New Directions in Studying Discourse and Materiality
三篇论文通过正反观点辩论，探讨组织研究中话语与物质性的关系，为学者提供不同理论视角和研究路径。
Since its emergence within the field of organization studies around the start of the 1990s, discourse analysis (DA) has moved from the margins to become a well-established and institutionalized approach to understanding a variety of organizational phenomena. Of course, this approach has not been without its critics. One particularly persistent criticism has been that in its focus on the discursive and emphasis on social-constructionist ontology and epistemology, DA has failed to engage with non-discursive aspects of organizations. This argument has been made in particular by scholars influenced by critical realism and has come from within DA (e.g., Fairclough, 2005), as well as outside (e.g., Reed, 2000; Thompson and Harley, 2012). In this Point–Counterpoint, three papers address the relationship between the discursive and the material in organization studies. Hardy and Thomas (2015) begin the Point–Counterpoint by arguing that critics who assail DA for ignoring the material have misunderstood this approach. In making this argument, the authors revisit the work of Michel Foucault – one of the major influences on DA within management studies – and argue that in fact a concern with the material is integral to his approach. Thus, they argue, Foucauldian DA necessarily engages with both the discursive and the material. Hardy and Thomas illustrate their argument with reference to four aspects of materiality commonly discussed by DA scholars: bodies; objects; spaces; and practices. They conclude their piece by arguing that if DA is to advance knowledge, particularly of power in and around organizations, it must necessarily involve empirical research on the material effects of discourse and the discursive effects of materiality. In the second paper, Orlikowski and Scott (2015) respond by supporting the turn to materiality in organizational research and endorsing Hardy and Thomas' argument that DA can be used to research aspects of materiality. They then move to map out their own approach, informed by Barad's concept of agential realism (Barad, 2007). They emphasize the role of researchers in acting upon that which they study, rather than simply generating representations of reality from an external vantage point. A key point of divergence from Hardy and Thomas' argument is that Orlikowski and Scott do not see practices as an aspect of materiality. Nor do they accept that practice and discourse are separate, if intertwined, phenomena. Rather, they conceptualize practices as constitutive of reality and consider these always and everywhere as material-discursive. Thus, while their approach complements that of Hardy and Thomas, it differs from it in important ways which have significant implications for research practice. In the final paper in this collection, Putnam (2015) also applauds the increasing focus on materiality in organization studies, but also diverges from Hardy and Thomas' approach. She argues that many Foucauldians do indeed privilege the discursive over the material. She also differs from Orlikowski and Scott by asserting that the discursive and the material are empirically distinct, while at the same time being indivisible. Thus, she argues, they should properly be understood as being held together in a mutual tension – a dialectical relationship – while being studied as empirically separate phenomena. In setting out her argument, Putnam considers five approaches to understanding this dialectical relationship between discourse and materiality which can be found in the literature: Foucauldian analysis; materiality and performativity; imbrication; plenum of agencies; and the mangle. Based on comparing and contrasting the five approaches, she draws out a series of implications for future research on materiality and discourse. Collectively, these three papers demonstrate the growing importance of materiality, as well as highlighting the challenges and opportunities of studying the materiality within broadly social constructionist frameworks. We hope and expect that this Point–Counterpoint will stimulate scholars working on discourse and materiality as well, no doubt, as generating new critiques from within and outside the DA community.