ANTi-History, relationalism and the historic turn in management and organization studies
Qualitative Research in Organizations and Management
ISSN: 1746-5648
Article publication date: 13 March 2017
Abstract
Purpose
This paper develops and provides insights on how researchers can use ANTi-History with a focus on one of its constitutive facets, relationalism. The purpose of this paper is to, first, develop a central facet of ANTi-History called relationalism and to outline how researchers interested in doing organizational history can use ANTi-History insights to undertake relational histories.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors propose four phases of the historic turn literature and situate ANTi-History and relationalism as an outcome of the fourth phase. The facet of relationalism is then explained and explored through five types of relations that the authors suggest act as sites of oscillation, where the past becomes (an immutable) history.
Findings
A central implication of the paper involves disrupting conceptualizations of the past and history as fixed. Instead, history is explained as a relational outcome of its constitutive social and political relationships.
Originality/value
The paper theoretically develops ANTi-History and relationalism while providing practical implications and tools for researchers to use it. Researchers are introduced to the notion of the site of oscillation. They are encouraged to focus their attention on five sites of oscillation: past-history, actor-network, human-nonhuman, researcher-traces of the past, and historical inscription-reading formation. These sites of oscillation are places where politics is at play and history is shaped or transformed.
Keywords
Citation
Durepos, G. and Mills, A.J. (2017), "ANTi-History, relationalism and the historic turn in management and organization studies", Qualitative Research in Organizations and Management, Vol. 12 No. 1, pp. 53-67. https://doi.org/10.1108/QROM-07-2016-1393
Publisher
:Emerald Publishing Limited
Copyright © 2017, Emerald Publishing Limited