New Ghosts in Old Town: The Intertemporal Translation of Edinburgh’s South Bridge

Abstract

Our paper theorizes the process of intertemporal translation with implications for the management scholarship on temporality and materiality. We develop a historical case study of the South Bridge in Edinburgh that shows how the meanings and uses of objects, i.e. its affordances, change over time as groups of people situated in different temporal contexts enact the objects in novel ways. We describe the sedimentation process through which uses and meanings associated with the bridge are converted into an inventory of affordances that influences new interactions with the bridge. In addition, we show how changes in the temporal context and the materiality of the bridge stimulated the emergence of new bundles of practice associated with the development of new affordances. We describe how actors engage in processes of figuration, imagining new possible uses and meanings for the bridge as the present unfolding of action conflicted with descriptions of the past and expectations about the future. We then show how the interplay of figuration and sedimentation creates new affordances and new bundles of practices that may expand or contract the perceived affordances of an object.