Building a Social Materiality: Spatial and Embodied Politics in Organizational Control

Abstract

The purpose of this article is to explore the relevance of ‘materiality’ to understanding changing modes of control in organizational life. In doing this, materiality is not placed in a dualistic relationship with social relations. Rather a conceptualization of ‘social materiality’ is developed whereby social processes and structures and material processes and structures are seen as mutually enacting. In developing this concept of social materiality, I have drawn upon insights from three areas of social theory. These are studies of material culture, Lefebvre’s work on the ‘social production of space’, and sociological and phenomenological approaches to embodiment. The final section of the article explores how control and materiality are linked through spatial politics in one organizational case.