AIME [ORG] workshop at Montreal - Saturday 22 March 2014 - Schedule
Workshop Objectives
To put to the test, exemplify, and object to certain theses advanced on the mode of existence [ORG]
Explore - theoretically and empirically - the crossings between [ORG] and other modes of existence.
Discuss writing strategies for Chapter 14 (the state of agreement and disagreement)
Schedule
9:00 - 9:15 - Welcome and Introductions
9:15 - 10:30 - Put [ORG] to the test
10:30 - 10:45 - Break
10:45 - 12:00 - Exploration of Crossings
12:00- 13:15 - Lunch
15:15 - 15:00 - Exploration of Crossings
15:00 - 15:15 - Break
15:15 - 16:00 - Summary and Writing Strategies
Participants:
Members of the LOG team:
Nicolas Bencherki (U. at Albany, SUNY)
Chantal Benoit-Barné (U. of Montréal)
Boris Brummans (U. of Montréal)
Mathieu Chaput (U. of Montréal)
François Cooren (U. of Montréal)
Thomas Martine (U. of Montréal)
Kirstie McAllum (U. of Montréal)
Daniel Robichaud (U. of Montréal)
Consuelo Vasquez (U. of Québec at Montréal)
Members of the AIME team
Bruno Latour (Sciences Po, Paris)
Patrice Maniglier (Université Paris Ouest-Nanterre)
Christophe Leclercq (Sciences Po, Paris)
Pierre-Laurent Boulanger (Sciences Po, Paris)
Video Recording: Pierre-Luc Chabot, Frédérik Matte
Schedule for the Day
1.Introduction by Bruno Latour
2.Putting [ORG] to the test: “What does it mean to act and speak “organisationally?”
We propose a specific case to test the definition of [ORG] proposed in Chapter 14. Two issues/themes have been chosen from what LOG understands as the “values” or “explicit felicity and infelicity conditions” (i.e. what [ORG] maintains...or, rather, who maintains [ORG]).
2.1 The Organization as an act of organizing AND the organization as actor
To “speak of organization in its language” we must take into account simultaneously the action of the organizer (or of self organization) and the organized beings who take part in this action: who speaks well and what is made to speak.
2.2 What makes [ORG[is the interweaving of scripts
The presence of scripts is not, by itself, a felicity condition of [ORG]/ For there to be “organization” (in the two senses of the term), there must be an interweaving of scripts (which not only reflect the piling up of contradictory scripts (pg. 399), but also their aggregation by alignment.
Case: The tectonics of scription in a tenant organization
3.Exploration of crossings [ORG] [TEC], [ORG] [POL], , [ORG], [LAW], [MOR], [ATT]: How and with whom to negotiate?
3.1 [ORG], [REP], [ATT], [MOR] and company...author-ity and authority (Auteurité et autorité).
Case: Doctors without Borders (MSF)
Through following the idea that the conditions of felicity and infelicity of ORG reflect a consistent dynamic that dominates some scripts and loses others, it appears important to us to question the “author-ity” (l’auteurité) of these texts. This question returns us to a notion which is somewhat absent in the book, namely authority.
3.2 Crossings [ORG] [TEC] [ATT]
Case: Negotiation of a wiki in an organisation
This involves the presentation of a wiki to the scientific director of an organization and the discussion which follows. The presentation of the wiki can be read as a technological breakage [TEC] starting from certain organizational scripts [ORG] , a breakage in which certain ideas the wiki and its presenter are attached to [ATT] boil over. The discussion focuses on the risk of the interruption of scripts initiated by the wiki [ORG] and on the tricks that enable them to be repaired [TEC].
Case: Roundtable on Road Safety
The Quebecois roundtable on road safety is an interorganizational dialog that unites a large diversity of actors who are mandated with counseling the Minister of Transportation on measures likely to reduce the number of deaths and serious injuries on the roads of Quebec. The continuous establishment and functioning of this collective are interesting for our purposes among others because they superimpose the modes [ORG] and [POL] and make them cohabitate. We aim to examine an excerpt of discussion where the actors place themselves “above” their organizational scripts to call them into question, but where this “organizational” calling into question operates largely in the “political” mode of unification.
Case: “Death by Document”
This “auto-ethnographic” case demonstrates that a declaration of euthanasia functions both as a legal means of making us capable of acting [LAW], and also as an organizational script that determines how we ought to act as members of a collective [ORG].
- Summary and Discussion of writing strategies for Chapter 14
Example of subjects to examine:
- The Canonical example of the meeting between Paul and Peter.
- Dropping the Ball = a catastrophe for [ORG] vs. normal for [POL]
- Organizational scripts = many of us vs. Political Scripts: A single us?
- Key concepts: authority, inequality, injustice, suffering?
- Arriving at a statement of disagreement,
- If se define [ORG] in this way, what do we lose?
Updates:
See the report here
[Thanks to Michael Thomas for the translation]