Nothing happened, something happened: silence in a makerspace

François-Xavier de Vaujany () and Jeremy Aroles ()
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François-Xavier de Vaujany: DRM - Dauphine Recherches en Management - Université Paris Dauphine-PSL - PSL - Université Paris Sciences et Lettres - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique
Jeremy Aroles: Durham Business School - Durham University

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Abstract: An ever-increasing range of work activities occur in open spaces that require collective discipline, with silence emerging as a key feature of such workplace configurations. Drawing from an ethnographic examination of a makerspace in Paris, we explore the ways in which silence is incorporated into new work practices in the context of their actualization, embodiment and apprenticeship. Through its engagement with the conceptual work of Merleau-Ponty, this paper does not posit silence as the opposite of sounds or as a passive achievement. Silence is inscribed in a learning process and requires numerous efforts to be maintained (e.g. body postures to avoid staring into the eyes of someone entering into an open space, wearing headphones, etc.). It is also the envelope of numerous noisy acts that take place in the phenomenological body and in the embodied practices of workers. We argue that ‘silencing' is an event ordering and giving directions to what ‘happens' in collective work activities and central to the process of embodied learning in collaborative spaces.

Keywords: Silence; Learning; Embodiment; Visibility; Merleau-Ponty; Makerspace; Work Practices; Collaborative spaces (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Published in Management Learning, 2018, ⟨10.1177/1350507618811478⟩

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:hal-02059269

DOI: 10.1177/1350507618811478

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