Studying Organization from the Perspective of the Ontology of Temporality

This chapter suggests an events-based approach that can be used to understand organization as a temporal phenomenon. To date, the ontology of time sees the present, the past, and the future as different and discrete temporal epochs and thus prevents us from understanding activities as a creative process in which the past, the present, and the future are constantly redefined to give meaning and sense to actors. Conversely, an ontology of temporality enables us to grasp the situated nature of organizational phenomena. We argue that an events-based approach provides a better understanding of how past, present, and future events are constantly co-defined and configured, thereby enabling actors to gain a sense of continuity, i.e. a sense about their history, the present moment, and an expected future. Following a discussion of the nature of an events-based approach, we discuss the contributions and implications of such an approach by showing how it redefines the very subject of organization and brings insights to the study of contemporary organizational phenomena.

Radicalizando o Imaginário: Impactos das transformações do trabalho nas construções imagéticas de si de domésticas brasileiras

Resumo: A partir de uma etnografia da duração (Eckert e Rocha, 2013) que abordou o trabalho doméstico remunerado e/ou realizado na casa de terceiros enquanto um fenômeno temporal, que dura por meio de múltiplos suportes e linguagens, este artigo tem o objetivo de problematizar as imagens que historicamente são remetidas ao trabalho doméstico em reportagens, livros e filmes; com aquelas que estão sendo reivindicadas e construídas pelas trabalhadoras na contemporaneidade. Sugerimos que as transformações no imaginário deste trabalho podem estar relacionadas ao surgimento de nova regulamentação e configurações deste emprego, que estão provocando mudanças decisivas nas práticas e no reconhecimento de si de trabalhadoras domésticas brasileiras. A pesquisa, de abordagem antropológica, foi realizada com domésticas residentes nas cidades de Belém/PA, Salvador/BA e Porto Alegre/RS e em acervos diversos, em que podemos concluir enorme disparidade entre as imagens que continuam sendo vinculadas em torno do serviço doméstico e àquelas que as trabalhadoras estão construindo à respeito delas mesmas.Palavras-Chave: Trabalho Doméstico Remunerado e/ou Realizado na Casa de Terceiros. Cultura Visual. Imaginário. Regulamentações RADICALIZING THE IMAGINARY:Impacts of work transformations on the self-image constructions of Brazilian maids Abstract: Based on an ethnography of duration (Eckert and Rocha, 2013) that approached paid domestic work and/or performed in the house of third parties as a temporal phenomenon that lasts through multiple supports and languages, this article aims to discuss the images that are historically referred to domestic work in reports, books and films; with those that are being claimed and built by women workers in contemporary times. We suggest that the transformations in the imaginary of this work may be related to the emergence of new regulations and configurations of this job, which are causing decisive changes in the practices and self-recognition of Brazilian domestic workers. The research, with an anthropological approach, was conducted with domestic residents living in the cities of Belém/PA, Salvador/BA and Porto Alegre/RS and in various collections, in which we can conclude huge disparity between the images that continue to be linked around the domestic service. and those that the workers are building about themselves.Keywords: Paid Domestic Work and/or performed at the Others House. Visual culture. Imaginary. Regulations

Pictorial Experience and the Perception of Rhythm

Painting, drawings, and engravings are frequently described as rhythmic, or as possessing rhythmic features, but it is far from clear how such observations are to be understood. The central problem here is that rhythm is standardly recognized to be an inherently temporal phenomenon: rhythmic structure or organization unfolds in time. If rhythm is essentially durational, how can a static configuration of marks and lines be rhythmic? Chapter 19 defends the view that although the experience of viewing a picture takes place in time, and thus is successive, it cannot be temporally structured in a sufficiently determinate manner to sustain the attentional focus required for the communication of even simple rhythmic patterns. With reference to examples of both representational and abstract art, and to recent empirical research, the author argues that graphic art is non-sequential and that this has important consequences for picture perception.

“You know it, how I feel, I mean you just did it:” The emergence of we-ness through re-enactment in psychotherapy

This article explores the nature and trajectory of a shared emotional experience in a psychotherapy interaction by combining insights from embodied cognition with the notion of intercorporeality along with the concept of re-enactment. The focus of the article is a detailed interactional analysis of the way the phenomenon of we-ness (or we experience) appears in a psychotherapy session. We-ness concerns the way two (or more) people share an experience by being aware and attentive to the way they participate together in the experience. It is argued that in social interaction, we-ness needs to be examined and understood as a profoundly temporal phenomenon that gradually evolves in the flow of interaction with different levels of intensity. It is built into and enabled by a skillful embodied coordination grounded in expressive movements and dependent on reciprocal patterns of action. Furthermore, it is suggested that the embodied enactment of we-experience may play a particular prominent role in psychotherapy. For the therapist, embodied communicative practices can work as an alternative resource to enhance the sensitive responsiveness in the interactive flow and thereby create an experience of being seen for the patient in a more direct manner than if only verbalized.

Material–temporal registers of belonging: Theorising the interplay between temporality and the built environment

This paper explores the interplay of temporality and the built environment in diverging discourses of belonging at Claremont Court, a modernist housing scheme in Edinburgh which was designed in 1958 by Sir Basil Spence, a key figure of post-war architecture. It explores belonging to place as a complex temporal process, in which the individual is connected to the built environment through various material–temporal registers. While existing analyses of belonging demonstrate that it is a fundamentally temporal experience, not enough is known about belonging as a temporal phenomenon. To fill this gap, our analysis reveals how multiple temporalities of the built environment are entwined with residents’ biographies, everyday life and future aspirations, which shape their varied sense of belonging. To conclude, we argue not only for theorising the temporal nature of belonging, but also how the temporality of the built environment shapes people’s sense of belonging. In doing so, we extend the literature on belonging by theorising the relationship between temporality and the built environment with the help of the concept of material–temporal registers.

Koncentryczność. Wieczność miasta w świetle semiotyki kultury

There are two ways of considering the eternity presented in this paper: the eternity as a fundamental value, in the context of sacrum, and the eternity expressed as a temporal phenomenon. The author collates linguistic and semiotic view with the ontological and metaphysical one. The text is built on two axes: theoretical and methodological optic founded by authors representing Tartu-Moscow Semiotic Group on the one hand, and the metaphysical way of describing the presence. There is one notion that combines these two approaches: the centre. The text presents characteristic relations betweencultural system and its centre (centres), as well as the centre as a place of presenceand sense (according to the Western metaphysics) or, in contrary, as a “sacred nothing” (according to the Eastern metaphysics). The last part of the article discusses some Old Testament texts presenting Babylon and Jerusalem. Author refers mainly to the conceptsof Lotman, Toporow, Barthes and Derrida.

Humor as interactional affordances: an ecological perspective on humor in social interaction

In adopting new theoretical advancements within linguistics and ecological psychology, this paper investigates humor from an ecological perspective in naturally occurring social interaction. In doing so, it is claimed that the notions of language as coordination and values-realizing can provide a new understanding of humor as it appears in human interaction. This argument will be unfolded as a rethinking of Wallace Chafe’s notion of nonseriousness (Chafe, 2007) that re-conceptualizes Chafe’s idea of a ‘mental state’ of nonseriousness in terms of interactional affordances and values realizing. This perspective is laid out in in-depth analyses of video recordings of two real-life examples from different settings: two siblings playing and a sequence from a couple-therapy session. It is claimed that both examples of interactional humor can be explained by re-conceptualizing humor as a distinct way of being together. Thus, the emergence of humor is enabled by a shift in the coordinative dynamics rather than by a transfer of semantic ‘content’ from a speaker to a hearer. Finally, humor is investigated as a temporal phenomenon integrating immediate ’here-and-now’ environmental features with socio-cultural expectations on a longer time-scale. In this way humor is viewed as a particular type of values-realizing activity that constrains our actions, re-directs our attention, and thereby enables us to act in a more playful and joyous manner.