‘Ella Says It’s the Secret to the Universe’: How eponymic claims ventriloquially constitute relational authority
通过一家同名化妆品公司的民族志研究，提出“同名宣称”概念，揭示人类与非人类角色如何以腹语方式赋予化妆师情境性权威，并形成组织性期待重量，展现关系性权威的瞬时性与持久性。
Contributing to the ‘relational turn’ within organization and management studies, we deepen authority studies’ handling of relationality by utilizing a communication as constitutive of organization lens to advance a novel understanding of authority’s simultaneously enduring and fleeting nature. We introduce the concept of eponymic claims to shift relational readings of authority from questions of presence or absence to those of ventriloquial weight . Our theorizing derives from an ethnography of an eponymous cosmetics firm. Blending multiple field materials, we show how arrangements of human and other-than-human figures ventriloquially lend weight to makeup artists’ situated authority moves, and carry an organizational weight of expectation , at times resembling a deadweight . Developing ventriloquial conceptions of weight helps to show relational authority to be both a momentary and a deeply organizational accomplishment, with the traces of eponymic claims’ authoritative and disorienting effects traversing into organizational, client and social spheres. Finally, the concept of eponymic claims helps to elevate eponymy from something that is largely hidden in plain sight to a powerful organizing force.