Process studies focus attention on how and why things emerge, develop, grow, or terminate over time. We identify various ontological assumptions underlying process research, explore its methods and challenges, and draw out some of its substantive contributions revealed in this Special Research Forum on Process Studies of Change in Organization and Management. Process studies take time seriously, illuminate the role of tensions and contradictions in driving patterns of change, and show how interactions across levels contribute to change. They may also reveal the dynamic activity underlying the maintenance and reproduction of stability.

/pdf/process-studies-of-change-in-organization-and-management-2p8lt2mvfa.pdf

Process studies of change in organization and management : unveiling temporality, activity, and flow

Scholars hold different views about whether organizations consist of things or processes and about variance or process methods for conducting research. By combining these two dimensions, we develop a typology of four approaches for studying organizational change. Although the four approaches may be viewed as opposing or competing views, we see them as being complementary. Each approach focuses on different questions and provides a different — but partial — understanding of organizational change. We argue that coordinating the pluralistic insights from the four approaches provides a richer understanding of organization change than any one approach provides by itself.

Alternative Approaches for Studying Organizational Change

As a response to Eduardo Viveiros de Castro’s critique of my essay “Fetishes are gods in the process of construction,” this paper enters into critical engagement with anthropological proponents of what has been called the “ontological turn.” Among other engagements, I note that my own reflections on Malagasy fanafody, or medicine, are informed by just the sort of self-conscious reflections my informants make on epistemology, something that anthropologists typically ignore. After making note of the arguments of Roy Bhaskar that most post-Cartesian philosophy rests on an “epistemic fallacy,” I further argue that a realist ontology, combined with broad theoretical relativism, is a more compelling political position than the “ontological anarchy” and theoretical intolerance of ontological turn exponents.

/pdf/radical-alterity-is-just-another-way-of-saying-reality-a-1k58bv1hcn.pdf

Radical alterity is just another way of saying "reality": A reply to Eduardo Viveiros de Castro

We can see mereology as a theory of parthood and topology as a theory of wholeness. How can the two be combined to obtain a unified theory of parts and wholes'? This paper examines three main ways of answering this question. On the first account, mereology and topology form two independent (though mutually related) domains. The second account grants priority to topology and characterizes mereology derivatively, by defining parthood in terms of wholeness (more specifically: connectedness). The third approach reverses the order, exploiting the idea that wholeness (connectedness) can be explained in terms of parthood along with other predicates or relations. The analysis and comparison of these strategies is mostly formal (and within the confines of standard first-order theories), but their relevance to spatio-temporal reasoning and representation is emphasized. Some more speculative strategies and directions for further research, such as the development of a unified framework based on a single mereotopological primitive of connected parthood, are also briefly considered.

/pdf/parts-wholes-and-part-whole-relations-the-prospects-of-2o9vs62nj3.pdf

Parts, wholes, and part-whole relations: the prospects of mereotopology

The debate concerning ontology is heating up in the social sciences. How is this impacting anthropology and archaeology? What contributions can these disciplines make? Following a session at the 2010 Theoretical Archaeology Group conference at Brown University (“‘Worlds Otherwise’: Archaeology, Theory, and Ontological Difference,” convened by Ben Alberti and Yvonne Marshall), a group of archaeologists and anthropologists have continued to discuss the merits, possibilities, and problems of an ontologically oriented approach. The current paper is a portion of this larger conversation— a format we maintain here because, among other things, it permits a welcome level of candor and simplicity. In this forum we present two questions (written by Alberti and Witmore, along with the concluding comments) and the responses of five of the Theoretical Archaeology Group session participants. The first question asks why we think an ontological approach is important to our respective fields; the second, building upon the first set of responses, asks authors to consider the difference that pluralizing ontology might make and whether such a move is desirable given the aims of archaeology and anthropology. While several angles on ontology come through in the conversation, all share an interest in more immanent understandings that arise within specific situations and that are perhaps best described as thoroughly entangled rather than transcendent and/ or oppositional in any straightforward sense.

/pdf/worlds-otherwise-archaeology-anthropology-and-ontological-23ea1q85ct.pdf

"Worlds otherwise": Archaeology, anthropology, and ontological difference

IT does not fall within our scope to attempt a detailed or technical examination of the volume of Gifford Lectures in which Prof. A. N. Whitehead has expounded at greater length than elsewhere his system of metaphysics. This has been done in many other notices, and we would be understood here only to give a general impression from rather a lay point of view, comparing it with other newly published syntheses of similar scope—for example, that of Profs. Alexander and Haldane, Pringle Pattison and Hobson, and Sir Arthur Eddington. Process and Reality: an Essay in Cosmology. (Gifford Lectures delivered in the University of Edinburgh during the Session 1927–28.) By Prof. Alfred North Whitehead. Pp. xxiii + 509. (Cambridge: At the University Press, 1929.) 18s. net.

Process and Reality: an Essay in Cosmology

Handle everyday research tasks with reliable, citation-backed results

Your personal Research Agent to handle research tasks with citation-backed results

Popular Tasks used by Researchers

How can I help with your research?

Meet SciSpace

Get more enhanced response by uploading the PDFs you want me to reference.

No relevant PDFs in your library

SciSpace is the AI research assistant for academics. Run systematic literature reviews on 280M+ papers, and write papers with cited sources. Trusted by 1M+ students, PhDs & researchers.

SciSpace | AI for Research

Analyze PDFs

Code & Manuscripts

Funding & Grants

Literature & Patents

Medical & Clinical Data

Systematic Review

Visualize & Present

Web & Data

Build a Google Scholar-like website for your research.

Build a website

Create charts and images for your research

Create a Chart

Write a paper for submission to a journal

Draft a manuscript

Patent Search

Design eye-catching scientific posters in minutes.

Scientific Poster Generation

Systematic Literature Review

One task is running at the moment. Your messages will be shown right after.

Drag and drop or click here to browse

Loved by <highlight>1 million+</highlight> researchers

Extract a list of specific topics and their sources from unstructured text

Topics

Compare and analyze relevant papers that matches with your search

Papers

Get insights from PDFs and bookmarked papers from your library

My library

Recent searches

Try searching for:

Catch AI-generated content in scholarly and non-scholarly content

{ai} Detector

Ai Writer

Get PDF Summaries, highlighted text explanations 

Chat with PDF

Effortlessly create in-text citations and bibliographies in APA and 2,500 other formats

Citation generator

Get explanations, summaries, and answers on academic papers

Ease up your research workflow with {scispace}'s cohort of exciting AI tools

Elevate your academic writing skills and convey your ideas the way you want

Paraphraser

Explore our range of reading and writing tools

Your file is being prepared and should be ready in a few minutes. If it's a large file, it might take a bit longer. You can close this window, and we'll email you the file when it's done.

You have reached a maximum limit of <strong>{limit}</strong> columns in the table. Remove at least <strong>1</strong> column to add or create another one.

F. S. Marvin

Author Tools

Chat about Author

Papers

Process and Reality: an Essay in Cosmology