The Body and Organisation Studies

Karen Dale

Chapter 1 in Anatomising Embodiment and Organisation Theory, 2001, pp 8-31 from Palgrave Macmillan

Abstract: Abstract The aim of this book is to examine the interrelationship between the (human) body, embodiment and the development of organisation studies as a disciplinary field. Obviously, the body is present in organisations and in organisation studies — after all, how could workers, even managers, do anything without bodies! It is argued here, however, that on the explicit level the body is not theorised and rarely seen as being relevant to the development of knowledge about organisations. Yet, while the body is not theorised in its own right, the discipline is riddled with implicit assumptions about the nature of the body, which have significantly shaped the course and approach of organisation studies. These assumptions affect even some of its fundamental preoccupations, such as the conceptualisation of ‘the organisation’ and dominant perspectives on the relationship between people and organisations. Thus it is in the sense of an ‘absent presence’ (see Shilling, 1993, on sociology) that the human body has been influential in organisation studies. In this book I intend to demonstrate how these assumptions about the body have shaped the discipline and draw out some of the consequences for the study of organisations. However, none of the elements of this aim is uncontroversial, so it is necessary to examine them before we turn to the relationship between them in more detail.

Keywords: Organisation Theory; Organisation Study; Emotional Labour; Definite Article; Intellectual Tradition (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2001
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pal:palchp:978-0-333-99382-8_2

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.palgrave.com/9780333993828

DOI: 10.1057/9780333993828_2

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Palgrave Macmillan Books from Palgrave Macmillan
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().