Böhm, Steffen (2003) The political event : impossibilities of repositioning organisation theory. PhD thesis, University of Warwick.

Preview

Text WRAP_THESIS_Bohm_2003.pdf - Submitted Version Download (15Mb) | Preview

Request Changes to record.

Abstract

In this thesis I outline a political problem of positioning organisation theory. I
maintain that there are projects of positioning, depositioning and repositioning,
which articulate organisation in different political ways. To dialectically critique
the politics of these projects I discuss the way philosophers of destruction,
deconstruction and impossibility conceptualise the political event. I argue that
these speculative philosophies share a political belief in the need to question and
show the limits of the ways social reality is positioned in the realms of modernity,
capitalism and `Empire', and explore possibilities of how the world might look
different. I maintain that the politics of the positioning project is to turn
organisation into the hegemony of management, which I show by engaging with
the particular discourse of knowledge management. The politics of the
depositioning project is to resist the hegemony of management in multiple ways; I
discuss particularly how organisation theorists emphasise the precariousness,
plurality and locality of processes of organising. Although the political resistances
by the depositioning project are of great importance, I argue that there is a
tendency to not link their politics to questions of hegemony, which I show to have
certain depoliticising effects. In response to these failures, the politics of the
repositioning project aims to repoliticise organisation theory by speculating about
a new hegemony of social organisation. My engagement with the so-called 'anticapitalist
movement' and questions of its organisation and politics shows,
however, that such an attempt of repositioning is itself an impossible or
undecidable event. Nevertheless, I argue that it is precisely this political event of
impossibility that calls for a speculative decision to be made; a decision, however,
which will always fail to fully represent social organisation.

Item Type:	Thesis or Dissertation (PhD)
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > HD Industries. Land use. Labor H Social Sciences > HM Sociology
Library of Congress Subject Headings (LCSH):	Organizational sociology, Organizational sociology -- Research
Official Date:	September 2003
Dates:	Date Event September 2003 Submitted
Institution:	University of Warwick
Theses Department:	Warwick Business School
Thesis Type:	PhD
Publication Status:	Unpublished
Supervisor(s)/Advisor:	Burrell, Gibson; Dale, Karen
Extent:	xxii, 300 leaves.
Language:	eng

Request changes or add full text files to a record

Repository staff actions (login required)

View Item

Downloads