The materiality turn in organization studies is the theoretical movement emphasizing objects, instruments and embodiments involved in organizations and organizing (the theoretical debate ) and the ontologies underpinnings theories about organizations and organizing, what deeply 'matters' in the study of organizations and organizing (the ontological debate; see e.g. Latour, 2007;Latour, B. (2007). "Can we Get our Materialism Back, Please?", Isis, 98(1), 138-142. de Vaujany and Mitev, 2016de Vaujany, F. X., & Mitev, N. (2016). "Introduction au Tournant Matériel", in de Vaujany, F.X., Hussenot, A. & Chanlat, J.F. (Eds) (2016). Les Théories des Organisations, Paris : Economica.).
In the context of organization studies (see e.g., Tsoukas and Knudsen, 2005Tsoukas, H., & Knudsen, C. (2005). The Oxford handbook of organization theory. Oxford Handbooks Online. or Clegg et al., 2006Clegg, S. R., Hardy, C., Lawrence, T., & Nord, W. R. (Eds). (2006). The Sage handbook of organization studies. Sage.), a turn is a collective direction of research, focused on some coherent sets of concepts, theories, and ideas, which represent a point of bifurcation for the field itself. Most turns in organization studies relate to broader ones in the social sciences and humanities.
The materiality turn is one of these major turns. It emerged in the nineties, precisely because materiality and the modes of existence of things were questioned by the digitalization of societies and organizations (Van Dijk, 2012Van Dijk, J. (2012). The network society. Sage Publications.), the disembodiment of agency (Hayles, 1999Hayles, N. K. (1999, 2008). How we became posthuman: Virtual bodies in cybernetics, literature, and informatics. University of Chicago Press.), and the increasingly distributed modalities of collective activity (e.g. with mobile technologies, digital nomadism, systematization of entrepreneurship, coworking spaces, end of work, see e.g. Engeström, Miettinen and Punamäki, 1999Engeström, Y., Miettinen, R., & Punamäki, R. L. (1999). Perspectives on activity theory. Cambridge University Press. or Turner et al., 2006Turner, W., Bowker, G., Gasser, L., & Zacklad, M. (2006). Information infrastructures for distributed collective practices. Computer Supported Cooperative Work, 15(2), 93-110.). The turn can be defined as an intellectual project, a forum that encompasses a diversity of ontologies, and it has a specific history.
Overview
The materiality turn corresponds to a broad intellectual project partly related to the symbolic approach of artefacts (see Galiardi, 1990Gagliardi, P. (Ed.). (1990). Symbols and Artifacts: Views of the Corporate Landscape (Vol. 24). Walter de Gruyter.): it develops post-discursive perspectives intended to make sense of the 'materiality' and 'matter-iality' of practices and processes at stake in organizations, organizing and management (Carlile and Langley, 2013;,Carlile, P. R., & Langley, A. (2013). How matter matters: Objects, artifacts, and materiality in organization studies (Vol. 3). Oxford University Press.Leonardi, P. M., Nardi, B. A., & Kallinikos, J. (2012). Materiality and organizing: Social interaction in a technological world. Oxford University Press on Demand. de Vaujany and Mitev, 2013De Vaujany, F. X., & Mitev, N. (2013). Materiality and space: organizations, artefacts and practices. Palgrave Macmillan.).
By contrast to debates about sociomateriality (emphasizing the co-constitution of materiality and sociality) which are more likely to lead to a strict relational ontology (see Orlikowski, 2007Orlikowski, W. J. (2007). "Sociomaterial Practices: Exploring Technology at Work". Organization Studies, 28(9), 1435-1448.), the materiality turn is a forum gathering a diversity of ontologies or ontological dimensions (de Vaujany and Mitev, 2016de Vaujany, F. X., & Mitev, N. (2016). "Introduction au Tournant Matériel en Théories des Organisations", in de Vaujany, F.X., Hussenot, A. & Chanlat, J.F. (Eds) (2016). Les Théories des Organisations, Paris: Economica.): phenomenology, pragmatism, critical realism, post-Marxism, post-structuralism, post-humanism, post-modernism, etc., which can all contribute and broaden the current debate about materiality.
History
The materiality turn has a specific history and originates from various historical sources, in particular: Marxism (a key source), Foucauldian studies, symbolic artefacts (and aesthetic) studies, material culture, science and technology studies (STS). These studies are largely post-Marxist in the sense that Marxist studies (e.g. with notions such as "Materialism", "Historical Materialism" or "Material dialectic") have been a major turning point both in the development of post-Hegelian ontologies and (probably far from Marx own view) in the disentanglement of ideal and material dimensions, or the distinction between Nature and Society, which are questioned today by some promoters of the materiality turn. The rediscovery of these seminal contributions has provided useful concepts such as materiality, material, devices, apparatus, modes of existence, intra-action, affordance, agentivity, entanglement, heterotopic space, material or sociomaterial practices, ontologies, process, network, meshwork, among others.
Following Latour (Latour, 2007: 139Latour, B. (2007). "Can we Get our Materialism Back, Please?", Isis, 98(1), 138-142.), the materiality turn is related to "the way we move knowledge forward in order to access things that are far away or otherwise inaccessible" (materiality) or "the way things move to keep themselves in existence." We propose to call this 'matter-iality', to emphasise how things matter.
Instrumentations, mediations, materializations, and preformations are at the heart of the materiality turn, which has strong intersections and commonalities with other turns such as the practice turn, communication turn, visual turn, process turn, performativity turn or spatial turn.
Both a set of theories and ontologies
If some researchers are interested in the materiality turn their focus on spaces, artefacts, objects, instruments, technologies, and bodies and their relationships with practices, others prefer to explore broader movements and associations. The latter are not so preoccupied with the usual dichotomies such as nature vs. culture, nature vs. society, or human vs. non-human entities.
Most of all, it seems that the materiality turn and the ontology turn largely converge. Exploring what deeply matters in the study of organizations and organizing leads (or should lead) to the reflexive identification of ontologies (Goodman, 2001);Goodman, D. (2001). "Ontology Matters: the Relational Materiality of Nature and Agro-food Studies". Sociologia Ruralis, 41(2), 182-200. Coole and Frost, 2010;Coole, D., & Frost, S. (Eds) (2010). New Materialisms: Ontology, Agency, and Politics. Duke University Press. Introna, 2013;Introna, L. D. (2013). "Epilogue: Performativity and the Becoming of Sociomaterial Assemblages" In de Vaujany, F.X. & Mitev, N. (Eds). Materiality and Space, Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan Press. (pp. 330-342). Jones, 2013;Jones, M. (2013). "Untangling Sociomateriality", in Carlile, P. R., & Langley, A. (2013). How Matter Matters: Objects, Artifacts, and Materiality in Organization Studies (Vol. 3). Oxford University Press. Kelly, 2014;Kelly, J.D. (2014). "The Ontological Turn in French Philosophical Anthropology Theory", Journal of Ethnographic Theory, 4 (1): 259–269. de Vaujany and Mitev, 2016de Vaujany, F. X., & Mitev, N. (2016). "Introduction au Tournant Matériel", in de Vaujany, F.X., Hussenot, A. & Chanlat, J.F. (Eds) (2016). Les Théories des Organisations, Paris : Economica.). Various answers exist about what deeply matters in the study of organizations and organizing, and what it means to be human, and how humanity is understood influences each perspective (Introna, 2013;Introna, L. D. (2013). "Epilogue: Performativity and the Becoming of Sociomaterial Assemblages" In de Vaujany, F.X. & Mitev, N. (Eds). Materiality and Space, Basingstoke, UK: Palgrave Macmillan Press. (pp. 330-342). de Vaujany and Mitev, 2016de Vaujany, F. X., & Mitev, N. (2016). "Introduction au Tournant Matériel", in de Vaujany, F.X., Hussenot, A. & Chanlat, J.F. (Eds) (2016). Les Théories des Organisations, Paris : Economica.). For some, relations and associations (involved in movements and assemblages) are the key ontological units. For others, it is more at the level of agency and intentionality (more or less embodied) that the main ontological unit is situated. Lastly, for some other researchers, sociological matter, what is expected to endure across time and space, structures, infrastructures, and superstructures, are expected to be the key units of analysis.
The materiality turn strives to go beyond oppositional debates between various proponents of sociomateriality, such as agential realism vs. critical realism or interpretivism vs. performativity. In short, the material turn is a theoretical stream covering what is expected to endure across time and space, or what is temporally and spatially constituted through everyday activities, i.e. tools, objects, artefacts, technologies, built spaces, bodies and embodiment and their relationships with organizations and organizing (Miller, 1998;Miller, D. (1998). Material Cultures: Why Some Things Matter. University of Chicago Press. 2005; Carlile and Langley, 2013;Carlile, P. R., & Langley, A. (Eds) (2013). How Matter Matters: Objects, Artifacts, and Materiality in Organization Studies (Vol. 3). Oxford University Press. Dameron, Lê and Lebaron, 2015Dameron, S., Lê, J. K., & LeBaron, C. (2015). "Materializing Strategy and Strategizing Material: Why Matter Matters ", British Journal of Management, 26(S1), S1-S12.).
The bulk of this stream of research hankers for post-discursive stances, i.e., visions which do not see language as a mere vehicle of representations and include non-linguistic (visual) elements in analysis (e.g,. through ethnographic analysis, see Meyer, Höllerer, Jancsary and Van Leeuwen, 2013Meyer, R. E., Höllerer, M. A., Jancsary, D., & Van Leeuwen, T. (2013). "The Visual Dimension in Organizing, Organization, and Organization Research: Core Ideas, Current Developments, and Promising Avenues" The Academy of Management Annals, 7(1), 489-555.). Some of these approaches adopt critical and historical views to explain how the materiality and semiosis of our world have changed in the post-WWII period (Hayles, 1999;Hayles, K. (1999). How We Became Posthumans. Chicago: University of Chicago. de Vaujany and Mitev, 2015de Vaujany, F. X., & Mitev, N. (2015). "The post-Macy Paradox, Information Management and Organising: Good Intentions and a Road to Hell?", Culture and Organization, 1-29. ).
Paradoxically, ontogenesis itself then needs to be historicized. Some suggest overcoming at some point the materialist terminology for a more technicist one (Latour, 2014;Latour, B. (2014). "Technical Does not Mean Material", Journal of Ethnographic Theory, 4 (1): 507–510. Lemonnier, 2014Lemonnier, P. (2014). "The Blending Power of Things", HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory, 4(1), 537-548.). It is also an ontological debate (de Vaujany and Mitev, 2016de Vaujany, F. X., & Mitev, N. (2016). "Introduction au Tournant Matériel en Théories des Organisations", in de Vaujany, F.X., Hussenot, A. & Chanlat, J.F. (Eds) (2016). Les Théories des Organisations, Paris: Economica.) about the main assumptions underlying the theorizations involved, for instance, in the debates mentioned above.