Showing papers on "Performativity published in 2019"
TL;DR: In this article, the authors examine the ways in which ClassDojo is altering the disciplinary landscape in schools through the datafication of discipline and student behaviour, and present a case study of one of the most successful classes.
Abstract: This paper critically examines the ways in which ClassDojo is altering the disciplinary landscape in schools through the datafication of discipline and student behaviour. ClassDojo is one of the mo...
94 citations
TL;DR: The influence of Foucault's oeuvre has had a remarkable and continuing influence on the field of Organization Studies and has been traced over the past thirty years or so as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: Since the establishment of Organization Studies in 1980, Michel Foucault’s oeuvre has had a remarkable and continuing influence on its field. This article traces the different ways in which organizational scholars have engaged with Foucault’s writings over the past thirty years or so. We identify four overlapping waves of influence. Drawing on Foucault’s Discipline and Punish, the first wave focused on the impact of discipline, and techniques of surveillance and subjugation, on organizational practices and power relations. Part of a much wider ‘linguistic’ turn in the second half of the twentieth century, the second wave led to a focus on discourses as intermediaries that condition ways of viewing and acting. This wave drew mainly on Foucault’s early writings on language and discourse. The third wave was inspired by Foucault’s seminal lectures on governmentality towards the end of the 1970s. Here, an important body of international research investigating governmental technologies operating on subjects as ...
90 citations
TL;DR: The authors examines the emergence of international agency as an empirical phenomenon and discusses three social-theoretical traditions: poststructuralism, performance studies, and actor-network theory, and highlights four insights that emerge from the contributions and challenge how IR has traditionally imagined agency.
Abstract: The academic discipline of International Relations (IR) has long pondered the questions of what it means to act in international politics and who can do so. However, the particular way in which IR has approached the problem of agency has somewhat masked important dynamics in international politics. By approaching the question of agency as an analytical problem that needs to be resolved before engaging with empirical material, IR has failed to see that who can act is often uncertain and contested. This special issue examines the emergence of international agency as an empirical phenomenon. Rather than analysing what given agents do, the contributions study how practices, performances and networks create and transform agency. In this introductory article, we prepare the ground for this distinct approach to studying international politics. We review how IR has addressed the problem of agency, and we discuss three social–theoretical traditions that see agency as an emergent phenomenon: poststructuralism, performance studies and actor-network theory. Finally, we highlight four insights that emerge from the contributions and challenge how IR has traditionally imagined agency.
54 citations
TL;DR: Callon's performativity thesis has illuminated how economic theories and calculative devices shape markets, but has been challenged for its neglect of the organizational, institutional and politica....
Abstract: Callon’s performativity thesis has illuminated how economic theories and calculative devices shape markets, but has been challenged for its neglect of the organizational, institutional and politica...
45 citations
01 Jan 2019
Abstract: ................................................................................................................... 3 Table of Figures ...................................................................................................... 9 List of Abbreviations ............................................................................................. 15 Glossary ................................................................................................................. 18
38 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, it has been proposed that engagement with activism might make critical organizational scholarship more relevant to practitioners, however, there is a lack of systematic inquiry into how such engage...
Abstract: It has been proposed that engagement with activism might make critical organizational scholarship more relevant to practitioners. However, there is a lack of systematic inquiry into how such engage...
38 citations
01 Jan 2019
TL;DR: Barad's theoretical-methodological considerations provide connection points for two concepts which are very influential in sociology: for Pierre Bourdieu's praxeology and Judith Butler's queer-theoretical considerations concerning socio-ontological precariousness of human life as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: The most pressing questions for how the world, with its range of phenomena, can be shared in a fair and egalitarian manner, how differences can be made possible while not being essentialized and exploited, in short: how alterity can be practiced as entanglement/relatedness, is currently discussed by authors, whose – still heterogeneous – approaches refer to a so called ‘New Materialism’. In this contribution the works of one of the representatives of this approach, the queer-feminist science theorist and physicist Karen Barad, are taken as a starting point to discuss, what kind of impulses her theory project of ethico-onto-epistemo-logy and her methodology of agential realism has to offer to a practice oriented sociology. Barad’s theoretical-methodological considerations provide connection points for two concepts which are very influential in sociology: for Pierre Bourdieu’s praxeology and Judith Butler’s queer-theoretical considerations concerning socio-ontological precariousness of (human) life. In addition to these entanglements, Barad’s concepts – as argued here – enable theoretical and methodological shifts of these practice oriented sociological and performativity-theoretical approaches regarding their understanding of sociality and anthropocentric anchoring.
32 citations
TL;DR: Marti et al. as mentioned in this paper explored the boundary conditions of performativity and showed that theories become self-fulfilling when they become selffulfilled, in the sense that they self-fill.
Abstract: Comment on: Marti, E, & Gond, J-P 2018 When do theories become self-fulfilling? Exploring the boundary conditions of performativity Academy of Management Review, 43(3): 487–508
29 citations
02 Jan 2019
TL;DR: In this paper, an increasing awareness of the fluidity and performativity of gender has allowed for recognition of recognition of gender as a "choice" and "choice", which has led to an increase in acceptance of gender.
Abstract: Social and cultural understandings of gender have shifted dramatically in recent years. Arguably, an increasing awareness of the fluidity and performativity of gender has allowed for recognition of...
29 citations
11 Sep 2019
TL;DR: Performativity, Cultural Construction, and the Graphic Narrative draws on Performance Studies scholarship to understand the social impact of graphic novels and their socio-political function as discussed by the authors, addressing issues of race, gender, ethnicity, race, war, mental illness and the environment.
Abstract: Performativity, Cultural Construction, and the Graphic Narrative draws on Performance Studies scholarship to understand the social impact of graphic novels and their socio-political function. Addressing issues of race, gender, ethnicity, race, war, mental illness, and the environment, the volume encompasses the diversity and variety inherent in the graphic narrative medium. Informed by the scholarship of Dwight Conquergood and his model for performance praxis, this collection of chapters makes links between these seemingly disparate areas of study to open new avenues of research for comics and graphic narratives. An international team of authors offers a detailed analysis of new and classical graphic texts from Britain, Iran, India, and Canada as well as the United States. This book will be of interest to students and scholars in the areas of communication, literature, Comics Studies, Performance Studies, sociology, languages, English, and Gender Studies, and anyone with an interest in deepening their acquaintance with and understanding of the potential of graphic narratives.
27 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, a middle school Black girl, Cameryn, is deconstructed using a hermeneutic process to reveal how she positions herself as a seemingly disinterested, resistant mathematics student through a facade called blackgirl face.
Abstract: While race, class, and gender are often treated as well-defined and static identities within mathematics education research, we explore gender, race and class as performances through the case of a middle school Black girl, Cameryn. Scenes from video artifacts are deconstructed using a hermeneutic process to reveal how Cameryn positions herself as a seemingly disinterested, resistant mathematics student through a facade we call blackgirl face. Blackgirl face not only reflects the particularities of Black girlhood for Cameryn but provides a new conceptual lens for understanding mathematics learning as a performance, requiring and enabling children to simultaneously negotiate race, class, and gender.
TL;DR: In this article, a critical realist perspective on performativity and how new conceptions of corporate social responsibility (CSR) have performative effects is presented. But the authors focus on the causal relationships that underpin performative tendencies and do not address the structural boundary conditions under which particular CSR can be expected to become performative.
Abstract: Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to advance a critical realist perspective on performativity and use it to examine how novel conceptions of corporate social responsibility (CSR) have performative effects.
Design/methodology/approach
To illustrate how the authors’ critical realist understanding of performativity can play out, the authors offer a field study of an Australian packaging company and engage in retroductive and retrodictive theorising.
Findings
In contrast to most prior accounting research, the authors advance a structuralist understanding of performativity that pays more systematic attention to the causal relationships that underpin performative tendencies. The authors explain how such tendencies are conditioned by pre-existing, social structures, conceptualised in terms of multiple, intersecting norm circles. The authors illustrate their argument empirically by showing how specific conceptions of CSR, centred on the notion of “shared value”, were cemented by the interplay between the causal powers embedded in such norm circles and how this suppressed alternative conceptions of this phenomenon.
Research limitations/implications
The findings draw attention to the structural boundary conditions under which particular conceptions of CSR can be expected to become performative. Greater attention to such boundary conditions, denoting the social structures that reinforce and counteract performative tendencies, is required to further cumulative, yet context-sensitive, theory development on this topic.
Originality/value
The paper is the first to adopt a critical realist perspective on performativity in the accounting literature. This perspective strikes a middle path between the highly constructivist ontology, adopted in most accounting research concerned with performativity and realist criticisms of this ontological position for de-emphasising the influence of pre-existing, objective realities on performativity.
14 Jun 2019
TL;DR: In this article, the authors investigate the performative practices and effects of immigrant integration monitoring and show how statistical knowledge production of those classified in one way or another as "immigrants" and their so-called integration enacts a racialized imaginary of society.
Abstract: The dissertation Dissociating Society: Knowledge, Affect and Performativity in immigrant integration monitoring analyses a work of dissociation by investigating the performative practices and effects of immigrant integration monitoring. It shows how statistical knowledge production of those classified in one way or another as ‘immigrants’ and their so-called integration enacts a racialized imaginary of society. Through two focal points, narrating and affect, the dissertation demonstrates what is produced ‘between the walls’ of social scientific knowledge production that is intricately tied to population management by the state. It does so through a multi-sited ethnography of monitoring practices at various institutions and academic networks in four West European countries.
The chapters of the dissertation show and claim the making of difference-as-racialized distance in images of immigrant integration, the narration of perpetual arrival of ‘immigrant’ characters compared to those already in society, an imagination of ‘there’ on the basis of constantly questioning ‘where are you from?’, and the active presence of a societal gaze through which seeing is distributed in the professional field of monitoring immigrant integration. Two forms of affect, discomfort and anxiety, are analysed as performative in practices of immigrant integration monitoring, sustaining and reproducing a racialized imaginary of society. This is traced in difficulties in speaking that emerged from the inevitable paradoxes that make up the logics of monitoring immigrant integration. The community of practice does a lot of work to avert a reversal of figure and ground, specifically, by pushing the reference category representing society out of sight and placing ‘immigrants’ in the spotlight. This results in paradoxes analysed through the observations of speaking with a double voice, moments of stammering and slips of the tongue. Subsequently, the dissertation states that monitoring immigrant integration is a work of dissociation in which ‘society’ is moved away and purified from ‘others’ who are not good enough yet, not fitting in, on a distance, that is, those who are perpetually arriving.
Dissertation•
01 Jan 2019
TL;DR: In this paper, a qualitative longitudinal study of traumatic brain injury (TBI) related experiences was conducted with ten dyads, consisting of one person who had recently sustained a TBI and their chosen significant other, at two time intervals.
Abstract: Specific processes for supporting self-management, as prioritised in contemporary Western healthcare policy, generally focus on biomedical aspects of managing a condition that is constructed as a separate entity from the rest of a person’s life. However, uncertainties in supporting self-management for long term conditions like traumatic brain injury (TBI) persist, including a mismatch between patient and professional contexts, and under-theorisation of the concepts ‘self’ and ‘agency’. To better grasp these issues, I gathered accounts of TBI-related experiences since hospital discharge, using a qualitative longitudinal design. I specifically relied on narrative interviews with ten dyads, consisting of one person who had recently sustained a TBI and their chosen ‘significant other’ person, at two time intervals. I undertook iterative narrative analyses, initially identifying discourses portrayed by participants and tensions, conflicts or emotional connections across our interactions. I drew upon insights from Michael Bamberg’s positioning analysis of the self in brief moments of talk-in-interaction, and Judith Butler’s work on performativity, to explore how people are bound by positions or create possibilities within socially instituted and maintained norms and expectations. The findings illustrate how the subject position ‘you are your brain injury’ brings an agentive gap. The self is made and remade through co-constructed narrative scaffolds that shift in collaborative storytelling, enabling the (re)claiming of a desired sense of self. This research offers insights into dynamics of consistency and change, rather than the assumed disruption to the self, when cognitive and communicative functions alter following TBI. In conclusion, I suggest implications for healthcare professionals’ conceptualisation of supported self-management interactions. Rather than ‘having’ individualistic agency that is bolstered by the clinical intervention, agency is understood as a relational co-construction, offering a shift away from positioning of the ‘clinician as expert’ and opening possibilities to reaffirm a sense of self.
10 Apr 2019
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors examine existing approaches to conducting qualitative process research (i.e., studies that view phenomena as becoming or evolving over time) by analyzing published process research in six premier organizational journals from 2010 to 2017.
Abstract: This chapter examines existing approaches to conducting qualitative process research (i.e., studies that view phenomena as becoming or evolving over time) by analyzing published process research in six premier organizational journals from 2010 to 2017. We identify four modes of performing process research that we label evolutionary process stories, performative process stories, narrative process stories and toolkit-driven process stories, and explore the particular ways in which they formulate and link empirical and theoretical elements. We also identify some of their specific challenges and suggest directions for the future.
12 Mar 2019
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors explore how democratic practice is enacted by non-governmental organisation practitioners in a country in transition and seek to unpack the embodied experiences of people who are increasingly perceived by international stakeholders and scholars as being important actors in processes of democratisation.
Abstract: This thesis explores how democratic practice is enacted by non-governmental organisation practitioners in a country in transition and seeks to unpack the embodied experiences of people who are increasingly perceived by international stakeholders and scholars as being important actors in processes of democratisation. I offer an in-depth ethnographic account of the work of practitioners within a women’s NGO in Montenegro, the Women’s Rights Centre, as they seek to enact democratic practice within and through a context of patriarchy and corruption. Whereas the extant literature on democratic practice in relation to NGOs offers insight into the processes of democratisation in countries in transition, it does not, by and large, account for the lived experiences of practitioners as they strive to democratise their societies. Bearing this gap in mind, I turn to contemporary theories of democratic practice, deliberation and agonism, perspectives that explore democracy as participative engagement between people, groups and governments. I interrogate these from a poststructuralist perspective. Specifically, I interpret them through Judith Butler’s theory of embodied performativity, an account of agency within a matrix of re-iterative norms, which is adopted as my theoretical framework. Pursuing a participant-observer research identity, I draw on my own observations generated through a 30-month-long ethnography, 11 of which were spent in the field. I adopt a multimodal discourse analytic approach in analysing the multifaceted and embodied sense of what it means to enact democratic practice as an NGO practitioner. I present three broad democratic practices. The first, embodying democratic practice, surfaces the bodies of practitioners as sites through which democracy is enacted. The second, navigating corruption, illustrates the struggle of practicing democracy within a ubiquitous context of corruption. The third, the aesthetics of assembling, offers insight into how democratic practice can be enacted through the entanglement of different aesthetic mediums, connecting and drawing diverse people into a public assembly.
TL;DR: The authors argued that economists make markets in a smorgasbord of shapes and flavors. But no economists claimed an ability to fix markets; instead, they claimed to make markets "smorgasbin of shapes" and "flavours".
Abstract: Before the 1970s, no economists claimed an ability to fix markets; now economists make markets in a smorgasbord of shapes and flavours. Secondary commentary on market design fails to apprec...
TL;DR: In this article, the authors explore the ways in which practices of risk assessment exert material and semiotic effects that structure how penal subjects are constituted, imagined, and governed, and explore the relationship between risk assessment and penal subjects.
Abstract: This article explores the ways in which practices of risk assessment exert material and semiotic effects that structure how penal subjects are constituted, imagined, and governed. In so doing, it p...
TL;DR: In this article, the authors present an analysis of the critical observations of the state of the art of the prevailing educational systems today through evaluations by instituti..., based on an analysis based on critical observations.
Abstract: The study we are presenting in this article is based on an analysis of the critical observations of the state of the art of the prevailing educational systems today through evaluations by instituti...
TL;DR: The existing scholarly work on strategy implementation focuses on factors that either catalyze or obstruct the infusion of strategy into the organization as mentioned in this paper, while this renders valuable know-how available to the reader.
Abstract: Much of the existing scholarly work on strategy implementation focuses on factors that either catalyze or obstruct the infusion of strategy into the organization. While this renders valuable knowle...
TL;DR: This article surveys the literature on discourses and practices of masculinities through three waves: the unitarist, the pluralist and, finally, the performativist approach, concluding that none of them fully interrogate identity to theorize how our attachment to the security that it promises is illusory, and that posthumanist feminists come closest to realizing this and seeking an alternative embodied and ethical engagement with, rather than a competitive elevation of self over, the other.
Abstract: Apart from a few paragraphs reminiscing on how, in response to a publisher contacting us, Jill, Marilyn and I founded Gender, Work and Organization combined with a few comments on its evolution as a leading journal in our field, this article largely summarizes and seeks to develop my lifelong interests in discourses and practices of masculinity. It pays tribute to my doctoral students and/or research colleagues with whom many of these ideas concerning masculinities were shaped. The article then surveys the literature on discourses and practices of masculinities through the three waves: the unitarist, the pluralist and, finally, the performativist approach to discourses and practices of masculinity. A central argument of the article is that although each wave has contributed something of importance to the critical examination of masculinities, none of them fully interrogate identity to theorize how our attachment to the security that it promises is illusory. Posthumanist feminists come closest to realizing this and seeking an alternative embodied and ethical engagement with, rather than a competitive elevation of self over, the other. In the conclusion, there is a brief comment on how the global backlash from the political right has made struggles against dominant masculinities all the more urgent.
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors examine how the performativity-driven practices of care impact on the possibilities of social inclusion for marginalised students and argue that a plural social justice framework focusing on the politics of redistribution and recognition can provide the basis of a socially just education for marginalized students.
Abstract: With schools coming under pressure to perform and produce outcomes, the caring practices of the institution have been increasingly framed around issues of achievement, excellence and outcomes. In this article, we examine how the performativity-driven practices of care impact on the possibilities of social inclusion for marginalised students. Drawing on case study data from two 14-year-old students in a government secondary school located in a low socio-economic suburb of Melbourne, Australia, we argue that the performative ethic of care fails to cater for the more complex needs of these students. Lacking the qualities of ‘good student’ as independent and successful learners, these students are positioned and treated differently in their schools, leading to their weak sense of belonging to the institution. We maintain that a plural social justice framework focusing on the politics of redistribution and recognition can provide the basis of a socially just education for marginalised students.
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors argue that how we understand the moral stakes of this debate depends on divergent views regarding language use in social interactions and illustrate how these divergent perspectives are tied to competing language ideologies regarding clinical disclosure, which they call "disclosure ideologies".
Abstract: This article examines an ethical controversy that has received relatively little attention in public debates about the legalization of medical aid-in-dying (AID): should physicians inform patients that they have the option of hastening death? Drawing on ethnographic research about the implementation of AID in Vermont, I argue that how we understand the moral stakes of this debate depends on divergent views regarding language use in social interactions. Some stakeholders in this debate view a physician’s words as powerful enough to damage the patient-physician relationship or to influence a patient to hasten her death, while others believe that merely informing patients about AID cannot move them to act against their own values and preferences. I illustrate how these divergent perspectives are tied to competing language ideologies regarding clinical disclosure, which I call ‘disclosure ideologies’. My analysis of these two disclosure ideologies surrounding AID highlights disclosure practices in medicine as a rich site for medical anthropological theorizing on linguistic performativity and the social power of clinical language.
01 Jan 2019
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors argue that it is not necessary to declare a "performative turn" in social sciences and humanities that announces a paradigmatic shift, a dominant view, since it destabilizes the grounds on which truth claims are made on behalf of various objects and subjects that paradigms constitute.
Abstract: The languages of ‘performance’ and ‘performativity’ have become prominent within the disciplines of social sciences and humanities and their interdisciplinary fields, enabling researchers to bridge between arts and sciences as well as sciences and politics. The reasons for this prominence are quite complex and derive from various sources involving a variety of uses, so that it is best to avoid imposing a singular meaning to this development. It is not necessary to declare a ‘performative turn’ in social sciences and humanities that announces a paradigmatic shift, a dominant view. There is something about performativity that in fact would (and should) resist becoming a dominant paradigm, since it destabilizes the grounds on which truth claims are made on behalf of various objects and subjects that paradigms constitute. Moreover, from a perspective that emphasizes multiple meanings and functions of words and the ways in which they do things, to impose a singular meaning on multiple ways in which performativity has been taken up would be misleading. So, rather than an ostensible performative turn, I would rather speak about a performative perspective on doing social science and humanities research and its multiple origins and developments.
TL;DR: Action learning has evolved over a period of time when managerialism and performativity, which are aspects of neoliberalism, have become stronger and this explains, in part, the emergence of Critic...
Abstract: Action learning has evolved over a period of time when managerialism and performativity, which are aspects of neoliberalism, have become stronger and this explains, in part, the emergence of Critic...
TL;DR: In this article, the authors investigate accountability for farm animal welfare (FAW) in food companies and investigate a proposed solution, the Business Benchmark on Farm Animal Welfare (BBFAW), and how it has disrupted the informal rules of the market.
Abstract: The purpose of this paper is to investigate accountability for farm animal welfare (FAW) in food companies. FAW is an important social issue, yet it is difficult to define and measure, meaning that it is difficult for companies to demonstrate accountability. The authors investigate a proposed solution, the Business Benchmark on Farm Animal Welfare (BBFAW), and how it has disrupted the informal rules or culture of the market. The research questions centre on the process of response to BBFAW and the necessary characteristics for BBFAW to play a performative role in the market.,This paper employs an analysis of published BBFAW reports (2012–2017) and case study interviews in five BBFAW firms, in order to address the research questions.,The authors present evidence of a dynamic, repetitive process, starting with recognition of the importance of FAW and BBFAW, followed by internal discussions and the commitment of resources, and changes in communication to external stakeholders. Three necessary characteristics for performativity are proposed: common language, building networks and expanding markets.,This paper reflects a socially important issue that is under-represented in the accounting literature. The results provide an insight into the use of external accounts to drive collaboratively the social change agenda. The performativity process and identified characteristics contribute to expanding this literature in the accounting domain.
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors identify four areas of gender performativity and their varying significance in reaffirming or challenging unequal gender regimes: gender images, status differences, the body and sexuality.
Abstract: What do the relaxed social events held by companies and organizations do for continued gender inequality? This article argues that outings, barbecues and parties offer opportunities for members of an organization to challenge unequal gender regimes. But they can also end up maintaining these inequalities instead. The article draws on Joan Acker’s theory of gendered organizations, and Judith Butler’s notion of gender performativity. Based on 208 accounts of organizations’ social events, it identifies the following four areas of gender performativity and their varying significance in reaffirming or challenging unequal gender regimes: gender images, status differences, the body and sexuality. The findings indicate that practices reaffirming unequal gender regimes outnumber practices that possibly balance or break them. Paradoxically, practices that challenge unequal gender regimes, when joined with powerful responses from the hitherto privileged party, can form a vicious circle which again ends up continuing...
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors argue that hunger strikes sensitise us to modes of doing that work by becoming passive, silent, weak and vulnerable, and argue that the Brussels hunger strike also challenges these performances by failing to meet certain expectations about what it is to be political/act politically.
Abstract: Drawing on Judith Butler’s work and a series of studies associated with actor–network theory (ANT), this paper engages with political agency through the concept of performativity. Based on the empirical analysis of a hunger strike that took place in Brussels in 2012 and involved 23 illegal immigrants, we aim to achieve three things. First, we foreground physical bodies as political entities caught up in multiple modes of doing politics. Second, we show how such modes relate to one another, reinforcing citizenship, activism and party politics as specific performances of agency associated with liberal democracy. Finally, we argue that the Brussels hunger strike also challenges these performances by failing to meet certain expectations about what it is to be political/act politically. As the European refugee crisis is generating louder and louder voices, hunger strikes sensitise us to modes of doing that work by becoming passive, silent, weak and vulnerable. Such processes, we suggest, expand the standard repertoire of modes of doing and may refigure our understanding of the interaction between transnational and liberal democratic politics—in International Relations, ANT and beyond.
TL;DR: In this article, the authors present a historic study of foreknowledge-making and its relationship to the structuring of energy policy as an autonomous policy domain in France and Germany, focusing on two periods: the making of national energy policies as "energy supply policies" in the post-war decades; and challenges to dominant approaches to energy policy and energy modelling in the 1970s and 1980s.
Abstract: Ongoing debates about the need to deeply transform energy systems worldwide have spurred renewed scholarly interest in the role of future-visions and foreknowledge in energy policy. Forecasts and scenarios are in fact ubiquitous in energy debates: commonly calculated using energy models, they are employed by governments, administrations and civil society actors to identify problems, choose between potential solutions, and justify specific forms of political intervention. This article contributes to these debates through a historic study of foreknowledge-making – modelling, forecasting, and scenario-building – and its relationship to the structuring of ‘energy policy’ as an autonomous policy domain in France and Germany. It brings together two strands of literature: work in the anthropology of politics on ‘policy assemblages’, and STS research on the ‘performative’ effects of foreknowledge. The main argument is that new ways of assembling energy systems in energy modelling, and of bringing together policy networks in scenario-building and forecasting exercises, can contribute to policy change. To analyse the conditions under which such change occurs, the article focuses on two periods: the making of national energy policies as ‘energy supply policies’ in the post-war decades; and challenges to dominant approaches to energy policy and energy modelling in the 1970s and 1980s. It concludes by arguing that further research should not only focus on the effects of foreknowledge on expectations and beliefs (‘discursive performativity’), but also take into account how new models ‘equip’ political, administrative and market actors (‘material performativity’), and how forecasting practices recompose and shape wider policy worlds (‘social performativity’).
TL;DR: In this paper, a new view of performativity is proposed, one that re-introduces transcendence in the analysis but sees in it something dialogical to the process itself.
Abstract: Phenomenological, process-based and post-Marxist approaches have stressed the immanent nature of the ontogenesis of our world. The concept of performativity epitomizes these temporal, spatial and material views. Reality is always in movement itself: it is constantly materially and socially ‘performed’. Other views lead to a pre-defined world that would be mostly revealed through sensations (i.e. ‘representational perspectives’). These transcendental stances assume that a subject, although pre-existing experience, is the absolute condition of possibility of it. In this paper, we develop another view of performativity (either complementary or interrelated to an immanent stance), one that re-introduces transcendence in the analysis but sees in it something dialogical to the process itself. We draw from the notions of visibility-invisibility and continuity-discontinuity (Merleau-Ponty 1945/2013, 1964) in order to show how everyday activity both performs and makes visible the world. From that perspective, modes of visibility appear as conditions of possibility of performativity itself. We draw some implications for the conceptualization of management practices.