[Linganth] CFP 2015 AAA Session: (In)visible Hands: Collective agencies and corporate actors

[Gregory Kohler]

Hi,

We're still looking for one or two more presenters for our 2015 AAA panel
on collective agency inside corporate and organizational settings. You can
find the original CFP below.

If interested, please email Gregory Kohler (gkohler at uci.edu) and Michael
Prentice (mprentic at umich.edu) with your potential topic.


On Tue, Feb 24, 2015 at 3:41 PM, Gregory Kohler <kohlergb at gmail.com> wrote:

> Hello,
>
> We are co-organizing a panel for the 2015 AAAs on collective agency inside
> corporate and organizational settings. We are looking for other panelists
> who have interesting theoretical or empirical data on attributing,
> constructing, or regimenting collective agency and agents. Miyako Inoue has
> agreed to be our discussant.
>
> If interested, please email Gregory Kohler (gkohler at uci.edu) and Michael
> Prentice (mprentic at umich.edu) with your potential topic or send a
> 250-word abstract by March 15th.
>
> See below for details:
>
> _____________________
>
>
> CFP for the 2015 American Anthropological Association Annual Meeting in
> Denver.
>
> Session: “(In)visible Hands: Collective agencies and corporate actors”
> Organizers: Gregory Kohler, UC Irvine; Michael Prentice, University of
> Michigan
>
> The ambiguity of agency within corporations has been a persistent issue
> since the rise of large-scale organizational forms more than 100 years ago.
> Collective agency has also remained a relatively undertheorized topic
> within anthropological discussions of agency. This session seeks papers
> that can creatively brige these two interests, by making visible the
> processes of how collective agency is constructed in corporate and
> organizational settings with attention to the different kinds of semiotic
> processes involved. There are three different dimensions we envision to
> this.
>
> First, collective agency and actors can be attributed through everyday
> communication; "The board is deciding" "Thanks from the Management." How do
> these simple attributions relate to footing, stance, or responsibility
> shifts within or across situated events? How might everyday instances of
> invoking collective agents differ cross-linguistically or within specific
> institutional histories?
>
> Second, collective agency can be the product of complex human activity and
> material networks, such as the production and circulation of documents. How
> is collective agency created through the work of different kinds of actors
> across situated events and technologies? What rituals, materials or other
> techniques are involved? How is individual agency co-constructed or elided
> in the process?
>
> Third, collective agency can be defined through internal rules, external
> regulations, or prescriptive theories. While much focus has been paid to
> legal theorizations, different corporate actors or institutions play roles
> in imagining and delimiting collective agency for practical purposes, such
> as Human Resources departments, safety inspectors, financiers, or ratings
> agencies. How are formal discourses about corporate agencies in these
> contexts conceptualized or regimented?
>
> By looking at corporations in a range of cultural contexts, we are seeking
> panelists who investigate the construction and invocation of collective
> agency as a socio-cultural phenomenon, as an emergent process, or as part
> of different kinds of normative discourses.
>
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