TY - JOUR
T1 - Organizing degrowth
T2 - The ontological politics of enacting degrowth in OMS
AU - Vandeventer, James Scott
AU - Lloveras, Javier
PY - 2020/11/29
Y1 - 2020/11/29
N2 - As degrowth notions begin to gain traction within business schools and organization and management studies (OMS), this paper draws on Science and Technology Studies to interrogate the ontological politics of enacting degrowth in this relatively new context. We argue that the ‘degrowth multiple’ is a boundary object which takes on different forms as it circulates among different epistemic communities and within their respective boundaries, institutional arrangements, practices, and agendas. We investigate this empirically to elucidate how degrowth is being enacted within the OMS epistemic apparatus, revealing three set of practices characterizing extant OMS-degrowth engagements: stabilizations, reconfigurations, and projections. These motivate a subsequent discussion of the ontological politics unfolding through degrowth performances in OMS, its transformations (t)herein, and degrowth’s wider enrollment within the OMS epistemic apparatus. We thus contribute a reflexive intervention to organizing degrowth such that it remains a politically actionable concept across multiple contexts, and avoids becoming uncritically black-boxed, fetishized, and/or diluted by diverging cross-boundary enactments.
AB - As degrowth notions begin to gain traction within business schools and organization and management studies (OMS), this paper draws on Science and Technology Studies to interrogate the ontological politics of enacting degrowth in this relatively new context. We argue that the ‘degrowth multiple’ is a boundary object which takes on different forms as it circulates among different epistemic communities and within their respective boundaries, institutional arrangements, practices, and agendas. We investigate this empirically to elucidate how degrowth is being enacted within the OMS epistemic apparatus, revealing three set of practices characterizing extant OMS-degrowth engagements: stabilizations, reconfigurations, and projections. These motivate a subsequent discussion of the ontological politics unfolding through degrowth performances in OMS, its transformations (t)herein, and degrowth’s wider enrollment within the OMS epistemic apparatus. We thus contribute a reflexive intervention to organizing degrowth such that it remains a politically actionable concept across multiple contexts, and avoids becoming uncritically black-boxed, fetishized, and/or diluted by diverging cross-boundary enactments.
KW - Boundary object
KW - Degrowth
KW - Epistemic apparatus
KW - Multiple ontologies
KW - Organization and Management Studies
KW - Reflexivity
KW - Science and Technology Studies
UR - https://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?eid=2-s2.0-85096933278&doi=10.1177%2f1350508420975662&partnerID=40&md5=51ea131881342f4fb9239270a715c214
U2 - 10.1177/1350508420975662
DO - 10.1177/1350508420975662
M3 - Article
JO - Organization
JF - Organization
SN - 1350-5084
ER -