boundary objects, and institutional work: “consuming...

Boundary Objects, “Translation”, and Institutional Work: “Consuming

History” and “A History of the World in 100 Objects”

Francesco Crisci, PhD Department of Economics and Statistics

University of Udine

2credits: British Museum, Collection online, Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) license.

“Dürer’s Rhinoceros” September 17 episode, object #75, fifteenth part of the project, related to 1375-1550 AD, in the quintet of objects dedicated to the theme “On the threshold of the modern world”

BENI, ATTIVITA' CULTURALI,TERRITORIO, VALORIZZAZIONE,

PRODUZIONE, PROMOZIONE Prof. Andrea Moretti

28 Aprile 2011

Ciclo di seminariArts&Economics: Cultura, Management e Territorio

ISTITUTO REGIONALE DI STUDI EUROPEI

Agenda

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• Research Object (artifacts redefine collective practices, triggering processes of social ordering in terms of institutional dynamics in markets)

• Theoretical Context: “institutional dynamics in markets” in a “posthumanist practice theory orientation” (markets as social systems; co-construction of reality; focus on change and consumers’ work)

• Empirical Context: collecting as boundary objects and archaeology as “discipline of things” (“material cultural as text” analogy)

• Methods: “A History of the World in 100 Objects” as a “revelatory incident” (ANT as research strategy: “translation of a socio-technical system”)

• Findings: “properties of archaeological objects” as relational materialism, performativity of “historical discourse”, and “consuming history” as institutional work

• Discussion/Conclusion: “consuming history” as a process of “self- and social construction […]” (“consumption practices [as a process of translation] define how the past manifests itself in society” [as institutional work])



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Research Object: materiality of consumption processes (a “problematization”) (*)

• artifacts in the relationship between production and consumption: (i) introducing the analogy of “material culture as text” (relational materiality); (ii) considering the practices of institutional work that connect “human and non-human actors”; (iii) in terms of “institutional dynamics of markets” (performativity)

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• N.B. (1) - unit of analysis, between agency & structure: (i) no “organizational field”; (ii) no “structure”; but “action-net” or (iii) practice-based approach (**)

• N.B. (2) - critical perspective in Management & Organization Studies: (i) “the role of actors in changing/maintaining institutions” (Lawrence et al. 2009), (ii) “social action as a situated affair” in terms of practice-theory (Orlikowski 2007; Gherardi 2012), (iii) “the critical role of the body and material things in all social affairs” (Nicolini 2012)

(*) Alvesson, Sköldberg 2009; Alvesson, Bridgman, Willmott 2009; Alvesson, Sandberg 2013(**) Schatzki et al. 2001, Schatzki 2002, 2010; Gherardi 2012; Orlikowski 2007; Orlikowski, Scott 2008; Monteiro, Nicolini 2014; Nicolini et al. 2012; Nicolini 2012



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Theoretical Context: (1) Markets as Institutions & New Institutional

Theory (NIT)• Institutional Work (IW) (Lawrence, Suddaby 2006), “practice approach” in

marketing (Araujo, Kjellberg 2009; Araujo et al. 2010), and “institutional dynamics in markets” (Dolbec, Fischer 2015; Scaraboto 2015; Scaraboto, Fischer 2013): • “a market may be defined as an organizational field encompassing a

set of institutions and actors, governed by institutional logics, supported by institutional work, and characterized by institutional boundaries” (Dolbec, Fischer 2015, p. 1449)

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• Callon (1998) defines market (in terms of “what it does”), as a “sociotechnical arrangements or assemblages (agencements)” that: • “organize the conception, production and circulation of goods”; “organize monetized

exchages”; • deploy “rules and conventions; technical devices; metrological systems; logistical

infrastructure; texts, discourses and narratives; technical and scientific knowledge, as well as the competencies and skills embodied in living beings”;

• and “construct and delimit spaces wherein conflicts or competitive forces can be resolved through pricing mechanisms”



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Theoretical Context (2): Artifacts, Relational Materialism, and

Performativity • STS, SCOT, economic sociology (Latour 1987; Knorr-Cetina 1997;

Bijker et al. 1987; Callon 1998; Law 2009; MacKenzie et al. 2007) • artifacts work as agents” (“from objects to things”) (Carlile et

al. 2012; Orlikowski 2007): (i) “materials are part of the way in which social processes and organizations are enacted and stabilized; (ii) “institutional agency is better conceived as both emergent and distributed” (Monteiro, Nicolini 2015, p. 61)

• artifacts in the production and distribution of the actors’ skills (extended self/collecting: Belk 1988; 2014) affecting the social structure related to production and consumption interaction (in terms of consumers’ immaterial labor: Cova, Dalli 2009a, 2009b)



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Empirical Context: Archaeology as “discipline of things”

• “The History of the World in 100 Objects” (a British Museum and BBC Radio 4 project) as “revelatory incident” (Belk 1988, 2006):

The “MacGregor-method”: «In these programs, I’m travelling back in time and across the globe, to see how we humans have shaped our world and been shaped by it over the past two million years. And I’m going to tell a history of the world in a way which has not been attempted before, by deciphering the messages which objects communicate across time – messages about peoples and places, environments and interactions, about different moments in history and about our own time as we reflect upon it. I’ve chosen just a hundred objects […], carefully designed and then either admired and preserved or used, broken and thrown away – from a cooking pot to a golden galleon, from a Stone Age tool to a credit card, and all of them come from the collection of the BM» (MacGregor, ep. #01, January 2010, BBC Radio 4).



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Methods (1): data collection & research process

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• a(n) (n)ethnographic case study (Van Maanen 1988; Agar 1996; Kozinets 2010/2015); • an interpretative/critical perspective (Garfinkel 1967; Marcus, Fischer 1999;

Alvesson et al. 2009; Tadajewski 2010; Bajde 2013) based on “translation of a socio-technical system” (*)

• data collection (Belk 2006; Kozinets 2015): • the podcast of the program (BBC Radio 4 ); • the book (2010, Penguin); • public interviews and video materials on the project (YouTube); • officials websites and platforms (BM and BBC Radio 4); • annual reports, strategic documents of the BM; • official reviews of the book, readers’ remarks, international press review(*) ANT as research strategy: Law 1986, 2009; Callon 1986, 1998; Latour 1987, 2005; MacKenzie et al. 2007; Muniesa 2014; in consumer research: Bajde 2013 critical perspective in marketing theory and consumer research: Tadajewksi 2010 (Tadajewksi 2010a, 2012; Peñaloza et al. 2011; Parsons, MacLaran 2009; Peñaloza et al. 2011)



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• “Material-cultural-as-text-analogy”(Belk 1988, 2010): “archaeology as discipline of things” (Olsen 2013, Olsen et al. 2012);

• properties of “archaeological objects” in “historical narrative” (book project, 2010; TED Conference, 2012):

• the necessary poetry of things; • the survival of things; • the biographies of things; • the things across time and space; • the limits of things

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Methods (2): archaeological objects as “boundary objects” (BOs)

“objects become BOs [Star, Griesemer 1989; Star 2010] when they function as translation and transformation devices at the disciplinary or professional boundaries between different work communities” (Nicolini et al. 2012)

The “MacGregor-method”: «The things we make have one supreme quality – they live longer than us. We perish, they survive; we have one life, they have many lives, and in each life they can mean different things. Which means that, while we all have one biography, they have many» (MacGregor, 2012, TED Conference)

• the interpretative flexibility • the material/organizational structure • the question of scale/granularity



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Findings (1): Materiality, “Consuming History” and Institutional Work

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“consuming history” (*) Popular History “Amateurs” Histories Performing and Playing

HistoryEnabling work - Narrative History - Local History - Reinhabiting the Past

Policing - Autobiography & Personal Memoir

- Roots, Identity, Genealogy -

Mythologizing - Public Historian, Historian in Public

- Popular Archaeology, Treasure Hunting

- Role Playing and History

Valourizing - - New Sources, New Tools, New Archives

- Living Museums/Living History

Routinizing - Historical Biography - History as Hobby, Collecting & Antiquing -

“institutional work” (**) definitions

Enabling work the creation of rules that facilitate, supplement and support institutions, such as the creation od authorizing agents or diverting resources

Policing ensuring compliance through enforcement, auditing, and monitoringMythologizing preserving the normative underpinning of an institution by creating and sustaining

myths regarding its historyValourizing/Demonizing

providing for public consumption positive and negative examples that illustrates the normative foundations of an institution

Routinizing actively infusing the normative foundations of an institution into the participants’ day to day routines and organizational practices

fonte: (*) de Groot 2009, Olsen et al. 2012, Olsen 2013; (**) Lawrence, Suddaby 2006;



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• Narrative History • Autobiography and Personal Memoir • Public Historian, Historian in Public• Historical Biography

• Local History • Roots, Identity, Genealogy • Popular Archaeology/Treasure Hunting • New Sources, New Tools, New Archives • History as Hobby/Collecting &

Antiquing

• Reinhabiting the Past• Role Playing and History • Living Museums/Living History

• Popular History

• “Amateurs” Histories

• Performing and Playing History

first-order categories second-order themes aggregate dimensions

Consum

ing History as a

form of Institutional W

ork

Findings (2a): How “Objects became Things” (archaeological artifacts work as agents)



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• Narrative History• Local History • Reinhabiting the Past

• Autobiography & Personal Memoir

• Roots, Identity, Genealogy

• Public Historian/Historian in Public

• Popular Archaeology/Treasure Hunting

• Role Playing and History

• New Sources, New Tools, New Archives

• Living Museums/Living History

• Enabling work

• Policing

• Mythologizing

• Valourizing

• Historical Biography • History as Hobby/

Collecting & Antiquing• Routinizing

Findings (2b): How “archaeological things” are part of the institutional work?

«How a society consumes its history is crucial to the understanding of contemporary popular culture, the issues at stake in representation itself, and the various means of self- or social construction available. Indeed, it allows us to question the very notion of consumption, too, articulating the concept across a variety of different media and socio-economic models. Consumption practices influence what is packaged as history and work to define how the past manifests itself in society» (de Groot 2009: Introduction)

“Consuming History” concept:



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Discussion/Conclusions: “Key Takeaways” and Implications

• from “(re)turn of things” & “materiality of the historical narrative” (Olsen et al. 2012; Olsen 2013) to an “archaeology of matter” (in consumer behavior: Belk 2010, 2013; Tumbat, Belk 2013; Belk et al. 1989):

• empirical implication (de Groot 2009): “the phenomena considered here tell us much about the possible relationship to, and valuing of, historical knowledge. They offer a series of versions of the past that suggest a variety of experience but also a deep sophistication in reading and responding to historical discourse” (p. 6)

• theoretical implications for market system analysis (for example: Marketing Theory, 2016, special issue; Giesler, Fischer 2016):

• markets as complex social systems • co-constitution of marketplace reality • focus on change and development



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References (to complete the extended abstract)

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Handobook of Marketing Theory, London, Sage, 193-280. Bajde D. (2013), “Consumer culture theory (re)visits actor-network theory: Flattering consumption studies”, Marketing Theory, 13, 227-242. Belk R.W., Wallendorf M., Sherry J. (1989), “The Sacred and Profane in Consumer Behavior: Theodicy and Odyssey”, Journal of Consumer Research,

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210-222. Tumbat G., Belk R.W. (2013), “Co-construction and performancescapes”, Journal of Consumer Research, 12, 49-59. Van Maanen J. (1988), Tales of the Field: On Writing Ethnography, UCP, Chicago. 14



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Università di Udine Dipartimento di Scienze Economiche e Statistiche

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boundary objects, and institutional work: “consuming...

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