[Commlist] CFP: The Somatechnics of Organizations

*Call for Papers | *Somatechnics Journal (University of Edinburgh Press) 
<https://www-euppublishing-com.proxy.library.uu.nl/loi/soma>
/The Somatechnics of Organizations/
*Abstract**deadline: *December 1st, 2021
*Full article deadline: *January 15th, 2021

*Call for papers: The Somatechnics of Organizations*

/Guest edited by Ohad Ben Shimon ((o.benshimon /at/ uu.nl) 
<mailto:(o.benshimon /at/ uu.nl)> /)/
/
Since canonical early Fordist-era scientific management theory (Taylor, 
1912) an almost taken-for-granted assumption within organizational 
theory and practice is that the role of the body is to bring the brains 
to work. The shift from an industrial (Fordist) economy to a 
knowledge-based (post-Fordist) economy has only helped facilitate the 
continual neglect and disappearance of the body where it is no longer 
the main instrument of production. Together with the rise in 
communication technology, creative production and predominantly 
cognitive forms of capitalism (Moulier-Boutang, 2012), “thinking for a 
living” (Davenport, 2005h) has highly impacted the way bodies are 
perceived and treated in organizations.

When critically interrogating the ontological foundations upon which 
current-day organizations constitute themselves, we encounter a 
stiffening and normalizing tendency to limit the imaginaries of what an 
organization actually is or could be. While organization has often come 
to mean “the appropriation of order out of disorder” (Cooper, 1990: 
193), and the act of organizing as one that “involves making patterns 
that endure in some way” (Parker, 2000) everyday lived experiences of 
bodies in organizations and political ecologies of degradation and 
environmental conflict seem to point to the opposite. Burn-out, fatigue, 
exhaustion, over-work, depression, decay, resource depletion, all 
indicate that disorder and entropy is gaining the upper hand.

Mainstream organizational theory itself seems to be confined in an 
inner-outer disciplined and disciplinary boundary making of what is 
included and what is excluded in such scholarship. The notion of a 
boundary that circumscribes ‘organization’ as a theoretical object aims 
to represent, rather than create, what organizations and organizational 
theory is meant to be and can do to face current-day societal challenges.

‘Organization’ has also played a key role as an explanatory metaphor and 
structuring concept in biology since modernity in the manner in which 
bodies are anatomized, classified and perceived as bounded entities 
which, more often than not, warrants the fixity of their ontological 
status. A well ‘organized body’ (Carter, 1983: 23) is /one/ which is 
“made up of structures, boundaries and organs” (Dale and Burrell, 2000: 
15), in a similar vein to how “organizations are social entities that 
are goal-directed, deliberately structured activity systems with an 
identifiable boundary” (Daft, 1989: 9-10) that understands organizing as 
a finished outcome (Cooper and Law, 1995) rather than a continual 
process of shifting relationships within networks of human and nonhuman 
actors.

Rather than forcing a totalizing account of what organization is or can 
mean when explored through the prism of soma, the body and technics, 
this special issue invites contributions that critically examine how the 
somatechnics of ‘organization’ can be made uncomfortable and uprooted 
from its ‘executive’ seat in organizational theory and practice. Instead 
this special issue would like to imagine and mobilize the somatechnics 
of ‘organization’ in myriad, active, embodied and process-based 
innovative ways.

We are interested in work that:

  * Discusses the human and non-human material and embodied dimensions
    of organizations/organizing
  * Imagines new ways of organizing human and non-human “bodies” and
    organizations alongside, in conflict or codependent on each other
  * Links disorganization/chaos, self-organization and resistance to the
    somatechnics of organizations
  * Explores artistic and curatorial practice-based research as
    alternative methods of organizing
  * Looks at Anarchism & the somatechnics of organization as an
    alternative theory of organizing
  * Uses empirical Anthropological/Ethnographic qualitative research
    methods/fieldwork to reveal the “hidden” somatechnics of organizations
  * Explores everyday organizational techniques and strategies (i.e
    time-management, planning, scheduling, labor rights) as ambivalently
    situated and embodied practices of control/emancipation.


    Please send 200-300 word abstracts to: (o.benshimon /at/ uu.nl)
    <mailto:(o.benshimon /at/ uu.nl)>

    *Abstracts are due: December 1^st , 2021.
    *Full articles of 6,000-,7000 words are due *January 15^th , 2022*.
    We also welcome shorter review essays of 5,000-6,000 words.

    References

  * Carter, R. Descartes’ Medical Philosophy. Baltimore, MD: Johns
    Hopkins, University Press, 1983.
  * Cooper, R. and Law, J. “Organization: distal and proximal views”,
    /Research in the Sociology of Organizations/, 13: pp. 237-74, 1995.
  * Cooper, R. “Organization/Disorganization,” in Hassard, J. and  Pym,
    D. (eds) The Theory and Philosophy of Organization: Critical Issues
    and New Perspectives. London: Routledge: pp. 167–97, 1990.
  * Daft, R. /Organization Theory and Design/, 3rd edition. St. Paul:
    West Publishing Company, 1989.
  * Dale, K. and Burrell, G. “What Shape Are We In? Organization Theory
    and the Organized Body.” /Body and Organization./ Edited by Hassard,
    J., Holliday, R. and Willmott, H. London: SAGE Publications Ltd, pp.
    16-30, 2000.
  * Davenport, T. H. /Thinking for a Living/. Boston, MA: Harvard
    Business School Press, 2005.
  * Moulier-Boutang, Y. /Cognitive Capitalism/. Polity Press, 2012.
  * Parker, M “Manufacturing Bodies: Flesh, Organization, Cyborgs”.
    /Body and Organization/. Edited by Hassard, J, et al., editors.
    /Body and Organization./London: SAGE Publications Ltd, 2000.
  * Taylor, F. “The principles of scientific management”, Addresses and
    Discussions at the Conference on Scientific Management Held Oct 12,
    13, 14, 1911, Amos Tuck School of Administration and Finance,
    Dartmouth College, pp. 22-55, 1912.


*No payment from the authors*will be required

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