
Vol 10 (3) ◽  
pp. 205979911774578 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eva Pallesen
Keyword(s):  
Social Science ◽  
Process Philosophy ◽  
Process Research ◽  
Organization Studies ◽  
Research Material ◽  
Rigorous Research ◽  
Research Designs ◽  
The World ◽  
Process View ◽  
The Universe

Currently, there is a growing field in organization studies, reflecting a stream in social science more broadly, which seeks to encompass a process philosophical view of the world as multiple and in constant becoming. However, this raises new questions and challenges to the field of methodology: If movement and process are the basic forms of the universe, then the vagueness and multiplicity that come with the flux of the world are not to be ruled out by rigorous research designs; rather, relating to vagueness and multiplicity may be the very precondition of approaching the studied phenomena. For some scholars, this has been an occasion for deeming the discipline of methodology ‘dead’ or ‘emptied’. In contrast to such claims, this article argues that the scholar doing empirical research from approaches drawing on process philosophy to no less extent than other scholars must deal with problems of methodological character. However, he or she may need a renewed understanding of traditional methodological categories such as documentation, validity and variation. Rather than cancelling such concepts, this article experimentally reconsiders them in a process view, using a piece of observational material to think from. The article suggests that process philosophy may open up a methodological thinking that has room for a more connotative, playful way of relating to research material – which does not demand from a method to overcome the gap between what is there and what is captured but makes use of this gap as a space of invitation and play. Rather than adhering to the promise of ruling out vagueness and filling out a gap, the article, therefore, in itself aims at being such an invitation for a connotative, playful methodology.

Managing the positioning of auditory impaired people within an organization

2018 ◽  
Vol 565 (10) ◽  
pp. 9-11
Author(s):  
Janusz Rymaniak ◽  
Katarzyna Lis ◽  
Eunika Lech
Keyword(s):  
Labour Market ◽  
Hearing Impaired ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Occupational Activity ◽  
Organizational Practice ◽  
Impaired People ◽  
The Status ◽  
Survey Results

Globalization and the ageing of population result in seeking extended occupational activity of groups inactive in the labour market, e.g., hearing-impaired people. This article discusses the theory as well as survey results, which show the status and forms of positioning of hearing-impaired employees within an organization. It also identifies major flaws in the theory, the different status and opinions in organizational practice, and recommendations in terms of theory and practice.

Sense and Segmentarity: Some Markers of a Deleuzian-Guattarian Sociology

1998 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 52-74 ◽  
Author(s):  
William Bogard
Keyword(s):  
Social Theory ◽  
Social Life ◽  
Gilles Deleuze ◽  
Molecular Level ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Social Structures ◽  
Felix Guattari ◽  
Deleuze And Guattari ◽  
Organic Form ◽  
The Subject

Although the focus of their work was rarely explicitly sociological, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari developed concepts that have important and often profound implications for social theory and practice. Two of these, sense and segmentarity, provide us with entirely new ways to view sociological problems of meaning and structure. Deleuze conceives sense independently of both agency and signification. That is, sense is neither the manifestation of a communicating subject nor a structure of language—it is noncorporeal, impersonal, and prelinguistic, in his words, a “pure effect or event.” With Guattari, Deleuze notes that it is not a question of how subjects produce social structures, but how a “machinics of desire” produces subjects. In Deleuze and Guattari, desire is not defined as a want or a lack, but as a machinery of forces, flows, and breaks of energy. The functional stratification we witness in social life is only the molar effect of a more primary segmentation of desire that occurs at the molecular level, at the level of bodies. In Deleuze and Guattari, bodies are not just human bodies, but “anorganic” composites or mixtures, organic form itself being a mode of the body's subjectification. The problem of the subject, and thus of the constitution of society, is first a problem of how the sense of bodies is produced through the assembly of desiring-machines. The subject, we could say, is the actualization of desire on the incorporeal surface of bodies.

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