A return to materialism? Putting social history back into place

This is an Accepted Manuscript of a book chapter published by Bloomsbury Academic in New Directions in Cultural and Social History on 22 February 2018, available online at: https://www.bloomsbury.com/uk/new-directions-in-social-and-cultural-history-9781472580818/. The Accepted Manuscript is under embargo until 22 August 2019.Peer reviewe

Diverse pathways in becoming an adult: the role of structure, agency and context

Although the transition from education to work has been a topic of much research, there is still lack of understanding regarding experiences of recent cohorts of young people. Moreover, much of the debate has focused on the polarization of youth transitions, at the neglect of a large group of young people who fall outside this dualism. This paper introduces a diverse pathways view offering a more comprehensive understanding of changing youth transitions and examines how transitions are shaped by interactions between structure and individual agency. The study is based on data from the British Household Panel Study (BHPS) and the UK Household Longitudinal Study (UK-HLS) using sequence analysis to identify transition patterns among cohorts born in 1980-84 and 1985-1989. Five distinct clusters could be identified, differentiating between those who participate in extended education, two pathways dominated by continuous employment, either directly after completing compulsory schooling at age 16 or after some further education, and two pathways characterized by exclusion from the labor market (either through prolonged experience of unemployment or inactivity). Both structural and agency variables are associated with variations in transition patterns, pointing to the need of conceptualizing the role of the agent as well as that of structures and resources for a better understanding of the processes underlying the selection into different pathways

Transmedia Strategies for Participatory Politics in Russia: Alexey Navalny’s Grassroots Campaign

Transmedia storytelling scholarship has been progressing rapidly over recent decades. Yet, a question that remains open is the lack of analysis of political transmedia campaigns. This political communication thesis contributes to filling that gap. Its goal is to develop a flexible and locally-specific approach to analysing transmedia political campaigning. To understand the context that affects the destinies of transmedia grassroots campaigns, the study turns to social movement and grassroots activism scholarships. In particular, it employs the idea of political opportunity structures to conceptualise those external opportunities and threats that affects transmedia campaigns in politics. To mitigate the negative aspects of a political climate, reduce the costs of political participation for active citizens and make their political change efforts more efficient, political organisers can mobilise valuable resources through transmedia campaigning, the thesis argues. Thus, the thesis incorporates the analysis of opportunity structures and mobilising resources to propose a new analytical approach to the study of political transmedia campaigns. Because this analytical approach reinterprets transmedia strategies through the lens of opportunity structures and resource mobilisation, I will refer to it in the thesis as the opportunity structures and mobilising resources (OSMR) analytical approach. The thesis tests it with the case study of Alexey Navalny\u27s 2013 mayoral campaign for Moscow. The case study outlines the opportunity structures of modern Russia and discusses the transmedia strategies Navalny’s campaign used to overcome some of their negative aspects. In doing so, the thesis enriches transmedia storytelling scholarship with insights from other disciplines and offers a flexible and locally specific approach to analysing political transmedia campaigns

Organizing space and time through relational human-animal boundary work: exclusion, invitation and disturbance

In this paper we examine the role that animals play within human organizational boundary work. In so doing, we challenge the latent anthropocentricism in many, if not most, theories of organization that locate animal agencies outside the boundary work that is said to constitute organizing. In developing this argument we draw together diverse strands of work mobilizing Actor-Network Theory that engage the entanglement of human/nonhuman agencies. In bringing this work together we suggest humans may organize, even manage, by conducting relational boundary work with animal agencies, spacings and timings. Our argument is empirically illustrated and theoretically developed across two cases of the spacings and timings of construction project organizations – an infrastructure project in the UK and a housing development in Scandinavia. Construction projects are well-known for their tightly managed linear timings and for producing the built spaces that separate humans and animals. Three concepts – Invitation, Exclusion and Disturbance – are offered to help apprehend how such organizings of space and time are themselves dependent upon entanglements between human and animal agencies. We conclude by suggesting that animals should not be negatively constituted as an ‘Other’ to human organizing, or indeed management, but rather acknowledged as sometimes constituting human capacities to organize, even managerially control, space and time

Governance architectures for inter-organisational R&D collaboration

Inter-organizational relationships are becoming an increasingly important source of competitive advantage and innovation. This study looks at these relationships in the context of inter-organizational R&D collaborations in the European automotive industry. Previous work led to the proposal of a competence-based portfolio framework that explains the design of the inter-organizational architecture and an indicative relationship strategy. This framework comprises four distinct types of governance architecture and relationship strategy. This paper reports on the first confirmatory transfer study, conducted at Jaguar Land Rover, in the UK. The study illustrates developmental paths and patterns in the evolution of inter-organizational relationships using empirical insights. Their configuration and dynamic evolution is contingent upon the ‘engageability’ of the partner companies’ competences based on their attractiveness, transferability and maturity. The study shows that the contingency framework is transferable and practically useful, as well as yielding further practical narrative about inter-organizational practice

The European Union as mistake - realizations of European unity

The European Union (EU) is the latest in a long line of failed attempts at European unity. Motivated by adverse experience, its founders proscribed a political and legal form for ‘Europe’, and their followers have sought to impose order and to effect integration. As predictable as the attempt has been the failure (attested by the frequent, complex, unresolved crises). It is not merely that the circumstances, conditions, and concerns have markedly changed (and continue to change) over time; it is more that ‘Europe’ cannot be successfully subjected to such schemes. Considered constructively, the experience of the EU offers insights into the process of constituting a polity. The first and last is the insight that unification is an iterative process, not an outcome; an ‘ever closer union’ is not an end state (literally or figuratively). These lie partly in the inescapably contextual nature of attempts at unifying Europe, each attempt being contingent on the circumstances etc. prevailing. A common will to order and belief in societal malleability may be present at particular periods among particular European elites (be they driven by functionalism, megalomania, or otherwise). However, determinative is the reality that no such schemes are realizable. The political and legal forms that might be suitable to the challenge of constituting the polity exceed our cognitive grasp. ‘Europe’ is too untidy and too fissiparous to be ruled through deliberation. Invariably, the best-laid plans of European statesmen have gone, and will go, awry. In this essay, I consider the meaning of European unification, not so much according to the normative or empirical details of given attempts, as according to the epistemological magnitude of repeated failures. In the way of conclusion, I will pointedly not propose a way out of the contemporary crises etc. or an own project for European unity

The "Placing" of Identity in Nomadic Societies: Aboriginal Landscapes of the Northwestern Plains of North America

Nomadic Northwestern Plains First Nations expressed fundamental symbols semiotically across media. Landscapes were transformational assemblages of signs and symbols; circle and power axis signified the cosmos. Ritual monuments were linked through animal ceremonialism to cosmic renewal. Animals were limitless if appropriate ritual was maintained. Formalized circular household plans signified the cosmos with the horizon-bounded outer landscape "read" by extension as consistent with the constructed inner world. Cyclic time had spatial parallels, with sites as cyclic iterations of prototypic place and performance. This aboriginal life-world was a web of overlapping territories with mobile centres and radiating itineraries. Sharing of resources and ritual sites, and transient co-residence of groups were facilitated by hand-signs that reinforced sym bolic "unity-within-diversity." These characteristics all had definable landscape correlates and consequences. Monuments were "of" a site, not "upon" it: deriving substance and power from location, they became "natural" elements. Résumé Les premières nations nomades des plaines du Nord-Ouest exprimaient sémiotiquement leurs symboles fondamentaux par divers canaux. Les pay sages étaient des assemblages en transformation de signes et de symboles et le cercle et l'axe de puissance représentaient le cosmos. Les monuments rituels étaient liés au renouveau cosmique par des cérémonies mettant en scène des animaux. Ceux-ci étaient considérés inépuisables si on observait le rituel adéquat. Les habitats circulaires représentaient le cosmos et le paysage extérieur délimité par l'horizon pouvait par extension être « lu » comme conforme aux structures du monde intérieur. Les cycles du temps avaient leurs pendants spatiaux, des circuits cycliques de prototypes d'emplacements et d'activités. Ce monde autochtone était une toile de territoires qui se chevauchaient, avec des centres mobiles autour desquels rayonnaient des trajets. Le partage des ressources et des lieux rituels et la coexistence passagère des groupes étaient facilités par le langage gestuel qui renforçait une symbolique « unité dans la diversité ». Ces caractéristiques avaient toutes des corrélations et des conséquences définissables dans le paysage. Les monuments étaient d'un emplacement, pas superposés à lui, et tiraient substance et force du lieu. Ils devenaient des éléments « naturels »

Governing inter-organisational R&D supplier collaborations:a study at Jaguar Land Rover

This article discusses the importance of collaboration with suppliers and partners during research and development (R&D) technology projects. It details how this can be accomplished using the collaborative enterprise governance (CEG) concept to manage a technology project. CEG is based on the premise that parts of companies work with parts of other companies, which are reconfigured on dynamic bases according to a variety of different internal and external factors. This article presents an overview of the founding literature, the CEG and its methodology, and examples based at Jaguar Land Rover in the UK. CEG has been used here to explain why some technology projects have succeeded while others have done less well. This article concludes by offering new propositions, inducted through grounded theory, relating to the successful management of R&D projects, which should be picked up by future research studies in the area