Writing Spaces — Performativity in Media Work

Abstract

Our everyday experience of living in the here-and-now is performed through a complex network of relationships and meanings attached to people, things and ideas. Yet some organizational spaces we occupy matter more than others (cf. Halford & Leonard, 2006; Tyler & Cohen, 2010). A challenge is to study organizational spaces as they are being performed (Beyes & Steyaert, 2011), particularly with a focus on different changing modes of materiality as artefacts move and shape spaces and simultaneously change the artefacts and their materiality (Knox et al., 2008). In this chapter we draw upon two different but overlapping strands of research: the study of organizational spaces and materiality. Space and spatial practices have in different ways gained new interest within social sciences with the writings of, for example, Michel Serres, Edward Soja, Nigel Thrift, Gilles Deleuze and Michel Augé. The idea of space being a product of social relationships or networks reveals space as compelling and controlling, and providing social boundaries for subjectivity. But it also opens up space to be challenged: we can liberate ourselves from the cages and prisons in which we find ourselves. But space is also material with walls, tables, staircases and computer software providing important building blocks of spatial practices. In this chapter we particularly highlight the anthropological work of Daniel Miller and the ways in which matter becomes meaningful and changes in different contexts and places.