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Having an Eye for It: Aesthetics, Ethnography and the Senses
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to discuss participant‐led photography as a response to the author's need for an “aesthetic approach” to ethnography during fieldwork, including the importance of an embodied, sensory orientation to ethnography in organizational contexts.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper reviews a range of literature and draws on the author's experiences to support a conceptual argument.
Findings
There is currently scant attention to the sensory dimension of ethnographic practice and the paper puts forward an agenda for future research.
Research limitations/implications
Suggestions are made as to how aesthetic and/or sensory ethnography can support changing landscapes of organizational research.
Originality/value
In drawing together multidisciplinary literature, the paper advances the agenda of ethnographic research in organizational life.
... For us, ethnography is a shared learning practice (Dicks et al., 2011: 232), an embodied method (Küpers, 2013;Thanem and Knights, 2019) and a holistic sensory approach. We consider our aesthetic sensitivity (Warren, 2008(Warren, , 2012 as researchers, openness to empathically engage with others and their experiences and the act of 'digging deeper' into the subtlety of the interviewees' experiences to be essential components of this study. We view embodiment as not only a subject of investigation but also a research approach -our bodies are both the subjects and the objects of our actions of perceiving, feeling and thinking (Crossley, 2006;Thanem and Knights, 2019). ...
... In addition to relating the information obtained through the ethnographic interviews in this paper, photographs are provided to evoke bodily experiences in readers (Warren, 2012), allowing them to become partially immersed in the dancers' lived experiences, and to observe a different kind of approach to the relationship between the dancers' embodied agency and the audience. The use of visual materials allows researchers to incorporate diverse voices and multiple levels of understanding within organisations (Ray and Smith, 2012) and, eventually, overcome aesthetic muteness (Taylor, 2002;Warren, 2008). ...
... Hence, it would be important to heed to one another's aesthetic cues (Küpers, 2013;Warren, 2012) and the ethical possibilities that arise during daily interactions at work. We argue that understanding embodied agency is essential for better understanding the underlying mechanics behind our 'visible' behaviours at work and how these connect to embodied vulnerabilities, power and embodied normativities in organisations (van Amsterdam et al., 2022). ...
This study investigates the relational dynamics of embodied agency in the empirical context of ballet. Drawing on 15 ethnographic and 6 photo-elicitation interviews with professional dancers from the Finnish National Ballet, this study analyses the ways in which ballet dancers negotiate their agency in relation to other agents in their everyday work. We show how ballet dancers have to balance between satisfying the needs of the invisible gaze through different layers of relationality, on the one hand, and aiming to create room for their intimate, embodied experiences on the other. This study contributes to the existing knowledge on agency at the workplace by illustrating how it is grounded in the body in relational ways. By furthering the phenomenological understanding of subject formation as a form of intersubjectivity, this study shows how the working self is always relationally constructed, open to ambiguity and, sometimes, ‘caught between’ achieving agency and the objectifying scrutiny of the self and others between the visible onstage and hidden backstage. Consequently, this study offers in-depth insights into and parallels for intersubjective development in organisations.
... Um herauszufinden, ob der jeweilige Ansatz einer KBI diesem Ziel entsprechen kann, wird das Verhalten der jeweiligen Teilnehmerinnen in einer Vielzahl von Publikationen besprochen (z. B. Bout and Mortier, 2014;Eaves, 2014;Johansson Sköldberg et al., 2016;Rusch, 2012;Warren, 2012;Zambrell, 2016a (Bozic Yams and Helldorff, 2016), dass KBI generell emotionale, physische und intellektuelle Reaktionen hervorrufen können (Bout and Mortier, 2014, S. 28) und infolge dessen zur persönliche Charakterund Kompetenzentwicklung beitragen können (Schnugg, 2010). Der Prozess einer KBI löst häufig Unsicherheiten aus (Amacker, 2017;Biehl-Missal, 2013;Zambrell, 2016a), mit denen die Teilnehmer jedoch einen kompetenten Umgang lernen können (Biehl-Missal, 2011;Geschwill, 2015;Rusch, 2012). ...
... Hence, the theoretical and empirical parts are interacting continuously, meaning that I analyze the case while I am describing it (Haselwanter, 2014, S. 101 B. Beobachtung (Blumenfeld-Jones, 2016;Sutherland and Ladkin, 2013;Vannini, 2015), teilnehmende Beobachtung (Bogerts, 2014;Haselwanter, 2014), Analyse von Sekundärliteratur (Barry and Meisiek, 2006;Bout and Mortier, 2014;Heinsius and Lehikoinen, 2013;Katz-Buonincontro, 2011), Interviews (Bain, 2005;Hallström, 2007;Staines, 2010;Taylor, 2002), Onlinebefragungen (Berthoin Antal, 2011;Antal and Nussbaum Bitran, 2015), Vergleich von verschiedenen Methoden (Antal and Strauß, 2013;Berthoin Antal, 2011), Analyse von journalistischer Berichterstattung (Berthoin Antal, 2011) oder persönliche Reflexionen (Bozic Yams and Helldorff, 2016;Brattström, 2012). Auch die Form der Daten kann dementsprechend sehr unterschiedlich sein und umfasst neben den klassischen Datensammlungen aus Interviews oder Umfragen auch Aufnahmen von Klangbildern (Sutherland and Ladkin, 2013), Geschichten (Taylor, 2002(Taylor, , 2013, Fotos (Warren, 2012), Zeichnungen (Meltzer, 2015) oder Bewegungsabläufe (Wetzel and Van Renterghem, 2015;Bozic Yams and Helldorff, 2016). Diese zuletzt genannten Formen von Daten werden unter anderem unter dem Begriff Sensory Data diskutiert (Amacker, 2017;Blumenfeld-Jones, 2016) und führen dazu, dass die Forschenden intensiv mit den Datensätzen interagieren (Bozic Yams and Helldorff, 2016;Darmer, 2006;Hujala et al., 2015) statt diese zu beschreiben, zu interpretieren und zu konzeptualisieren. ...
... Selbst wenn künstlerische Methoden verwendet werden, stehen Autoren in den meisten Fällen vor der Herausforderung, die Ergebnisse noch verschriftlichen zu müssen. Einige verhelfen sich mit Fotografien und Illustrationen(Amacker, 2017;Bozic Yams and Helldorff, 2016;Hujala et al., 2015;Warren, 2012), denen sie eine detaillierte theoretische Grundlage voranstellen, die nicht selten dem Pragmatismus und einer Embodied View of Cognition entspringt. Dennoch ist noch lange nicht gesagt, ob es sich bei den Methoden aus der Arts-based Research um die Lösung handelt, die in der Forschung um KBI gesucht wird.Nachdem das Forschungsfeld rund um KBI vorgestellt wurde, wird im Folgenden auf das Teilgebiet der KBI im Innovationsmanagement eingegangen.Springborg, 2012), auf den Trend, Erlebnisse für Konsumenten zu schaffen (z.B. ...
Kunstbasierte Interventionen (KBI) können guten Gewissens als einer der großen Hypes des 21. Jahrhunderts bezeichnet werden. Besonders dann, wenn sie im Zusammenhang mit Veränderungsprozessen in Organisationen genannt werden. Von künstlerischen oder kunstbasierten Interventionen spricht man dann, wenn Kunstschaffende in Organisationen tätig werden – sei es als Lehrende im Rahmen von Workshops für Mitarbeitende oder als Artists in Residence, die für einen bestimmten Zeitraum ihr Studio durch die Räumlichkeiten der Organisation ersetzt haben. Doch was macht das künstlerische Denken und Handeln überhaupt aus, dass es so in den Fokus unterschiedlichster wissenschaftlicher Disziplinen und das Innovationsmanagement geraten ist? Die vorliegende Arbeit destilliert einzelne Parameter dieses Denkens und Handelns und bietet schließlich eine Antwort auf die (zugegebenermaßen überspitzte) Frage, ob man unbedingt tanzen muss, um neue Arbeitsweisen in Organisationen zu etablieren.
... In order to explore the aesthetic side of organizational life, scholars have addressed the methodological challenges involved in any aesthetic research (see Warren 2012;Strati 2016;Hancock 2005). For example, they have proposed ways of collecting data that can preserve the complexity of the aesthetic experience (Warren 2012). ...
... In order to explore the aesthetic side of organizational life, scholars have addressed the methodological challenges involved in any aesthetic research (see Warren 2012;Strati 2016;Hancock 2005). For example, they have proposed ways of collecting data that can preserve the complexity of the aesthetic experience (Warren 2012). What is more, they have sought to transmit the richness of the aesthetic experience to the reader by using 'allusive' and 'poetic language' (Gagliardi 1996, 576). ...
... Alexandersson and Kalonaityte 2018;De Molli, Mengis, and van Marrewijk 2019;Elias et al. 2018;Wasserman and Frenkel 2011) has been accompanied by a heated methodological debate on how to conduct aesthetic research (e.g. Warren 2012;Strati 2016;Hancock 2005;Taylor 2013). The aesthetic understanding of organizational life constitutes 'a form of knowledge diverse from those based on analytical methods' (Strati 1992, 569), and therefore requires different tools and methods for it to be properly conducted (Strati 2016). ...
Despite the growing academic interest in the aesthetic dimensions of organizational life, there is a surprising lack of critical reflection on how to analyse data acquired through organizational aesthetic research. This paper addresses this gap, first by illustrating the analytical challenges that aesthetic research poses. Then, it introduces participatory interpretation as an analytical method, and evaluates it by drawing on an empirical study. What sets this method apart from the other methods traditionally used is its potential (1) to avoid an almost exclusive reliance on the researcher's interpretation, developing instead an understanding of the aesthetics explored which takes into account both the researcher's and the actors' interpretations, and (2) to achieve an understanding of the performativity of the organizational aesthetics under study. The paper concludes by suggesting possible applications of this method in a wide range of other organizational research fields.
... 18) Like aesthetics, the chair is both noticed and unnoticed in the context of organizations, thus by students as well. The riddle itself yields important insights about how the chair does important "symbolic work" (Warren, 2012) within organizations and organizational life. Strati (1999: 18-22) describes how students activate their sensory experiences and aesthetic judgments in an attempt to solve the riddle-creating a fundamental change in the classroom atmosphere-that is, the aesthetic dimension of the classroom as organization. ...
... Following presentations of the artifact, students received feedback from their classmates. These representations of "sensory artifacts" (Warren, 2012) enable students to participate in "active audiencing" (Steyaert et al., 2012) and reflect on the aesthetic nature of their audience's experiences. Excerpts are offered below to give you, the reader, a plausible account of this process. ...
... Montage as "form" works both to bring the audience in and to "disturb the peace" and disrupts initial impressions and meanings (Davison et al., 2012). Such affordances create opportunities for students to become aesthetically attuned to "aesthetic and political preferences" as part of a more critical-reflexive (Warren, 2012) approach. Multimedia becomes not only a form for representing and eliciting aesthetics, but its "creative reconstructions" reveal their "performative nature" of the digitization process for "re-presentation" (author's emphasis, Van Dijck, 2007: 329-336). ...
The recent burgeoning of “organizational aesthetics” scholarship represents unrealized potential for transforming management learning practices. In response to calls for more embodied “holistic” ways of knowing, the present case study is a “wayfinding” journey into organizational aesthetic encounters with undergraduate management students. Initial encounters reveal how narratives of organizational quotidian evoke aesthetic attunement. Closer encounters engage students with their own aesthetic inquiries and artifacts to re-present aesthetic knowledge and sensibilities. As aesthetically attuned and active producers of “organizational aesthetics,” what is sensible and thus knowable in the context of management learning is disturbed—informing and enlivening our learning experiences. From a practical standpoint, these types of aesthetic encounters may breach the “management learning” peace, one disturbance at a time.
... In this perspective, the role of emotions is analyzed as a cornerstone of a feminist writing process and as "an untapped resource of information, lending insight into the research process, the findings of the study" (Blakely, 2007, p. 61) and as a "tool of investigation" (ibid: 62), which acknowledges the "emotionality of science" (Campbell & Wasco, 2000, p. 786). This concern for emotions is part of broader reflection on how to turn the embodied and sensory dimensions of experience into words (Warren, 2012), underlining the importance to overcome the "aesthetic muteness" (Taylor, 2002) pervading organizational life and academic writing, to negotiate "the drive to share internal lived experience, and the drive to externalize and abstract" (Brewis & Williams, 2019, p. 93), and "to actually write the lived experience and not just write about it" (Meier & Wegener, 2017, p. 193). This "affective turn of feminist studies" (Ilmonen, 2019, p. 18) however did not translate very well to the research projects using ethnography: the ethnographer's emotions are seldom discussed or taken into consideration (Gilmore & Kenny, 2015). ...
... First, I contribute to the discussion on emotions as key in feminist writing processes (Kiriakos & Tienari, 2018;Satama & Huopalainen, 2019). I focus here on bringing a feminist perspective on the topic of "induction" in the process of writing an ethnographic work, following recent calls to acknowledge emotions (Gilmore & Kenny, 2015), as well as sensory cues (Warren, 2012), as a source of information in ethnographic work. Induction is not often questioned or discussed in the field of research on feminist ethnography, and I struggled a lot with its underlying assumptions of rationality and distancing. ...
The article explores the topic of turning a feminist activist ethnographic “fieldwork” into words, that is, of writing an ethnographic account in a feminist way. It builds on the work of Audre Lorde to underline the role of emotions in a feminist writing process producing emancipatory knowledge. First, the article contributes to the topic of emotions in feminist writing, by redefining induction as an emotional rather than a rational process. Second, I show how the contribution of Audre Lorde to rethinking writing as an emancipatory process helped me come out of silence and gain empowerment, and hence how writing can be a feminist empowering action. Finally, displaying a story about my experience of writing can hopefully resonates with the ones of others and challenge dominant accounts of writing as a linear process.
... This approach has come to be known as 'sensory ethnography', which as Pink (2009) explains, draws inspiration from phenomenological anthropology (Merleau-Ponty, 1989; see also Ingold, 2008). It has also been called multisensory ethnography (Dicks, 2014) and described as an approach embedded in the wider spectrum of scholarly work that features sensory methodologies (Warren, 2008(Warren, , 2012. Senses are interactive, adaptable and fluid, and they shape people's everyday lives by serving as modes of experiencing meaningful aspects of life (Riach and Warren, 2015). ...
... To disseminate our findings, we use photographs as evokers of bodily experiences in readers (Warren, 2012) to allow our readers to become immersed in imagined extracts of the observed situations (Strati, 1999). Images are helpful in 'overcom[ing] "aesthetic muteness" among organisational members and in the scholarly community' (Taylor, 2002;Warren, 2008: 576). ...
This study illustrates the value of embodied subtleties in the process of collaborative creativity. Drawing on a sensory ethnography of two dance productions, we illustrate the fine-grained ways in which professional dancers negotiate creative processes behind the scenes. We identify three aspects through which collaborative creativity emerges from bodily subtleties: (1) moving beyond individual bodies towards collective ambitions, (2) relating to colleagues' micro-gestures and bodily nuances, and (3) the role of 'serious play' between bodies in setting the scene for the first two aspects to occur. The findings will contribute to our understanding of the practice of collaborative creativity, which we treat as not only a mental but also a highly intimate bodily practice. We conclude that appreciating sensory micro-dynamics between oneself and one's colleagues is crucial for creative collaboration, which is increasingly necessary for management learning in contemporary organisations.
... While the goal of interpretivist research is to understand the worlds of others, these worlds are never fully accessible. Even if the voice is given to the respondents or if they are allowed to 'speak' through images (Warren, 2012) when such data are analyzed interpretation is involved--that is: ...
... aesthetic or behavioural) paradoxically resulting in even more ambiguous and awkward experiences. The concept of situational liminality proposed in this paper, may provide a fitting conceptual background within the realm of experience economy for venturing into these relatively uncharted terrains (with notable exceptions including Kociatkiewicz & Kostera, 2010, 2012. ...
... With this ever-present and dynamic sensory backdrop in mind, it's clear that relocating work tasks from a centralised office to the home fundamentally alters the sensory landscape in which the body operates, obliging the body to learn to labour differently as the work sensorium gets displaced (Kamsteeg et al., 2021). These significant shifts underscore the necessity for a deeper investigation into sensory (auto)-ethnographies within the contexts of work and organising (Warren, 2012;Calvey, 2021). ...
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to reflect on and analyse the sensory experiences related to the transition to remote work during the COVID-19 pandemic. The research seeks to understand how these experiences have influenced the integration of work practices into home and family life and the subsequent adaptations and embodied learning that arise in response.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors' research approach incorporates autoethnographic methods to explore the sensory, affective and emotional experiences of transitioning to remote work. The authors draw on principles of embodied learning, as influenced by Gilles Deleuze, and utilise a range of ethnographic tools including note-taking, audio memos, photography, shared conversations and written reflections to gather their data.
Findings
The study illuminates the ways bodies learn to accommodate the new organisational contexts that arise when the spaces, affects and forces of home and work intersect. It demonstrates how the integration of work into the private domain resulted in new affective and material arrangements, involving novel sensory experiences and substantial embodied learning.
Originality/value
This study provides a distinct, sensory-oriented perspective on the challenges and transformations of remote work practices amid the pandemic. By focussing on the affective resonances and embodied learning that emerge in this context, it contributes to the emerging discourse around post-lockdown work practices and remote work in general.
... Thus, working from "the inside," Weatherall (2020) discusses her engagement in a shelter for battered women in the context of postcolonial New Zealand; Burchiellaro (2020) presents an account of her multi-site ethnographic study of the queer scene in London; Fotaki and Daskalaki (2020) explore the strategy of affective embodiment deployed by women resisting extractivism in Greece; and Vachhani and Pullen (2019) detail the online organizing to resist sexism. Such engagement with the actors during fieldwork translates into efforts to reinvent ways of writing that can account for the embodied and emotional side of ethnographic work (Campbell & Wasco, 2000;Taylor, 2002;Warren, 2012;Kiriakos & Tienari, 2018). ...
... Photographic methods are, according to Madden et al. (2013) based on Warren (2002) an appropriate way to research a topic like compassion, which was one of the first and central themes of the initial theoretical framework. By using photographs as the central focus in Warren (2002Warren ( , 2012 explored aspects of life like emotions within a particular organization that would have been difficult to capture with classic methods that use merely written or spoken language. Photographs allow eliciting the "tacit, intangible and largely ineffable nature" (Warren, 2002: 242) in order to explore what it feels like to, in this case, work in a certain organization. ...
... Satama and Huopalainen 2018; de Souza Bispo and Lino da Silva 2021; Helin, Dahl, and Guillet de Monthoux 2022) has been accompanied by an ongoing debate about the appropriate research methodology for aesthetic research (e.g. Warren 2012;Taylor 2013;Strati 2016). In this paper, we suggest that adopting different research strategies, such as intensive case studies, narrative enquiry, and ethnographic research (Eriksson and Kovalainen 2015), may help researchers produce rich empirical data on aesthetic aspects to study how participants construct their contextual realities (Blichfeldt and Andersen 2006) and thereby overcome 'aesthetic muteness' (Taylor 2002). ...
This paper examines how emotion rules are socially constructed and how and why they are enacted and challenged through specific modes of embodiment in face-to-face interactions. The paper broadens the understanding of emotion rules by connecting them to aesthetics to explore face-to-face interactions. This paper is based on ethnographic data gathered from a two-year study of a micro-sized service company. It explores the structure, function, and meaning of three emotion rules: (1) the emotionality rule, (2) the enthusiasm rule, and (3) the nice way rule as enacted by the company's chief executive officer (CEO) and employees. This paper enhances the understanding of the role of emotion rules in establishing an innovative and democratic organisation. It offers insight into how emotion rules were enacted, challenged, and broken in an unexpected situation when the CEO announces her non-consultative decision that affected the company's employees. ARTICLE HISTORY
... Fifth, and finally, methodological options have been formulated to better account for the centrality of the senses. This is the case of sensory ethnography (Pink, 2015;Warren, 2012), affective ethnography (Gherardi, 2019), sensory archeology (Day, 2013), multi-modality (Stigliani and Ravasi, 2018), affective ethnographic history (Marsh and Śliwa, 2022) and the role of sensing in the field (Cnossen, in press;Willems, 2018). These methodological proposals, while diverse, share a common interest for the way researchers can know about the organizations and practices they observe -but also touch, smell, hear and move along with. ...
Organization and management are the perpetual, and perpetually fraught and resisted, ordering of sense experience. However, banning the senses into the outside of thought, and of organizational analysis, was – and to a large degree still is – the default and mostly implicit and unquestioned mode of thinking and studying organization and management. Introducing the special issue on ‘The Senses in Management Research and Education’, this essay historicizes and contextualizes the neglect of the senses, dwells upon possible reasons for keeping the sensory at bay and discusses recent attempts to remedy this situation. The contributions to the special issue are introduced into this context. In conclusion, we speculate on what might happen next.
... Isso significa dizer que a experiência estética não pode ser uma contemplação somente cerebral, mas corporal também. A experiência estética é resultado de uma coalizão com o mundo humano (pessoas) e não humano (material), a exemplo do medo, da felicidade e da beleza (ou outra categoria estética); isso porque os julgamentos estéticos são sociais (WARREN, 2012). Faz parte da estética organizacional o conhecimento sensível, visto que, ele apresenta a realidade da vida, onde as pessoas se posicionam e entram, não só na realidade física e material, dos mundos, mas também na realidade virtual (STRATI, 2007a); e, nessa nova perspectiva de realidade virtual, os instrumentos audiovisuais ganham forças como elementos de apoio para estudar a vida. ...
Tem-se como objetivo compreender as relações sociomateriais na prática docente síncronas. Entende-se como relação sociomaterial as interações estabelecidas entre os humanos (pessoas) e não humanos (coisas, animais, objetos, arte). Foi preciso fazer uso de mais duas lentes teorias: a estética organizacional e os afetos. Para tanto se utilizou de uma abordagem pós qualitativa, com inspiração na etnografia sensorial, que alinhada a prática da interpretação evocativa, consolidou as reflexões aqui descritas com rigor e ética. Com as observações, foi possível perceber o quanto a pandemia afetou a vida dos docentes, sobretudo quanto à forma de lecionar. Impôs a todos uma nova rotina e metodologia. Introduziu novos objetos e novas formas de interagir com as pessoas, provocando uma multiplicidade de sentimentos, impulsionado e mitigado pelos afetos. Dito isso, o estudo conclui que a prática docente foi afetada e afetou tanto os elementos humanos quanto os não humanos no decorrer de suas atividades educacionais. Copyright © 2021, Celina Maria de Souza Olivindo et al. This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
... constatamos a relação entre etnografia e estética (e.g. OLIVEIRA, 2012;STRATI, 1995;TAYLOR;HANSEN, 2005;WARREN, 2012). No segundo momento da pesquisa, revisamos as buscas nas mesmas bases, inserimos o Google acadêmico e a plataforma Scopus, observamos que a situação não foi alterada. ...
Em Estudos Organizacionais, embora a estética seja tema valorizado desde 1980,
conhecimentos metodológicos para impulsionar a pesquisa ainda são limitados, dispersos e fragmentados. Se a etnografia é a abordagem frequentemente associada à estética, ainda carecemos de integração e sistematização de saberes em etnografia estética. O objetivo é integrar, estruturar e sistematizar o conhecimento sobre a etnografia estética no campo dos Estudos Organizacionais pela identificação, seleção e análise sistemática da produção acadêmica, envolvendo as Ciências Sociais, Humanas e Arte. Como resultados, elaboramos e discutimos princípios (sensibilidade, empatia, expressividade, corporeidade, intersubjetividade e agência), processos (aproximação, aprofundamento e criação), dinâmicas e desafios (interdisciplinares, imersivos, perceptivos, interpretativos e expressivos) da etnografia estética.
Palavras-chave: Etnografia organizacional; Etnografia estética; Métodos sensoriais;
Metodologia; Estética Organizacional.
... Peripheral scholars could also consider going beyond visual methods to overcome ocularcentric approach (Warren 2012) and engage into creating MK from a broader range of sensory experiences through organisational aesthetics (Taylor and Hansen 2005). By engaging the senses and aesthetic judgment, peripheral researchers would free themselves from the dependence on Anglo-American logico-deductive thinking and intellectually restrictive domination by English to create non-mentalised, multi-sensorial knowledge of growing organisational importance (Strati 1996). ...
This article seeks to synthesise three fields of inquiry-management studies, linguistics and cognitive psychology-to explore an arguably emerging phenomenon of global management knowledge (MK) impoverishment. To this end, three literatures are reviewed and interrogated for the insights they may provide into the underlying factors affecting global MK: trends in knowledge production, Englishisation of management scholarship and the culturally determined differences in cognition. Arguments are developed through descriptive investigation, discussion and analysis. The central proposition of this article is that the politics of knowledge production, the hegemony of English as the dominant language of management studies and the variations in thinking styles are synergistically interlinked in a way that facilitates Anglophone homogenisation of management research and potentially leads to global MK impoverishment. The ways of addressing the situation are discussed.
... This combined visual and textual research design aligns with the shift towards visual methods and analysis within the humanities and social science disciplines (Bell and Davidson, 2013). We used images selected by the informants as prompts to uncover and stimulate thought processes during the interview, serving to facilitate dialogue (Warren, 2012) about modern slavery. Thus, we took a dialogical approach, using the informantchosen images to evoke rich dialogue and deep insight (Meyer et al., 2013) into their thoughts, perceptions and experiences of modern slavery. ...
While research has examined the plight of vulnerable workers, the role of consumers who drive demand for slave-based services and products has been largely neglected. This is an important gap given both historical evidence of the effectiveness of 18th and 19th century anti-slavery consumer activism and recent attempts to regulate slavery through harnessing consumer power, such as the UK’s Modern Slavery Act 2015. This article draws on data from in-depth interviews with 40 consumers, to identify their understanding of modern slavery, before revealing the neutralising and legitimising techniques they use to justify their (in)action. Our findings contribute to, and extend, neutralisation theory by exploring its applicability in this unique context. We also position techniques of legitimisation as central to understanding how modern slavery is tolerated through a variety of discursive and institutional factors.
... Narrative ethnographers, for example, appreciate talk as a form of social action and focus on the construction, performance and effect of stories (Gubrium and Holstein 2008). Visual and other sensory approaches seek to augment fieldnotes with images and sounds that evoke something of a time and place (Warren 2012, Arnfred 2015. Researchers working in the framework of autoethnography have sought to develop the reflexive aspects of ethnographic work to explore their own experiences against broader social, economic and political phenomena (Doloriert and Sambrook 2012). ...
... According to De St. Maurice & Miller (2017), food industry studies focus more on the sensory aspects of consumer experiences. The affective relation of brands and products with the minds of consumers is created through the sensory experience (five senses) (Warren, 2012). Relationship with a brand or business products creates five different sensory experiences by seeing, hearing, touching, smelling and tasting for consumers (Schmitt, 1999). ...
One of the concepts considered nowadays by the marketers in the area of consumers' consumption behavior is the creation of pleasant experiences and the impact of these experiences on consumers' behavior, since the creation of different experiences as a vital element in marketing strategies can create value and lead to a competitive advantage. Thus, the objective of this research is to evaluate the dimensions of customer experiences and the effects of these dimensions on consumer purchase intentions. The present study is an applied research in terms of objective and correlational type of descriptive-survey in terms of the nature of data collection. The research population is the consumers of restaurants and fast food stores in Shiraz. A sample of 385 consumers of restaurant and fast food stores in Shiraz city was selected using convenient sampling method. Validity of the questionnaire was confirmed through content validity and its reliability was confirmed through Cronbach's alpha. Questionnaire was used to collect the data. Structural equation modeling was used to analyze the data. The results of this study confirmed the positive and significant effect of five dimensions of customer experiences, including behavioral experience, cognitive experience, affective experience, sensory experience and social experience on consumer purchase intention. Therefore, the owners and managers of restaurants and fast food stores can influence the purchase intention behavior of their customers and make them loyal to their restaurant by creating good experiences for their customers.
... Finally, this paper makes a methodological contribution to the ethnographic research approach (Van Maanen, 2011), specifically to its sensory-based dimensions (Warden, 2012;Warren, 2012; see also Valtonen et al., 2010), by illustrating how several (and at first glance different) research contexts can 'talk together' and describe the complexities of leadership phenomena through analogous arguments. Although at the beginning of the research process there were two separate stories with their own contexts, field notes and analyses, the stories began to interact and were influenced by one another as the research process advanced (Cornelissen, 2005;Tsoukas, 1991). ...
This paper explores relational leadership as a reflexive activity that comprises the subtle interplay between the verbal and bodily acts of people at work. Although the existing literature on collective leadership acknowledges various qualities of relational leadership, the latter’s deeply reflexive nature has remained underexplored. By drawing on ethnographic research material from the two controversial; yet, surprisingly similar contexts of ballet and ice hockey, we set out to explore the fine-grained dynamics of the reflexive practices of relational leadership in greater detail. Based on our findings, we argue that relational leadership builds on a bundle of verbal and embodied reflexive practices, entwined with offstage and onstage power dynamics in the workplace. Consequently, our study calls for a more nuanced and bodily appreciative understanding of relational leadership in organisation studies in general.
... Scholars established that the use of space is an important characteristic of study for organizational and ethnographic inquiry (Warren, 2012). King Comics is not what one would call "inviting," particularly for the uninitiated. ...
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine the rituals and communicative practices that simultaneously create community, out-groups and perceptions of stigma at a local comic book retail organization through autoethnography. As such this piece explores personal identity, comic book culture and how this comic book shop acts as important third place as defined by Oldenburg.
Design/methodology/approach
Autoethnography allows for the simultaneous research into self, organizations and culture. As a layered account, this autoethnography uses narrative vignettes to examine a local comic book retail organization from the first person perspective of a collector, a cultural participant and geek insider.
Findings
The term geek, once brandished as an insult to stigmatize, is now a sense of personal and cultural pride among members. Various rituals including the “white whale” moment and the specialized argot use help maintain community in the comic book shop creating a third place as categorized by Oldenburg. However, these shared communication practices and shared meanings reinforce the hegemonic masculinity of the store, leading the author to wonder if it can maintain its viability going forward.
Originality/value
This autoethnography was performed at a local comic book shop, connecting communicative and ritual practices to organizational culture, hegemonic masculinity, geek culture and personal identity. It also argues that one need not be an embedded organizational insider to perform organizational autoethnography.
... Photographs are valuable 'sensory windows' that open out onto the participant's world (Pink, 2009;Warren, 2012). Although photographs can never be seen as truth, their striking resemblance to (what we commonly perceive as) reality means that they have an allusive power to evoke bodily recollections and experiences which are immediate and direct in ways that words are not (Barthes, 1982;Wagner, 1979). ...
In this article, we put forward the concept of ‘embodied inhabitation’ to bring a bodily and material perspective to bear on institutional maintenance. Using an ‘inhabited institutions’ framework, and drawing on autoethnographic, visual data, we develop a strategy of empathizing with field research participants that blurs the boundaries between human and non-human, social and material, and cultural and biological in understanding the embodied micro-level, situated interactions that maintain the institutional status quo. These have hitherto been overlooked in studies of institutional maintenance and institutional theory more broadly. Empirically, we explore how organizational imperatives designed to uphold the institution of the ‘safe system of work’ required by health and safety law in the United Kingdom play out in the course of the everyday work of e-waste recycling workers. Three vignettes relating to an overarching theme of ‘suffering’ consider institutional inhabitation as micro-level embodied interactions, and we show how socio-embodied discourses of commitment, skill and (working-class) masculinities legitimate the normalization of waste workers’ suffering, which in turn maintains institutionalized ideas of health and safety at work. We conclude by reflecting on the value of employing an ‘embodied inhabitation’ approach in other institutional settings.
... Third, this paper makes a methodological contribution to the ethnographic research approach (e.g. Van Maanen 2011) and to its sensory-based dimension in specific (e.g.Warden 2012;Warren 2012;see also Val tonen et al. 2010) by illustrating how field notes of several researchers can " talk together " and by so doing, illustrate the complexities of leadership phenomena. Here, we had the opportunity to dig deep into two specific settings in which the working builds on concurrent actions in extraordinarily transparent ways. ...
This paper explores leadership as a relational activity. Even if the prevailing leadership literature acknowledges plural forms of leadership, in our view, the theoretical understandings and the empirical illustrations of these forms have remained scattered. In this paper, we aim at uncovering the collectively shared qualities of relational leadership in ballet and ice-hockey. By combining insights from the two diverse contexts, we make a joint effort to explore a complex phenomenon of relational leadership in greater detail. Based on the findings of this paper, we argue that relational actions build on concurrent and complementary movements among collaborative agents in the field. Therefore, this paper argues for a more nuanced and co-constructive theorization of relational leadership in organization studies.
... Third, this paper makes a methodological contribution to the ethnographic research approach (e.g. Van Maanen 2011) and to its sensory-based dimension in specific (e.g.Warden 2012;Warren 2012;see also Val tonen et al. 2010) by illustrating how field notes of several researchers can " talk together " and by so doing, illustrate the complexities of leadership phenomena. Here, we had the opportunity to dig deep into two specific settings in which the working builds on concurrent actions in extraordinarily transparent ways. ...
... The researcher was granted permission to take photos at liberty by the VisualCo managing director (MD), and images were copiously collected at the factory, with the idea that they might communicate in different ways than texts (Warren, 2012) and provide a counterweight to the verbal component of the research (Bell and Davidson, 2013). The visual component comprised photographs covering various aspects of work situations and physical environments as part of the overall project. ...
This article examines how the material, and specifically visual, aspects of organizing contribute to understanding control and resistance issues in organizations. Whereas the role of visuality in workplace power relations has been acknowledged, the processes by which specific visual affordances contribute to power contests are not well understood. We argue that the diverse affordances of visual images offer opportunities for both control and resistance, where control is exerted via the normalizing and objectifying feature of visuality, while resistance draws on bricolage and juxtaposition to subvert dominant management discourses. Based on an ethnographic study of an industrial print company, we show how the diverse uses of visuality create a field for negotiating organizational tensions. We draw conclusions for the study of visual affordances as a tool for control and resistance struggles in organizations.
... Discourse analysis and aesthetic inquiry are unexplored methodologies, and a combination of both provides new ways of interpreting the dynamic world of sustainable entrepreneurship. This study extends an aesthetical understanding of organizing (Strati, 1992(Strati, , 1999 by experimenting with visual ethnography (S. Warren, 2012) to experience an embodied "knowing" (Nicolini, Gherardi, & Yanow, 2003). At the same time, such a playful fusion of trying out aesthetic sensemaking with a more "traditional" discourse analysis is an invitation to discourse scholars to expand their horizons and open up to new ways of disclosing multi-discursivity. ...
Sustainable entrepreneurship is a vital and growing area of entrepreneurship studies. Although charged with multiple potentially conflicting discourses, sustainable entrepreneurship is usually viewed from a binary logic of business versus sustainability. This article uses an aesthetic process approach to sustainable entrepreneurship to move beyond this binary logic and unearth the tensions between multiple discourses. The authors introduce the construct of embodied multi-discursivity that addresses this issue methodologically as well as conceptually. By combining discourse analysis with aesthetic inquiry, the article pushes the boundaries of “traditional” qualitative methods. The aim is to encourage sustainable entrepreneurship scholars to expand their methodological horizon to capture the emotionally charged, value-laden processes they study. Embodied multi-discursivity shows how multi-discursive processes of entrepreneurship come into being, how they are disrupted, and how they can break into a duality that ignores the variety of discourses. The authors conclude by drawing some implications for sustainable entrepreneurship.
... For example, Cunliffe (2002) has elaborated social poetics as a research practice that offers a way to explore how, in the flow of our embodied dialogical activity, we relate to our surroundings and make sense of our experiences. Other researchers, like Pink (2009), call for sensory ethnography, Strati (1999) invites experimentation with imaginative participant observation, and Warren (2012) warns us about the "aesthetic ethnographer" who is still faced with the very real challenge of sensory fieldwork, since we are simply not accustomed to noticing much of the sensory stimuli in which we are immersed. All these later works have a family resemblance with the idea of surrender-and-catch. ...
Structured Abstract:
Purpose: The article is devoted to illustrate the contribution offered by Wolff’s sociology of knowledge to organizational ethnography and to practice-based studies.
Design: Drawing on Wolff’s writing, the surrender-and-catch perspective is introduced and how to be inspired by it is illustrated in relation to three working practices.
Findings: The centrality of the body and of sensible knowledge for doing ethnographies of working practices is affirmed and the surrender-and-catch perspective is interpreted as an art of seeing connections.
Practical implications: surrender-to may be included in the methodology for studying knowing-in-practice:
Value: a contribution to frame the legacy of a sociologist of knowledge little known in organization studies. Its contribution stresses the importance of a plurality of forms of knowing alongside the rational-analytic one. Therefore Kurt Wolff’s work becomes relevant within the so-called ‘practice-turn’.
... For example, Cunliffe (2002) has elaborated social poetics as a research practice that offers a way to explore how, in the flow of our embodied dialogical activity, we relate to our surroundings and make sense of our experiences. Other researchers, like Pink (2009), call for sensory ethnography, Strati (1999) invites experimentation with imaginative participant observation, and Warren (2012) warns us about the "aesthetic ethnographer" who is still faced with the very real challenge of sensory fieldwork, since we are simply not accustomed to noticing much of the sensory stimuli in which we are immersed. All these later works have a family resemblance with the idea of surrender-and-catch. ...
Purpose
– The purpose of this paper is to illustrate the contribution offered by Wolff’s sociology of knowledge to organizational ethnography and to enrich the lexicon of practice-based studies with the concept of surrender-and-catch.
Design/methodology/approach
– Drawing on Wolff’s writing, the surrender-and-catch perspective is introduced and how to be inspired by it is illustrated in relation to three working practices.
Findings
– The centrality of the body and of sensible knowledge for doing ethnographies of working practices is affirmed and the surrender-and-catch perspective is interpreted as an art of seeing connections.
Practical implications
– Surrender-to may be included in the methodology for studying knowing-in-practice and it may help students to get prepared to conduct an organizational ethnography.
Originality/value
– A contribution to frame the legacy of a sociologist of knowledge little known in organization studies. Its contribution stresses the importance of a plurality of forms of knowing alongside the rational-analytic one. Therefore Kurt Wolff’s work becomes relevant within the practice-based studies.
... Naturally, the focus on ideation of the societal dynamics combined with an obsessive recourse to pseudo-actions and pseudo-events expressed through images, the sole purpose of which is to induce a certain impression of reality, did not go unnoticed (Alvesson 1990). In fact, the projective methods designed to elicit such ideational dimension are increasingly applied in organizational research (Warren 2012). However, even if the agreement that both image and experience play an increasing role in social interactions (Fineman [1996(Fineman [ ] 1999, and that the new 'soft' organizational discourses increasingly embrace ever more eagerly the personal qualities of individuals (cf. ...
The recent inquiries into the dynamics of exchanges between social actors evoke the notions of ‘liquidity’ and ‘mcdonaldization’, while their objects are rendered distant from ‘the real’. Using the ‘popular’ examples from the nonymous (Facebook) and anonymous (YouTube) social media, the current study emphasizes the role of increasing mediation of images in the processes of ‘liquid’ societal sensemaking. Managing the relationship between reality and image is conceptualized in terms of ‘translucency’ – the capacity to make oneself explicitly visible as an ‘image consumer–creator’ while still enjoying the fantasy that reality is inherent in one's rendition. Since contingency is disabled, its associated notions: ‘luck’ and ‘serendipity’ are reconceptualized and can be employed as heuristics of translucent sensemaking expressed through its construal of ‘actor’, ‘image’, ‘performance’ and ‘success’. Finally, it is argued that the ‘translucent’ – display-only-oriented – mode of interaction is feasible to become populated by arbitrary ideological contents.
Head and Hands Relocation presents a case study that follows the organization through their office relocation over a period of three years. After a brief introduction to the participants and the research process, this extended chapter presents two parallel narratives. One is the turbulent yet remarkable journey of the staff as they dislocated—physically removing themselves and their departments from a rundown, yet beloved house—and relocated into a newly renovated, intelligently designed space. The other story follows the transition of Head and Hands through a period of disruption and potential, as the organization adapted and reformed itself with and within the new space. Here memories, feelings, and lived experience take centre stage as staff members describe their day-to-day encounters with two unique office spaces. Their experiences were materialized through memories and ghosts, emotions, embodied displacement, wellbeing and light, sterile coldness, echoes, transition, and camaraderie, as well as feelings of support, pride, and hope. These stories do not represent the experiences of Head and Hands as a singular unit, lived and shared equally by all staff; rather, they offer glimpses from those who participated in entering a myriad of possible relationships and ways of being in the organization’s two very different spaces. Drawing from themes explored earlier, this chapter reveals how moments of change and disruption can highlight organizational insight and disrupt patterns through increased aesthetic awareness. Through the staff’s rich and diverse spatial relationships, their office beats and breathes as if infused with a heart and mind.
Writing the Invisible offers an honest glimpse into my process as a researcher as I explored the role of words and their ability to convey my and others’ aesthetic knowledge. In questioning the effectiveness of language to adequately share nuanced and ephemeral experience, this chapter dives into the ultimate power of words, not only to describe space, but to evoke and create it. Drawing from various writers, artists, and academics to explore stories told through text and material spaces, we begin to see space as a contributing character, and in some cases, co-author of the plot. In this sense, the narrative framework becomes an important aspect of experiencing, creating, and documenting our environment. Words and conversations with space can surface qualities of the material world, becoming entwined with our experience of them. Listening to and speaking with space are part of how we perceive and notice our surroundings. I also investigate the potential within the act of noticing as a way to attune and attend the material world. This chapter is aimed at reflexive researchers and practitioners looking at the nuanced ways in which space takes shape in their writing and research. As space is explored on the page, readers (and writers) can simultaneously connect with their own surroundings. Reflecting on how space shows up will transform writing and speaking into spatial practices in and of themselves.
Aesthetics is quintessential for entrepreneurial practice and theory.
Specifically, we argue that aesthetics provides a more sophisticated
understanding of the embeddedness of cultural and artistic entrepreneurship (CAE). This paper is based on an aesthetic ethnography of entrepreneurial organizations in the music sector in Brazil. Our findings generate
a conceptualization of aesthetic embeddedness, explaining how CAE is
embedded in culture through three practices (crossing, syncretic and
valuing). Crossing practices are aesthetic contagions that generate
exchange. Syncretic practices are harmonizations between different elements that create coexistences during aesthetic product creation. Valuing
practices are aesthetic negotiations that occur between entrepreneurs
and stakeholders. As an outcome of the three practices, we discuss how
aesthetic knowledge deriving from aesthetic embeddedness can be mobilized as aesthetic capital, value and innovation in entrepreneurial
practice.
How are relations of care and security between hospital staff and patients organized through sound? This article argues that the shifting distinction between meaningful sound and noise is fundamental to the lived experience of immersion in organizational acoustic environment. Based around a qualitative study of listening practices and ‘ear work’ at a medium-secure forensic psychiatric hospital, using interview and photo-production methods, the article positions the organizing of the sensory as central to formal organization. Analysis of empirical material demonstrates how the refinement of key listening practices is critical to the ways in which staff and patients orient to the hospital setting. It also details how the design process for the unit has undermined the capacity to manage and control through sound, or ‘panauralism’, rendering it as a reversible and contested struggle to make sense of the acoustic environment, and describes the attempts by patients to create alternative acoustic spaces and exercise ‘sonic agency’. We contend that ‘acoustic organizational research’ offers an experience-near means of mapping organizational space and power relations and invites a renewed questioning of the role of the sensory as form of organizing in itself.
The five senses, namely, sight, taste, hear, smell and touch, contribute to form a unique relationship between tourists’ perception and their destinations. However, research on tourist sensory experience that systematically employs broad multidisciplinary approaches in Malaysia is still limited. Moreover, linking the tourist sensory experience with cultural heritage attractions would reveal appreciation values towards the attractions through senses. Therefore, this study aims at gaining insights into sensory experiences among tourists in an urban heritage destination area. A multi-method quantitative approach is adopted to identify the tourists’ sensory experiences around the Melaka Historical City Council’s (MBMB) Core Zone area. A questionnaire as a guide map is designed using items and attractions identified through content analysis of journal articles and travel materials. A total of 268 international tourists have participated in the survey. The analyses yielded seven main findings: walking and cycling influence the sensory experience, visualisation of sensory mapping presents the creation of ‘tourists space’ through sensory experiences, sensory profiling reveal the ranking of each sensory, cultural heritage provides higher appreciation values of sensory experience in comparison to sensory satisfaction, tourists have emotional attachment and joyful quality experience, there are positive relationships in the overall tourist sensory experience, and there were negative and positive impressions towards the cultural heritage attractions based on sensory experiences. This study contributes to the conceptual development of the tourist sensory experience process in the urban heritage destination, the survey mapping technique in evaluating the tourist sensory experience, and the indicators for tourist sensory experience in the Core Zone area of Melaka World Heritage Site. The findings are beneficial for the management of the sensory quality in preserving and conserving the cultural heritage, specifically in the Core Zone area of Melaka World Heritage Site.
Purpose
This paper aims to explore how experiences and emotions arising from the performance of ethnography shape the construction of knowledge about democratic practice in two social enterprises. It argues that ethnographers can develop a more nuanced understanding of organisational practices by moving beyond the self-reflexive work of being aware of one’s position to embrace the emotional work of engaging reflexively with this position, re-embedding reflexive moments in the process of knowledge construction.
Design/methodology/approach
Reflections are made on the emotions and experiences arising during a 12-month ethnographic study in two social enterprises.
Findings
The author found that engaging reflexively with relational and emotional processes of meaning-making opened up three analytical starting points. First it highlighted and helped the researcher to see beyond the limits of their assumptions, opening them to new understandings of democracy. Second, it gave rise to empathetic resonance through which the researcher was able to feel into the practice of democracy and re-frame it as a site of ongoing struggle. Finally, it brought to consciousness tacit ways of knowing and being central to both research and democratic praxis.
Originality/value
The paper adds to limited literature on processes of knowledge construction. Specifically, it contributes new insights into how emotional experiences and empathetic resonance arising at the meeting point of research performance and democratic praxis can offer analytical starting points for a more nuanced understanding of democratic organising in social enterprise.
Sensory encounters with place, site and landscape have the potential to stimulate new and deeply felt engagements with local places, and to prompt discussion about the relationships between place, culture and identity. Such sensory encounters may also offer opportunities for critical, reflexive theorising and practice (Pink, 2008, 2009; Stevenson, 2014; Warren, 2012).
In this article, the authors demonstrate how an anthropologically informed approach that attends to the material culture of occupational safety and health (OSH) offers new insights for such applied research fields. Research into OSH typically seeks to solve its perennial problem of ‘improving’ workers’ health and safety through scholarship dominated by management disciplines, human factors and ergonomic sciences, and psychological and physiological theories. Here, they focus on the example of ‘the safe hand’ and its making through the materiality of gels, water and gloves in the work of health care workers. In doing so they show how organizational, environmental, embodied and biographical elements of OSH intersect with institutionalized and personalized constituents of the material and sensory culture of safety amongst health care workers. They argue that material culture studies have a pivotal role in revising the agendas of applied research and intervention.
The Senses in Self, Society, and Culture is the definitive guide to the sociological and anthropological study of the senses. Vannini, Waskul, and Gottschalk provide a comprehensive map of the social and cultural significance of the senses that is woven in a thorough analytical review of classical, recent, and emerging scholarship and grounded in original empirical data that deepens the review and analysis. By bridging cultural/qualitative sociology and cultural/humanistic anthropology, The Senses in Self, Society, and Culture explicitly blurs boundaries that are particularly weak in this field due to the ethnographic scope of much research. Serving both the sociological and anthropological constituencies at once means bridging ethnographic traditions, cultural foci, and socioecological approaches to embodiment and sensuousness. The Senses in Self, Society, and Culture is intended to be a milestone in the social sciences’ somatic turn.
This article reframes the notion of work/life balance through analysis of branding and the immaterial labour process in a ‘new age capitalist’ organization. The company does not manufacture material products; rather, value is produced through branding imported goods to promote ‘alternative’ ways of living. This is achieved through incorporation of leisure activities and lifestyles of key employees, effectively putting their ‘lives’ to ‘work’ in the creation of value for the company. For employees, therefore, much work actually takes place notionally outside or on the margins of their formally employed space and time. We argue that this qualitatively transforms the conceptions of, and relations between, work and life that underpin the concept of work/life balance. We conclude by exploring the tensions generated by organizational incorporation of employee autonomy in the pursuit of aspirational branding.
There is a contemporary scepticism towards vision-based metaphors in management and organization studies that reflects a more general pattern across the social sciences. In short, there has been a shift away from ocularcentrism. This shift provides a useful basis for metatheoretical analysis of the philosophical discourse that informs organizational analysis. The article begins by briefly discussing the vision-generated, vision-centred interpretation of knowledge, truth, and reality that has characterized the western philosophical tradition. Taking late 18th-century rationalism as the high-point of ocularcentrism, the article then presents a metatheoretical framework based Ion three trajectories that critiques of ocularcentrism have subsequently taken. The first exposes the limits of the metaphor by, paradoxically, taking it to its limits. The second trajectory seeks to displace the primordial position of the ocular metaphor and replace it with an alternative lexicon based on other human senses. Last, the third trajectory describes how the Enlightenment ocular characterization of the visual and mental worlds has effectively been inverted in the postmodern moment.
This article offers an alternative to Richard Florida's theory of the creative class. Departing form a study of contemporary practices within the Copenhagen advertising industry, I argue that the salaried advertising professionals that fit Florida's definition of the creative class are not the primary producers of creativity. Rather they owe their class position to their ability to poach and appropriate creativity produced elsewhere, in networks of (mostly) unsalaried immaterial production that unfold in the urban environment. In my study, the creative content of advertising was mostly produced by this 'creative proletariat', while salaried advertising professionals mostly functioned as a sort of administrative class of the creative economy. Their task was to connect these forms of (relatively) autonomous creative production to the value-circuits of the capitalist economy. Thus, my contribution here is to propose a different model of the interaction between the creative industries and the urban environment, namely one which emphasises the contribution of the unpaid 'mass intellectuality' of the urban arts, design, music and fashion scenes. Lately there has been a lot of emphasis on the city as a positive externality for the culture and creative industries. The most influential text in this respect is perhaps Richard Florida's The Rise of the Creative Class (2002). Florida's chief argument is that the urban environment can be an important factor in attracting the creative 'talent' that drives the increasingly central immaterial activities of technological, cultural and social innovation. He describes this talent as a new creative class, defined by its unique skills in immaterial production and innovation. Florida makes an ambitious general claim with somewhat sweeping policy implications: given that the creative class now makes up what he estimates to be the most productive and promising 30 per cent of the US economy, building an urban environment attractive to the creative class becomes a standard recipe for contemporary urban development. While Florida's emphasis on the role of creativity in the contemporary economy overall has run into much general criticism (cf. Glaeser 2004, Peck, 2005), it retains its validity in the case of advertising. After all 'creativity', the "creation of meaningful new forms", as Florida (2002: 8) defines it, is what these industries engage in. Here however Florida's argument runs into a different difficulty. In his version, the creative class, a particular group of uniquely talented individuals, are the sole producers of creativity. This might have been true in the 1980s, when advertising agencies relied exclusively on their own employees to produce advertisements. But as we shall see below, that model is less applicable abstract
The sociology of the body and the sociology of work and occupations have both neglected to some extent the study of the ‘working body’ in paid employment, particularly with regard to empirical research into the sensory aspects of working practices. This gap is perhaps surprising given how strongly the sensory dimension features in much of working life. This article is very much a first step in calling for a more phenomenological, embodied and ‘fleshy’ perspective on the body in employment, and examines some of the theoretical and conceptual resources available to researchers wishing to focus on the lived working-body experiences of the sensorium. We also consider some possible representational forms for a more evocative, phenomenologically-inspired portrayal of sensory, lived-working-body experiences, and offer suggestions for future avenues of research.
Despite growing scholarly interest in aesthetic dimensions of organizational life, there is a lack of literature expressly engaging with the methodological mechanics of 'doing aesthetics research'. This article addresses that gap. It begins with an overview of the conceptual idiosyncrasies of 'aesthetics' as a facet of human existence and maps out the challenges these pose for empirical research methodology. A review of methodological approaches adopted to date in empirical studies of organizational aesthetics is then presented. The remainder of the article draws on the author's experiences and suggests methods and techniques to address both conceptual and practical challenges encountered during the execution of an organizational aesthetics research project. The article calls for a firmer focus on the aesthetic experiences of organizational members in addition to those of researchers and concludes with some suggestions as to the future of such 'sensual methodologies'.
Our possessions are a major contributor to and reflection of our identities. A variety of evidence is presented supporting this simple and compelling premise. Related streams of research are identified and drawn upon in developing this concept and implications are derived for consumer behavior. Because the construct of extended self involves consumer behavior rather than buyer behavior, it appears to be a much richer construct than previous formulations positing a relationship between self-concept and consumer brand choice.
"The Right Sensory Mix" is one of the four best marketing books in 2011 according to the American Marketing Association Foundation. The Berry-AMA Book Prize is awarded annually be the Foundation (AMAF) and recognizes books whose innovative ideas have h
ad significant impact on marketing and related fields. For additional information about the Berry-AMA Book Prize, visit Berry-AMA Book Prize. Why do some people drink black coffee and others stick to tea? Why do some people prefer competitors' products? Why do we sell less in this country? Many companies fail to acknowledge and analyze disparities observed among customers and simply put them down to culture or emotion. New neuroendocrinological research proves that consumers are rational: They just have a different biological perception of the same stimulus! Their preferences, behavior, and decisions are strongly influenced by the hundreds of millions of sensors monitoring their body and brain. People with more taste buds are for example sensitive to bitterness nd are more likely to drink their coffee with sugar or milk, or to drink tea. After reading the book, managers will be able to: Understand and predict consumers' behavior and preferences Design the right sensory mix (color, shape, taste, smell, texture, and sound) for each product Fine-tune their positioning and product range for every local market Systematically increase their innovation hit rate. © Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2010. All rights are reserved.
Visual Research Methods is a guide for students, researchers and teachers in the social sciences who wish to explore and actively use a visual dimension in their research. This book offers an integrated approach to doing visual research, showing the potential for building convincing case studies using a mix of visual forms including: archive images, media, maps, objects, buildings, and video interviews. Examples of the visual construction of 'place', social identity and trends of analysis are given in the first section of the book, whilst the essays in the second section highlight the astonishing creativity and innovation of four visual researchers. Each detailed example serves as a touchstone of quality and analysis in research, with themes ranging from the ethnography of a Venezuelan cult goddess to the forensic photography of the skeleton of a fourteenth-century nobleman. They give a keen sense of the motives, philosophies and benefits of using visual research methods. This volume will be of practical interest to those embarking on visual research as well as more experienced researchers. Key concerns include the power of images and their changing significance in a world of cross - mediation, techniques of analysis and ethical issues, and how to unlock the potential of visual data for research.
Acknowledgements Introduction: The Meaning and Power of Smell Part I: In Search of Lost Scents 1. The Aromas of Antiquity 2. Following the Scent: From the Middle Ages to Modernity Part II: Explorations in Olfactory Difference 3. Universes of Odour 4. The Rites of Smell Part III: Odour, Power and Society 5. Odour and Power: The Politics of Smell 6. The Aroma of the Commodity: The Commercialization of Smell Bibliography
About the book: The first of its kind, this volume introduces students to a range of research methods used in the study of English, particularly the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Including concrete examples, it covers textual, discourse, and quantitative analysis, auto/biographical methods, interviewing, visual methodologies, archival and ethnographic methods, oral history, creative writing as a research method, and the uses of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT).
Qualitative research has to market itself aggressively, both because academic publishers face more pressures to sell books, and because of the competitive funding climate where one often has to demonstrate methodological innovation as a condition for obtaining a grant. This article considers how social theorists have understood the issue of `newness' and the pursuit of innovation as a cultural problem. It explores the issue in qualitative research through examining how we accomplish and recognize `newness' in the texts we read and produce as academics, which include publisher's catalogues and grant applications, and through considering technological advances such as internet ethnography and video analysis.
This paper presents visual autoethnography as a method for exploring the embodied performances of tourists’ experiences. As a fusion of visual elicitation and autoethnographic encounter, visual autoethnography mobilises spaces of understanding; transcending limitations of verbal discourse and opening spaces for mutual appreciation and reflection. The paper proposes, through visual autoethnography, researcher and respondents connect through intersubjective negotiation; unpacking intricate performances and mobilising knowledge exchange through a will to knowledge. Visual autoethnography ignites embodied connections and understanding as visuals become the bridge that connects researcher and respondent experiences within the interview. The paper argues visual autoethnography facilitates the “sharing of speech” and generates “sounds of silence” that facilitate an enriched research space within which previously ‘hidden’ embodied knowledges are shared.
This article charts the emergence since the 1950s of a new value category, staging value, which arises when capitalism moves from addressing people's needs to exploiting their desires. Staging values serve the intensification and heightening of life rather than the satisfaction of primary needs. The article reevaluates successive theories on the relationship between aesthetics and the economy in the light of these changes, and suggests the continued relevance of critical theory in the era of the aesthetic economy.
What are the challenges and opportunities posed to the dominant interpretive paradigms of visual studies by the rise of a new fascination with the object? How can the study of visual culture respond to what has been variously termed a `pictorial' or an `iconic' turn? Can this phenomenological concern for the power of the image to determine its own reception be incorporated into approaches that emphasize its political implications? Is it possible to conceive of the image as both a representation and a presentation at the same time?
This paper concerns sensations and how they are organised. More specifically, it is about the sense of smell and the social meanings we attribute to the generation and perception of odour. Although biologists and ethologists have studied olfaction in some depth, organisation theorists have given the phenomenon a wide berth, preferring to focus their attention on the visible world. However, this paper argues that smell has a significant bearing upon human interaction and social identity, as well as providing an opportunity for organisational research endeavours premised on a dissolvability of object/subject relations.
Our intention in this article is to add to the different ways of looking at and working with change in organizations. We suggest a set of working propositions that move away from problem-solving or planning-based approaches to change, towards a method which focuses primarily on organizational members' emotions and relations, and on forces of uncertainty and defensiveness. We attempt both to highlight the dynamic nature of change, and to point towards some key issues, often avoided, for engaging with aspects of change. We then describe a participative research process we have employed to access and act on organizational members' emotional responses to change. In this instance, drawings were used with managers in six public service organizations as the catalyst to enable managers to bring out often paradoxical emotions, and to work with these as part of the process of the management of change. While our research is set in the context of enormous changes in U.K. public services, we feel that our methodology is applicable to any organizational setting which is characterized by uncertainty and defensiveness.
Direct questioning about the ‘felt sense’ of organizational actions or artefacts is an accepted way to explore organizational members’ aesthetic experience. However, this requires organizational members to be able to talk about their aesthetic experience, to translate that felt sense into language. I suggest this is often difficult due to aesthetic muteness, which is a significant problem, not just for research but for organizational practice in general. I use empirical data to illustrate how this aesthetic muteness is manifested in the research process as organizational members’ difficulty in approaching their experience from an aesthetic perspective, reframing from ‘feeling’ to ‘thinking’, inability to recall aesthetic experience and denial of aesthetic experience. I then speculate that aesthetic muteness might be caused by threats to harmony, efficiency and images of power and effectiveness and that the consequences of aesthetic muteness are aesthetic amnesia, a narrowed conception of organizational aesthetics and aesthetic stress.
Purpose
The main objective of this paper is to discuss how photography might help give research participants a louder voice in (qualitative) critical accounting and management research, enabling their multiple voices to be better represented/performed through the technique of “native image making”. A secondary aim is to familiarise the reader with key developments and debates in the field of “visual research” more generally.
Design/methodology/approach
A brief overview of the field is offered, and, drawing on examples from the author's visual research practice, how the concept of “photo‐voice” might increase participants' involvement in research in two ways is discussed.
Findings
First, it is argued that accessibility of the method, control of the research agenda and ownership of the images give a louder voice in the process of research. Second, and following Barthes, it is contended that through their iconic and quasi‐representational nature, photographic images can communicate participants' views of their worlds with more primacy than language alone, raising their voices in the dissemination of research.
Practical implications
The paper has especial implications for researchers engaged in critical studies of accounting and management seeking to give voice to marginal groups of people traditionally disregarded by mainstream organization/management studies.
Originality/value
The paper contributes to the development of a novel qualitative methodology for accounting and management research.
In recent years, social theory has played an increasingly important role in archaeology. In particular, archaeologists have shown a growing interest in meaning, structure, text, power and ideology. Social Archaeology is a series designed to explore these wider interests and the developing links between archaeology, anthropology, sociology and history. From a basis of detailed archaeological and ethnographic research, the authors will re-examine the relationships between past and present and between material culture and society, looking at, for example, the clothes we wear, the houses we build and the rubbish we deposit. The series will also apply perspectives and methods in archaeology that incorporate or have been influenced by developments in social theory and ethnography. Book jacket.
This paper is a definition of photo elicitation and a history of its development in anthropology and sociology. The view of photo elicitation in these disciplines, where the greatest number of photo elicitation studies have taken place, organizes photo elicitation studies by topic and by form. The paper also presents practical considerations from a frequent photo elicitation researcher and concludes that photo elicitation enlarges the possibilities of conventional empirical research. In addition, the paper argues that photo elicitation also produces a different kind of information. Photo elicitation evokes information, feelings, and memories that are due to the photograph's particular form of representation.
In "Workplace by Design," Franklin Becker and Fritz Steele address the missing link for a successfully reengineered organization: the reengineered office. With graphic illustrations and examples from Levi Strauss, Chrysler Corporation, Steelcase, Chiat/Day and others, the authors show how to plan, design, and manage a total workplace in which space is a tool for achieving business goals, not a drain on profits. They demonstrate how managers, executives, human resource specialists, and design consultants can keep the physical work setting from undermining the success of workplace initiatives—such as teamwork, telecommuting, and cross-functional collaboration—that encourage high performance.
[This book] shows how diverse companies have implemented a total workplace strategy to effectively involve designers, consultants, and internal staff in diagnosing and solving space problems. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
The authors obtained their material in Bali in 1936-1938 and a 6-weeks period in 1939. In a 48-page introduction Mead summarizes important considerations of the Balinese character to orient the reader for the 100 plates, containing 759 photographs selected from among 28,000 stills. The photographs were taken by Bateson while Mead made verbal notes on the behavior being photographed. Each plate is accompanied by detailed explanatory captions. The plates are presented in the following 10 groupings: villages, agricultural practices, religious and trancerites, industrialization; social organization, physical elevation, respect; learning (visual, kinaesthetic, balance); trance behavior, body surface, hands; orifices of the body (mouth attitudes, eating habits, suckling habits, body products); autocosmic play (the baby, genital manipulation, toys, cock fighting); the roles of parents and children, temper tantrums, borrowed babies, trance behavior, witches, fear, sleep; sibling rivalry and roles; stages of male and female child development; and birthday rituals, tooth-filing, marriage, death, funerals, exhumation practices. A 3-page selected bibliography is followed by a glossary and index of native words and personal names. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
How can researchers avoid the inherent problem of influencing subjects while observing them? In this pioneering work, Robert Ziller examines the uses of photography and video-communication as observation techniques in the social sciences. These techniques take several forms: showing subjects a series of photographs in order to elicit attitudinal responses and asking subjects themselves to compose photographs that represent their attitudes and behaviors. Ziller thoroughly discusses the advantages and disadvantages of these approaches and outlines various research possibilities when using photo communication. In addition, practical examples are drawn from clinical psychology, intercultural communication, family studies, and criminal justice to demonstrate the overall effectiveness of this approach. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
Since the sense of smell cannot be turned off and it prompts immediate, emotional responses, marketers are becoming aware
of its usefulness in communicating with consumers. Consequently, over the last few years consumers have been increasingly
influenced by ambient scents, which are defined as general odors that do not emanate from a product but are present as part
of the retail environment. The goal of this article is to create awareness of the ethical issues in the scent marketing industry.
In particular, we illuminate areas of concern regarding the use of scents to persuade, and its potential to make consumers
vulnerable to marketing communications. Since this is a new frontier for marketers, we begin with an explanation of what makes
the sense of smell different from other senses. We then provide a description of how scents are used in marketing, past research
on the power of scents, and the theoretical basis for, and uses of scents to influence consumers. This brings us to the discussion
of the ethical considerations regarding the use of this sense. We close with several future research ideas that would provide
more evidence of how the sense of smell can, and should be used by marketers.
Keywordsambient scent-attitudes-behaviors-influence-marketing
The First Edition of this contemporary classic can claim to have put ‘consumer culture’ on the map, certainly in relation to postmodernism. Updated throughout, this expanded new edition includes a fully revised preface that explores the developments in consumer culture since the First Edition. Among the most noteworthy areas discussed are the effect of global warming on consumption, the rise of the new rich, changes in the North/South divide and the new diversity of consumer culture. The result is a book that shakes the boundaries of debate, from one of the foremost writers on culture and postmodernism of the present day.
In this paper I discuss the potential role and utility of photographs in exploring the aesthetic dimension of processes of organizing. Beginning with a review of the growing significance within organization and management studies literature of the so-called ‘non-rational’ elements of human-being at work, I question why these issues appear to have become subjects worthy of specific scholarly attention at the turn of the century (Williams 2001). Within this discussion, I recognise the embodied nature of organization and make links between some of the characteristics of contemporary (Western) consumer culture, and aesthetics – with particular emphasis on the context of work and organizations. Following from this, I move to consider how it might be possible to gather data about these phenomena in an organizational setting. The limitations of language as a medium of articulating aesthetic experience due to the sensory nature of these phenomena are examined as a condition which undermines the efficacy of traditional text-based research methods and I argue that these issues necessitate the employment of a more ‘sensually complete’ methodology – introducing the idea of photography as one step towards this end. In order to discuss the epistemological and methodological implications of this approach, I reflect on my experiences during an ethnographic study of the web-site design department of a global IT firm to suggest that photographs taken by the respondents of their work environment helped them to express the largely ineffable aesthetic experiences that resulted from the relationships they had with their physical surroundings. The photographs were used by the respondents in this research as a means of communicating their aesthetic experience during semi-structured interviews where the images served both as an ‘aesthetic lens’ through which to explore my research questions and as foci for discussion and reflection about those questions. Some of these photographs are displayed in this paper, juxtaposed with my narrative accounts to create what Mitchell (1994) has called an image-text. This rests on the assumption that written texts and images have relative merits as modes of dissemination in their own right, with neither taking precedence over the other in terms of authority, or claim to ‘truth’. As part of this discussion I problematize some assumptions about the capacity of images to serve as realist representations, arguing instead that photographic images are partial, selected and subjective interpretations of one reality wholly dependent on the photographers ‘visual culture’ (Pink 2001). In concluding, I briefly mention some of the practical and ethical issues surrounding the use of a camera and the taking of photographs in the research arena.
Photo novella does not entrust cameras to health specialists, policymakers, or professional photographers, but puts them in the hands of children, rural women, grassroots workers, and other constituents with little access to those who make decisions over their lives. Promoting what Brazilian educator Paulo Freire has termed "education for critical consciousness," photo novella allows people to document and discuss their life conditions as they see them. This process of empowerment education also enables community members with little money, power, or status to communicate to policymakers where change must occur. This paper describes photo novella's underpinnings: empowerment education, feminist theory, and documentary photography. It draws on our experience implementing the process among 62 rural Chinese women, and shows that two major implications of photo novella are its contributions to changes in consciousness and informing policy.
PIP
Contrary to the traditional approach of relying upon photographic images taken by health specialists, policymakers, and professional photographers to document what transpires in a particular community or subpopulation, photo novella encourages children, rural women, grassroots workers, and other constituents with little access to decision-makers to take their own photographs of life as they see it. This process of empowerment education enables community members with little money, power, or status to communicate to policymakers where change must occur. This paper describes photo novella's foundation in empowerment education, feminist theory, and documentary photography. It draws upon experience implementing the process among 62 rural Chinese women, highlighting the ability of photo novella to change consciousness and inform policy.