The fluid affective space of organizational practices

• Published in: Qualitative research in organizations and management Vol. 18; no. 5; pp. 1 - 19
• Main Author: Gherardi, Silvia
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Bradford Emerald Publishing Limited 2023; Emerald Group Publishing Limited
• Subjects: Aesthetics; Epistemology; Ethnography; Human subjects; Organization studies; Writing; Spacing; Agencement; Affective space; Fluidity; Posthumanist practice theory; Affective ethnography
• ISSN: 1746-5648; 1746-5656
• DOI: 10.1108/QROM-07-2022-2368

PurposeThe article contributes to affective ethnography focussing on the fluidity of organizational spacing. Through the concept of affective space, it highlights those elements that are ephemeral and elusive – like affect, aesthetics, atmosphere, intensity, moods – and proposes to explore affect as spatialized and space as affective.Design/methodology/approachFluidity is proposed as a conceptual lens that sits at the conjunction of space and affect, highlighting both the movement in time and space, and the mutable relationships that the capacity of affecting and being affected weaves. It experiments with “writing differently” in affective ethnography, thus performing the space of representation of affective space.FindingsThe article enriches the alternative to a conceptualization of organizations as stable entities, considering organizing in its spatial fluidity and in being a fragmented, affective and dispersed phenomenon.Originality/valueThe article's writing is an example of intertextuality constructed through five praxiographic stories that illustrate the multiple fluidity of affective spacing in terms of temporal fluidity, fluidity of boundaries, of participation, of the object of practice, and atmospheric fluidity.