Events at The University of Manchester
  • University home
  • Events
  • Home
  • Exhibitions
  • Conferences
  • Lectures and seminars
  • Performances
  • Events for prospective students
  • Sustainability events
  • Family events
  • All Events

Posing Problems to Ethnography: New Objects and Matters of Concern in Management and Organization

image
Dates:28 April 2015
Times:All day
What is it:Seminar
Organiser:School of Social Sciences
Who is it for:University staff, Adults, Alumni, Current University students, General public
See travel and contact information
Add to your calendar

Other events

  • In category "Seminar"
  • In group "(SoSS) Centre for Research on Socio-Cultural Change"
  • By School of Social Sciences

Ethnography is widely regarded as one of the most important methods for studying business and management, and in recent years has been identified as the fastest growing method in organization studies (Czarniawska, 2012). Both compelling and potentially transformative, ethnography offers a unique set of resources for those interested in theoretical innovation informed by the day-to-day practical and lived experiences of those working in management. However, ethnography in business and management studies risks becoming intellectually moribund and anachronistic unless it can respond to the ontological challenge posed by the emergence of an unprecedented range of ‘objects’ and ‘subjects’ of concern to management: i.e. digital code, virtual realities, affect, space, big data, new ‘money’, performative models of economy, etc. This is particularly worrying when the predominant mode of ethnography in business and management studies remains conceptually derivative and unreflexively ‘realist’ in its descriptive and analytical work. Where colleagues in sociology and anthropology have shown greater confidence and innovation in ethnographic study, those in management still tend towards the wellworn tropes of ‘tales from the field’. We present 6 new papers in this symposium from scholars that address these issues from a range of disciplinary traditions, some based in business schools and others working in the humanities and social sciences.

Speakers include: Dr Mark Egan – Engineering Affect: An Ethnography of Vibrational Science. Professor Penny Harvey – Collaborative Research - tales from an ethnographic project on the Peruvian regional state. Dr Chris Mclean - The Trials and Tribulations of Participative Observation: ‘Knowing Your School’ & the role of data dashboards Dr Helene Ratner – Mind the gap: Learning sociology from headmasters Dr Madeleine Reeves - Reverberation and/as ethnography: on the afterlives of 'intercommunal violence Professor Theo Vurdubakis – Spatial Effects: Data Practices, Transparency Regimes and Environmental Law Enforcement in the Brazilian Amazon Professor Albena Yaneva – Blinded by the Sun: Cosmopolitical Experiments with Glare

Travel and Contact Information

Find event

Room 10.05, Harold Hankins, Manchester Business School

Contact event

Damian O'Doherty

damian.odoherty@mbs.ac.uk

Contact us

  • +44 (0) 161 306 6000

Find us

The University of Manchester
Oxford Rd
Manchester
M13 9PL
UK

Connect with the University

  • Facebook page for The University of Manchester
  • X (formerly Twitter) page for The University of Manchester
  • YouTube page for The University of Manchester
  • Instagram page for The University of Manchester
  • TikTok page for The University of Manchester
  • LinkedIn page for The University of Manchester

  • Privacy /
  • Copyright notice /
  • Accessibility /
  • Freedom of information /
  • Charitable status /
  • Royal Charter Number: RC000797
  • Close menu
  • Home
    • Featured events
    • Today's events
    • The Whitworth events
    • Manchester Museum events
    • Jodrell Bank Discovery Centre events
    • Martin Harris Centre events
    • The John Rylands Library events
    • Exhibitions
    • Conferences
    • Lectures and seminars
    • Performances
    • Events for prospective students
    • Sustainability events
    • Family events
    • All events