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1 – 10 of over 3000
Open Access
Article
Publication date: 23 August 2019

Maria Ehrnström-Fuentes

The purpose of this paper is to examine the politics involved in local struggles against forestry extractivism. The forestry sector is dependent on vast areas of land for tree…

3419

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to examine the politics involved in local struggles against forestry extractivism. The forestry sector is dependent on vast areas of land for tree plantations. This creates deep-rooted conflicts between global corporations that seek access to natural resources and locals whose way of life requires the use of the same land.

Design/methodology/approach

This study draws on a political ontology frame of reference and storytelling methodology to build on testimonies of three small-scale farmers who actively seek to resist forestry plantations next to their land in rural Uruguay. The stories reveal the impossibilities they face when raising claims in the public political sphere and how they lack the means to organise strong collective resistance.

Findings

One of the testimonies reveals how the farmers engage in a form of “politics of place” (Escobar, 2001, 2008) to counter the power of the proponents of forestry and the further expansion of plantations. This form of politics strengthens and politicises the ontological difference between extractive and non-extractive worlds. The farmers seek to build new imaginations of rural living and sustainable futures without the presence of extractive corporations. They fulfil this aim by designing community projects that aim to revitalise ancient indigenous legends, set up agro-ecological farms, and teach schoolchildren about the environment.

Originality/value

The struggles of the farmers indicate the territorial transformations involved in (un)making (non)extractive places and the need to expand the analysis of the politics involved in struggles against extractivism beyond social struggles.

Details

critical perspectives on international business, vol. 18 no. 1
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1742-2043

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 9 July 2013

Richard Ek

Tourism studies have conceptualized social media as artifacts and networks of tangible objects based on neat distinctions and categorizations. These neat ontological distinctions…

Abstract

Tourism studies have conceptualized social media as artifacts and networks of tangible objects based on neat distinctions and categorizations. These neat ontological distinctions and categorizations have been discussed within the academic field of actor-network theory. Several scholars have most significantly investigated the spatialities of messier ways of conceptualizing and approaching societal objects and the trajectories of societal phenomena. Efforts are being made to widen the ontological register that has traditionally dominated social science research, including tourism studies. The purpose of this chapter is to address and problematize the social media pertaining to tourism, focusing on a research project as analytical and methodological lens.

Details

Tourism Social Media: Transformations in Identity, Community and Culture
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78190-213-4

Keywords

Open Access
Article
Publication date: 25 July 2022

Andrea Lucarelli

This study aims to outline an axiology of inclusivity, which can facilitate self-reflection on the possible impact of acting and pursuing a more inclusive branding and marketing…

1573

Abstract

Purpose

This study aims to outline an axiology of inclusivity, which can facilitate self-reflection on the possible impact of acting and pursuing a more inclusive branding and marketing for places.

Design/methodology/approach

By deconstructing the main assumption, which constitutes the new inclusive paradigm in the marketing and branding of places as more participatory, responsible and democratic, this article tackles critical and pragmatist concerns about the political dimension and its implications for branding and marketing theories and practices in the realm of places.

Findings

The article argues that, to be understood and enacted as inclusive, branding and marketing should be seen and act as (bio)political arts of government, characterized by the impolitical as an alternative form of political praxis, whose axiological foundation is based on a particular form of civism, which offers a different mode and stance of approaching political effects and impacts for all stakeholders involved.

Originality/value

Little has been written about the political value, substance and appearance that indicate inclusivity as a fundamental notion for participation, engagement and democracy. This article contributes to the existing literature, arguing that inclusivity should be demystified, as it may present a self-fulfilling discourse that might create political problems.

Details

Qualitative Market Research: An International Journal, vol. 25 no. 5
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1352-2752

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 30 July 2020

Christian Nold

The purpose of this paper is to articulate an ontological anarchist approach for an engaged post-human politics and present insurrection training as a pragmatic tool for…

226

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to articulate an ontological anarchist approach for an engaged post-human politics and present insurrection training as a pragmatic tool for researchers to directly transform the world.

Design/methodology/approach

The paper analyses how post-humanism has been criticised for dissolving political agency. It shows that this is due to the way post-humanism has been framed as sensitising and including non-humans into liberal politics. Instead, the paper examines anarchist-influenced post-humanism and combines this with the notion of multiple ontologies and ontological interventions. The paper presents the notion of insurrection training as offering the possibility for researchers to become emotionally sensitised to ontological difference. A case study of the “Seeds of Hope East Timor Ploughshares action” (1996) is used to illustrate what insurrection training and ontological interventions look like in practice. Finally, the paper makes suggestions as to how post-human researchers can apply this approach in their everyday lives.

Findings

The paper suggests that beyond a liberal framing of post-humanism as inclusion, there is also an ontological anarchist post-humanism that can support transformative impacts in the world. This form of post-humanism offers specificity of intervention and reflexive training practices. Insurrection training can offer new possibilities for post-humanist researchers: experience ontological difference, de-trivialise the everyday, connect to social movements, make post-human politics “doable” and offer “direct” change.

Originality/value

The paper addresses discussions that claim post-humanism is disabling political change. Its contribution is to map an anarchist post-humanism and extend this with concepts of multiple ontologies. It proposes the notion of insurrection training which places attention on the role of the researcher as an active agent that needs to be sensitised to ontological difference to carry out interventions. A case study of direct action illustrates what ontological intervention and insurrection training look like in practice. The case study suggests that insurrection training is an everyday performative practice that integrates and negotiates the personal, material and political. Finally, the paper suggests how researchers can adopt such an approach in their everyday lives.

Details

International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy, vol. 41 no. 3/4
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0144-333X

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 7 August 2019

Roser Pujadas and Daniel Curto-Millet

While digital platforms tend to be unproblematically presented as the infrastructure of the sharing economy – as matchmakers of supply and demand – the authors argue that…

Abstract

While digital platforms tend to be unproblematically presented as the infrastructure of the sharing economy – as matchmakers of supply and demand – the authors argue that constituting the boundaries of infrastructures is political and performative, that is, it is implicated in ontological politics, with consequences for the distribution of responsibilities (Latour, 2003; Mol, 1999, 2013; Woolgar & Lezaun, 2013). Drawing on an empirical case study of Uber, including an analysis of court cases, the authors investigate the material-discursive production of digital platforms and their participation in the reconfiguring of the world (Barad, 2007), and examine how the (in)visibility of the digital infrastructure is mobilized (Larkin, 2013) to this effect. The authors argue that the representation of Uber as a “digital platform,” as “just the technological infrastructure” connecting car drivers with clients, is a political act that attempts to redefine social responsibilities, while obscuring important dimensions of the algorithmic infrastructure that regulates this socioeconomic practice. The authors also show how some of these (in)visibilities become exposed in court, and some of the boundaries reshaped, with implications for the constitution of objects, subjects and their responsibilities. Thus, while thinking infrastructures do play a role in regulating and shaping practice through algorithms, it could be otherwise. Thinking infrastructures relationally decentre digital platforms and encourage us to study them as part of ongoing and contested entanglements in practice.

Details

Thinking Infrastructures
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78769-558-0

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 12 January 2021

Roger Friedland

In this paper, I compare Theodore Schatzki’s practice theory, the existential phenomenology of Martin Heidegger upon whom Schatzki drew in its formation, and my own theory of…

Abstract

In this paper, I compare Theodore Schatzki’s practice theory, the existential phenomenology of Martin Heidegger upon whom Schatzki drew in its formation, and my own theory of institutional logics which I have sought to develop as a religious sociology of institution. I examine how Schatzki and I both differently locate our thinking at the level of practice. In this essay I also explore the possibility of appropriating Heidegger’s religious ontology of worldhood, which Schatzki rejects, in that project. My institutional logical position is an atheological religious one, poly-onto-teleological. Institutional logics are grounded in ultimate goods which are praiseworthy “objects” of striving and practice, signifieds to which elements of an institutional logic have a non-arbitrary relation, sources of and references for practical norms about how one should have, make, do or be that good, and a basis of knowing the world of practice as ordered around such goods. Institutional logics are constellations co-constituted by substances, not fields animated by values, interests or powers.

Because we are speaking against “values,” people are horrified at a philosophy that ostensibly dares to despise humanity’s best qualities. For what is more “logical” than that a thinking that denies values must necessarily pronounce everything valueless? Martin Heidegger, “Letter on Humanism” (2008a, p. 249).

Details

On Practice and Institution: Theorizing the Interface
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-80043-413-4

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 25 July 2019

Sven Modell

The purpose of this paper is to contrast actor-network theory (ANT) and critical realism (CR) as two contemporary approaches to critical accounting research and advance a critique…

1398

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to contrast actor-network theory (ANT) and critical realism (CR) as two contemporary approaches to critical accounting research and advance a critique centred on the neglect of social structures in the former perspective.

Design/methodology/approach

This is a conceptual paper based on a critical reading of ANT inspired by CR.

Findings

Although the author does not question the ability of ANT to be imbued with critical intent per se, the author is critical of its tendency to downplay the significance of pre-existing, social structures and the concomitant neglect of enduring and ubiquitous states of structural stability as an ontological possibility. This may lead to an overly optimistic view that naively valorises agency as a largely unfettered engine of emancipation. By contrast, CR offers a deeper and more nuanced ontological conception of how social structures constrain as well as enable emancipation. In contrast to the highly empiricist epistemology of ANT, it also provides an epistemological rationale for going beyond empirical descriptions of how social structures work to advance theoretically informed, explanatory critiques that are better suited for realising less easily observable opportunities for emancipation.

Research limitations/implications

The paper advances the debate about how social structures should be examined in critical accounting research and the relative merits of doing so in advancing emancipatory projects.

Originality/value

The paper is an attempt to contrast ANT and CR as two distinct approaches to critical accounting research and thus extends the debate about what such research is and could be.

Details

Accounting, Auditing & Accountability Journal, vol. 33 no. 3
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0951-3574

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 9 November 2015

Nicholas J. Rowland and Matthew J. Spaniol

This paper asks “Why is the future in futures studies plural?” The attitude toward inquiry, based on post-actor-network theory (ANT) literature, positions philosophical questions…

Abstract

Purpose

This paper asks “Why is the future in futures studies plural?” The attitude toward inquiry, based on post-actor-network theory (ANT) literature, positions philosophical questions about the ontological character of the future within the context of “planning” for it (i.e. in practice). Multiplicity, as a post-ANT sensibility, helps one make sense of the empirical materials. This paper examines the possibility that rather than being alternatives to one another, plural futures and the singular future might co-exist in practice, and, thus, constitute a multiplicity.

Design/methodology/approach

In this case study, “planning” is narrative scenario planning. The second author facilitates dialogue-based long-term strategic scenario planning processes, primarily in Scandinavia and Northern Europe, and contributes a wealth of professional experience to the project. The first author, an academic, shadows the second author. This paper examines experiential and observational data for evidence of the ontological character of the future. Elements of a typical scenario planning process, in this case, about the possibility of crewless (i.e. unmanned) shipping vessels are demonstrated – although, insight into the crewless ship is submerged by our analytical attentiveness to the ontology of the future.

Findings

The findings bear on what sort of “object” the future is. Practices associated with planning for the future appear to transform it so that one future becomes many, and, without irony, managing the growing number of futures seems to be a core function of planning for the future. The implication is that neither plural futures nor the singular future is – individually – satisfactory to capture what is found in practice. It is both plural and singular; ontologically, it is the future multiple.

Originality/value

The original contribution is in demonstrating how plural futures and the singular future co-exist in practice. Thus, an eclipse of the future by futures can only ever be partial. For “futures” to be conceptually potent, “the future” must be at least provisionally believable and occasionally useful. Otherwise, if “the future” were so preposterous an idea, then “futures” would cease to be a critical alternative to it. Futures needs the future; they are relationally bound together in a multiplicity. This paper considers what such a logical reality implies for a field that distances itself from the future and self-identifies with futures.

Article
Publication date: 9 March 2012

Lindsay Hamilton

Organizational analysts have long questioned the ways in which professional knowledge becomes powerful. The purpose of this paper is to extend that enquiry by examining two…

951

Abstract

Purpose

Organizational analysts have long questioned the ways in which professional knowledge becomes powerful. The purpose of this paper is to extend that enquiry by examining two professional groups in the UK – doctors and veterinarians.

Design/methodology/approach

The paper examines a selection of social interactions, tensions and disagreements between practitioners and non‐medical actors and draws on a range of qualitative research methods, particularly structured interview and participant observation, to analyse and interpret these as “epistemological conflicts”.

Findings

Hospital doctors and veterinary surgeons share a common belief that “truth” and “facts” are at the core of their clinical and surgical work. This positivist paradigm underpins a range of practical engagements with bodies and diseases and lends them a sense of ontological security when dealing with people from outside their professions, especially those without medical training. This paper examines the practical effects that such ontological tensions can have. In exposing some of these effects, this paper questions the often taken‐for‐granted divisions between science and arts, religion and medicine, and takes a more heterdox approach in analyzing social interactions.

Originality/value

The paper advocates philosophical, methodological and theoretical heterodoxy. The findings are viewed through a number of different theoretical lenses; from actor network theory and sociology of technology and science (STS) to deconstruction, frame theory and semiotics. The paper makes no attempt to choose between these approaches and instead argues that a “messy” and multiple understanding, both of theory and practice, is needed to gain insights into the tricky politics of knowledge and its effects in practical settings.

Details

International Journal of Organizational Analysis, vol. 20 no. 1
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1934-8835

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 4 October 2023

Hamid H. Kazeroony

This chapter reviews different ontological positions and uses modernism, postmodernism, structuralism, and poststructuralism to illustrate how each changes the nature of research…

Abstract

This chapter reviews different ontological positions and uses modernism, postmodernism, structuralism, and poststructuralism to illustrate how each changes the nature of research when attempting to decolonize the research method.

Details

Decoloniality Praxis: The Logic and Ontology
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-80262-951-4

Keywords

1 – 10 of over 3000