Tracking the sociomaterial traces of affect at the crossroads of affect and practice theories
Qualitative Research in Organizations and Management
ISSN: 1746-5648
Article publication date: 17 October 2018
Issue publication date: 13 September 2019
Abstract
Purpose
Affect is relevant for organization studies mainly for its potential to reveal the intensities and forces of everyday organizational experiences that may pass unnoticed or pass in silence because they have been discarded from the orthodoxy of doing research “as usual.” The paper is constructed around two questions: what does affect “do” in a situated practice, and what does the study of affect contribute to practice-based studies. This paper aims to discuss these issues.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors chose a situated practice – interviewing – focusing on the dynamic character of the intra-actions among its heterogeneous elements. What happens to us, as persons and researchers, when we put ourselves inside the practices we study? The authors tracked the sociomaterial traces left by affect in the transcript of the interviews, in the sounds of the voices, in the body of the interviewers, and in the collective memories, separating and mixing them like in a mixing console.
Findings
The reconstruction, in a non-representational text, of two episodes related to a work accident makes visible and communicable how affect circulates within a situated practice, and how it stiches all the practice elements together. The two episodes point to different aspects of the agency of affect: the first performs the resonance of boundaryless bodies, and the second performs the transformative power of affect in changing a situation.
Originality/value
The turn to affect and the turn to practice have in a common interest in the body, and together they contribute to re-opening the discussion on embodiment, embodied knowledge, and epistemic practices. Moreover, we suggest an inventive methodology for studying and writing affect in organization studies.
Keywords
Acknowledgements
The authors wish to express gratitude to Angelo Benozzo who supported the authors’ writing process with his friendship and encouragement. The authors would like to thank also the anonymous reviewers for their insightful comments. Naturally they are not responsible for the particular form that the arguments take here. This paper is a collaborative effort by the five authors, nevertheless if for academic reasons individual authorship has to be attributed, Silvia Gherardi wrote the sections “The encounter between the turn to practice and the turn to affect,” “The in-between-ness of bodies and trans-corporeality,” and the “Conclusion”; Annalisa Murgia wrote the sections “Second Episode: the transformative power of affect,” and the “Discussion”; Elisa Bellè wrote the section “First episode: resonance of boundaryless bodies”; Anna Carreri wrote the “Introduction,” and Francesco Miele wrote the section “Affect and empirical research: a methodological note.”
Citation
Gherardi, S., Murgia, A., Bellè, E., Miele, F. and Carreri, A. (2019), "Tracking the sociomaterial traces of affect at the crossroads of affect and practice theories", Qualitative Research in Organizations and Management, Vol. 14 No. 3, pp. 295-316. https://doi.org/10.1108/QROM-04-2018-1624
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2018, Emerald Publishing Limited