Becoming an Alternative Cultural and Creative Third Place Through Tensions between Space and Organizing

Abstract

Over the past years, third places have emerged worldwide. Being used as an umbrella concept, the term comprises various types of organizations without differentiating alternative organizations from capitalistic consumer spaces. This paper explores how cultural and creative third places (CCTPs) become alternative through tensions between space and organizing. It brings together two strands of literature, alternative organization and communicative constitution of organization (CCO), through the concept of counter spaces and uses ethnographic and process methodology to investigate an CCTP in a Paris suburb. Beyond two traditional tensions, individual work versus collective engagement and informal adjustment versus structuring, we find three specific ones: architectural constraints versus work needs, freedom versus institutionalization, and proximity to versus distance from local communities. These support the emergence of practices through which organizations become alternative. We contribute to the alternative organization literature by evidencing three tensions between space and organizing and the microprocess by which alternative CCTPs become counterspaces that are not a direct confrontation, proposing resistance through alternative practices. We also contribute to the CCO literature by stressing the key role of tensions in becoming alternative in artistic and creative organizations outside institutions.

Keywords

• cultural and creative third places
• space
• organizing
• tensions
• alternative organization
• counterspaces