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Affiliative Objects.

Research output: Contribution to Journal/MagazineJournal articlepeer-review

Published
<mark>Journal publication date</mark>1/05/2005
<mark>Journal</mark>Organization
Issue number3
Volume12
Number of pages21
Pages (from-to)379-399
Publication StatusPublished
<mark>Original language</mark>English

Abstract

Through the case of a particular organization devoted to technological research and development, this paper investigates how values of the ‘new’ operate in what Appadurai (1986) has characterized as the social life of objects. Drawing on previous scholarship in anthropology and science and technology studies, I adopt the trope of the ‘affiliative object’ to describe the relational dynamics of association (and disassociation) that characterize the identification of objects and persons. This perspective emphasizes the multiplicity of objects within the unfolding and uncertain trajectories of organizational life, as both problem and resource for organization members. The paper examines how ‘object-centered sociality’ (Knorr-Cetina, 1997) is enacted as a strategic, but also contingent, resource in the alignment of professional identities and organizational positionings.

Bibliographic note

RAE_import_type : Journal article RAE_uoa_type : Sociology