Embodied, Relational Practices of Human and Non-Human in a Material, Social, and Cultural Nexus of Organizations

Abstract

This article explores the significance of materiality and non- or other-human, especially the role of body and embodiment in relation to intra- and inter-practices in organizations and their culture from a phenomenological perspective and cross-disciplinary approach. Following a Merleau-Pontyian approach, the non-human is discussed in relation to cultural practices in organizational life-worlds. Based on a critique of physicalist empiricism and idealistic rationalism, impasses and limitations of naturalist and constructionist approaches towards culture are problematized. Showing the co-constitutive role of the in(ter)-between and inter-corporeality allows interpreting the corporeal nexus of material, social, and cultural phenomena of inter-practices within a continuum of the human and non-human, thus as an entangled ‘non-+-human’ web. Finally, the paper discusses some implications and perspectives on the ‘non-+-human’ in the study and practice of culture by particularly outlining an ethos of ‘engaged releasement’ (‘Gelassenheit’). This orientation will be presented as a letting be-come in relation to things and thinking for mediating a living sustainable ‘bodiment’ of human and more-than-human dimensions.

Keywords

• in-between
• merleau-ponty
• practice
• gelassenheit
• organizing
• organizations
• embodiment
• non-human