The limits of process: On (re)reading Henri Bergson

This article offers a reading of the work of Henri Bergson as it pertains to organizations through the lens of ideas drawn from critical realism. It suggests an alternative to interpretations based on a stark division between process and realist perspectives. Much of the existing literature presents a rather partial view of Bergson’s work. A review suggests some interesting parallels with themes in critical realism, notably the emergence of mind. Critical realism has a focus on process at its heart, but is also concerned with how the products of such processes become stabilized and form the conditions for action. This suggests that attention might usefully be paid to the relationship between organizational action and the sedimented practices grouped under the heading of ‘routines’. More attention to Bergson’s account of the relationship between instinct, intuition and intelligence provides a link to the social character of thought, something which can be mapped on to Archer’s work on reflexivity and the ‘internal conversation’. This suggests that our analyses need to pay attention to both memory and history, to building and dwelling, rather than the one-sided focus found in some process theory accounts

Maurice Merleau-Ponty and Gilles Deleuze as interpreters of Henri Bergson

In this essay I concentrate on the relation between Deleuze's philosophy and Merleau-Ponty's. I examine the question of whether their philosophical projects are as widely divergent as Deleuze wants the reader to believe. Since explicit references to Merleau-Ponty in the work of Deleuze are rather rare, I take the detour of examining their interpretations of Henri Bergson, a philosopher they both recognized as an important source of inspiration. More specifically, I study the references to Bergson in the work of Merleau-Ponty and Deleuze that deal with difference and immanence. I show that Merleau-Ponty merely reads Bergson as a difference thinker, whereas Deleuze stresses Bergson's immanentism. However, these two positions do not exclude one another. First of all, there are many similarities with respect to which Bergsonian concepts both authors focus on and how they interpret them. Secondly, as Deleuze's own philosophy illustrates, a philosophy of difference is not incompatible with immanentism. However, there is one passage in Cinema I. The Movement-Image in which Deleuze states that there is a fundamental difference between the battle against dualism as it is fought by Bergson on the one hand, and phenomenology on the other. Since Deleuze's search for an immanent philosophy relies heavily on concepts introduced by Bergson, this passage can help to indicate to what degree the aforementioned similarities between Deleuze's and Merleau-Ponty's immanentism hold

Medicated bodies: Mental distress, social media and affect

Social media are increasingly being recruited into care practices in mental health. This paper analyses how a major new mental health social media site (www.elefriends.org.uk) is used when trying to manage the impact of psychiatric medication on the body. Drawing on Henri Bergson's concept of affection, analysis shows that Elefriends is used at particular moments of reconfiguration (e.g. change in dosage and/or medication), periods of self-experimentation (when people tailor their regimen by altering prescriptions or ceasing medication) and when dealing with a present bodily concern (showing how members have a direct, immediate relationship with the site). In addition, analysis illustrates how users face having to structure their communication to try to avoid 'triggering' distress in others. The paper concludes by pointing to the need to focus on the multiple emerging relationships between bodies and social media in mental health due to the ways the latter are becoming increasingly prominent technologies through which to experience the body when distressed

The fundamental problem of command : plan and compliance in a partially centralised economy

When a principal gives an order to an agent and advances resources for its implementation, the temptations for the agent to shirk or steal from the principal rather than comply constitute the fundamental problem of command. Historically, partially centralised command economies enforced compliance in various ways, assisted by nesting the fundamental problem of exchange within that of command. The Soviet economy provides some relevant data. The Soviet command system combined several enforcement mechanisms in an equilibrium that shifted as agents learned and each mechanism's comparative costs and benefits changed. When the conditions for an equilibrium disappeared, the system collapsed.Comparative Economic Studies (2005) 47, 296–314. doi:10.1057/palgrave.ces.810011