Concept Of Assemblage Research Articles

Geopolitical assemblages and disasters-in-the-making in Kalimpong, India

This article argues that landslides ought to be understood as geopolitical processes. The argument is based on a study into the causes and impacts of landslides in Kalimpong District, West Bengal, India. The article is based on six months of qualitative, ethnographic fieldwork carried out between 2019 and early 2020. Several semi-structured interviews with both landslide victims and some other key informants provide most of the data for the article. This was complemented by field notes and other ethnographic methods. Landslide prone Kalimpong District sits mostly in The Eastern Himalayan foothills and is West Bengal's newest district, annexed from Darjeeling district in 2017. That year also saw the third major uprising of a century-long movement for a separate Indian state of Gorkhaland, of which Kalimpong would be a part. The intersections of that movement and its drivers with disaster risk and its management in Kalimpong are the primary focus of the article. I make sense of these intersections by advancing a conceptual framework that combines assemblage-based geographical theories of disaster risk and the concept of geopolitical assemblages. This allows me to, by narrating people's experiences and understandings of three specific landslides, illustrate that geopolitical processes make landslides possible and then exacerbate and prolong their impacts. The article makes novel theoretical contributions to geographical literatures on infrastructure, geopolitics, and hazards. It also provides a critical, contemporary overview of the geopolitical context of the Eastern Himalayas.

“Fractional” Vocational Working and Learning in Project Teams: “Project Assemblage” as a Unit of Analysis?

Situated and Activity theories have exercised a significant influence in the field of vocational learning for some considerable time, both sharing a focus on bounded forms of work and forms of learning that facilitate learning in, or to changes to, bounded forms of work. Yet much learning occurs in unbounded contexts often referred to as projectification, where collaborations occur only for the life of a project thereby creating new contingent contexts for learning . Given the existence of this form of working and learning, what type of unit of analysis (UoA) is required to analyse that vocational working and learning in the context of projectification? To address this question, the paper advances the following inter-theoretical argument. Firstly, it is timely to develop a new unit of analysis (UoA) to capture the fractional (intermittent, discontinuous and concurrent) working and learning dynamics associated with the forms of projectification, where funding has to be procured in order to commence. Secondly, that unit of analysis is constituted by the concept of project assemblage, which is based on ideas from Actor Network Theory, Cultural-historical Activity Theory and Cultural Sociology. Thirdly, this new UoA enables researchers to identify the way in which project teams, where members are coming in-and-out, learn to use their different forms of specialist activity to enact objects, why team members will have different backgrounds and understandings of their work, why objects may not cohere, even though team members may treat them as unified and coherent, and how team members learn to incorporate one another’s insights and suggestions, and establish a finalized object.

The life of the cell membrane: A paradigmatic reading from Deleuze and Guattari

While the Fluid Mosaic model (FMM) is widely accepted as an account of the cell membrane's structure-function, its inability to explain certain phenomena has led to the lipid rafts hypothesis (nanodomains) that spontaneous spatiotemporal enriched zones of sphingolipids-cholesterol-protein exist within the membrane. In this text, we propose a novel approach that conceives the cell membrane as a living entity. The questions regarding the FMM revolve around the fact that, although these molecular components are present in many cell types, the membrane does not react in the same way to every external agent; for example, a virus evokes a particular response: why is there some marked specificity of virus (or toxin) attack on one (or some) of these cell types and not to other cell types that nevertheless have a similar membrane protein constitution? The crucial question, to explain this selectivity, would be what determines the specificity of attack on some cells and not others? While FMN assumes a dynamism between macrostates at the intramolecular, intermolecular, and/or collective levels in the membrane, the approach of the lipid raft model presupposes a much greater and more complex dynamics of microstates (even nano-states) of these molecular components. In other words, it implies higher and instantaneous mobility as assemblages ("intentional") and thus, of the membrane itself (as a collective), in response to changes in the internal and external physicochemical environment over a broad spatiotemporal scale. This suggests a mechanism of membrane adaptation in the face of evolutionary constraints. In this text, we propose a paradigmatic approach, from Deleuze-Guattari's philosophy: to conceive the cell membrane as living and not as a mere molecular conglomerate with particular functions and mechanical processes between molecules. For this, we employ the functional concepts of territory and machinic assemblage, whence the vitality of the membrane would allow us to postulate instantaneous updates, within wider spatiotemporal scales in its composition in contrast with the model that dominates as a more plausible explanation nowadays, that does not include smaller spatiotemporal events. If we resort to the concept of territory and its different media components, we could offer a more plausible explanation of the vigorous dynamism in the composition of the cell membrane since it would allow more subtle and complex differentiations between media and thus make visible the constant and instant changes. We propose that the model of nanodomains, understood as a process of dynamic territorialization, offers a more complex and subtle explanation of the instantaneous changes in the cell membrane's composition. This approach expands the explanatory framework for cellular phenomena and reveals their spatiotemporal complexity in accordance with other research.

Queer space making across greater Los Angeles: reimagining urban autonomy through collective care

This paper analyzes the lives of whom I call poli-creatives and how they reimagine space making and urban autonomy across greater Los Angeles through a queer and feminist praxis of collective care. Using women of color feminisms, queer of color critique, and transnational feminisms, this paper introduces the concept of mycorrhizal assemblages. As a theoretical and analytical tool, it draws from subterranean webs of mycelial fungal strands to conceptualize how poli-creatives use their work to navigate their everyday socio-political economic conditions by building interconnected spaces and nurturing local queer, feminist, working class, immigrant communities. Drawing on ethnographic observations and life-history interviews with five key poli-creatives, this paper discusses one kind of mycorrhizal assemblage rooted in informal spaces and practices; intimacy, trust, and vulnerability; and anti-surveillance and -policing. I show how these spaces do not depend on visibility and representation in public space, gayborhoods, nor the neoliberal state and formal institutions. Instead, I argue that although they are decentralized and ephemeral, they stay connected by a transnational and queer politics of local community building through DIY practice, holding spaces for embodied trauma, and divesting from institutional and settler-colonial state power. This study responds to the limitations within urban studies and discourses about queer communities by centering how poli-creatives use their transnational experiences, intimate communities, and embodied traumas and knowledges to lay down new soil for collective survival across greater Los Angeles and a future otherwise.

From Child–Animal Relations to Multispecies Assemblages and Other-Than-Human Childhoods

This article discusses how childhood studies could be enriched with a focus on child–animal relations, multispecies assemblages and other-than-human childhoods. First, research on child–animal relations prior to, and at, the animal turn is presented. It is argued that the dominant utilitarian and adult-centered views respond poorly to the significance children themselves see in their relations with other-than-human animals. The article then moves on to the concept of multispecies assemblages. Viewing childhoods as multispecies from the outset allows one to draw attention to the specific and situated relationalities amidst natural, cultural, technological, economic, and political forces. Finally, attention is drawn to other-than-human childhoods. The differences, hierarchies, connections and unequal possibilities that arise from being born and growing up as a member of a distinct species amidst societal processes are discussed. Additionally, childhood is suggested to be an important concept through which to give detail, specificity, and a critical edge to the work of multispecies research.

Trends in Contemporary Ceramic Art and the Overlapping of Stylistic Concepts (Installation Art and Assemblage as a Model)

Contemporary arts have achieved, in accordance with the transition of concepts, a new logic in presentation and expression in general, and specifically in the field of ceramic art. The shift towards the logic of rejection and subversion of prevailing methods, which have been almost a constant foundation for a long period, has directly influenced the direction of visual arts in the contemporary world. The growth and cultural transformations that the world has witnessed after the two World Wars have produced cognitive shifts based on strategies that diverge from the dominant culture. These approaches vary according to existential needs, as the language of art has become conceptual and a medium for contemporary culture with its rapid and expanding rhythm. Thus, contemporary ceramic art has encompassed a diverse range of concepts expressing a specific philosophy tied to technology and scientific progress as means that directly contribute to the development of aesthetic values and artistic formations in alignment with the culture of the era. The concepts of this art form have changed and transformed in terms of presentation style and formal outcome .There is no longer a specific definition for fixed techniques and materials. Instead, we find that contemporary potters have moved beyond the boundaries of their traditional artistic field, under the concept of assemblage , achieving a form that is not subject to homogeneity .They employ renewed presentation methods that are not limited to enclosed spaces but are open in their settings, creating a visual witness in which the artist and the recipient participate in the idea and interpretation , fostering a dialectical and intellectual discourse linked to issues subject to discussion within the inevitability of existence.

Accounting infrastructure and promissory sustainable extractive industries: an actor-network theory analysis

PurposeThis study aims to articulate the conceptual foundations of the role of accounting infrastructure (calculative practice and the communicative dimension of accounting) in extractive industries (EIs) towards a sustainable orientation from an actor-network theory (ANT) perspective.Design/methodology/approachThis study is a literature-based analysis of the calculative property and communicative dimension of accounting in EIs, using the concepts of calculability, assemblage and other related concepts from ANT to identify potentialities and limits of the roles of accounting in this sector.FindingsWhile accounting infrastructure can influence social and environmental outcomes, it has not, as yet, led to ecologically and socially sustainable practices in EIs. Calculative properties and the communicative dimension of accounting infrastructure have capabilities to foster the phenomenon of “sustainability” in EIs by valuing, disclosing (reporting) and governing EIs towards a sustainable orientation. Conceptualizing sustainable EIs as a promissory economy, accounting infrastructure serves as a tool not only to represent past performance but also to enact the future: it helps to shape a sustainable future for the industry by informing and triggering behavioural decisions of EIs firms towards sustainable practices.Research limitations/implicationsThis conceptual paper is anticipated to stimulate future sustainability accounting research. The research agenda discussed in this paper can be used to enrich our understanding of the role of accounting in sustainability.Originality/valueThis paper charts a direction for future research by interpreting the role of sustainability accounting within networks of sociotechnical relations, using ANT concepts which attach importance to the dualism of nature and society. Conceptualizing sustainability accounting and reporting as an infrastructure, which draws more attention to the relationality characteristic of accounting, the study goes beyond the traditional interpretation of accounting as a mediation device and draws on a contemporary view of accounting by invoking the dynamic relation between accounting and society, in the context of EIs.

‘It’s not cardboard, it’s a house’: cartographies of agentic assemblage in the early childhood classroom

ABSTRACT The concept of assemblage, drawing on the posthuman theorisations of Deleuze and Guattari, delineates a dynamic and new materialist approach to an event. In this approach, desires, material agency and (de)(re)territorialisation emerge as key concepts, and open ways to understand the school classroom in early childhood as a territory where lines of flight challenge the boundaries of normative education. This paper focuses on a classroom assemblage and aims to cartography the material relations between human and non-human bodies, where (de)(re)territorialisation forces are constant. We draw on diffractive ethnography in order to think-with-theory, making use of a vignette and a diagram containing its material relations. Our analysis highlights the agentic relations of matter in the assemblage, the role of desire as a dynamic force and the ever-changing flow of (de)(re)territorialisations that emerge in it. This study shows the complexity of material experience in early childhood, where desire and deterritorialisation frame creative and unexpected processes that defy the idea of education and classroom activities as linear processes controlled by adults. On the contrary, the cartography depicted in this research supports an idea of education as a space for the emergence of creative lines of flight, material relations and non-linear meaning-making.

O Pedrón: time and a stone in northwest Iberia

The granite block of O Pedrón, a recarved Roman altar to Neptune, is an object of veneration at the church of St. James in the town of Padrón along the Camino de Santiago in Galicia, northwest Iberia. I use this enchanting object as a vehicle for thinking about materials, assemblages, and time, engaging with ideas drawn from Bergson, Benjamin, Deleuze, and Husserl. I describe how O Pedrón has participated in events across two millennia: the Roman colonization of Iron Age Iberia; the medieval creation of the cult of Santiago; and a contemporary push for tourism. The concept of assemblage helps us visualize the sensory, emotional, political, and other dimensions connected with the stone. The emergent properties of assemblages move not only forward but backward in time, in a process characterized by Husserl and Gell as protension and retension.

무덤 연구의 다각화를 위한 노력

Research on burials in archaeology has mainly involved the identification of tomb type and the classification of the material. Although such an arrangement of the data is necessary prior to analysis, the method of ‘grouping based on similarities or differences’, which has been commonly used to organize archaeological data, is not without its problems. This is because the existing method of classification cannot handle ‘outlier’ tombs that deviate from the general trend; it is also difficult to highlight the differences that exist between tombs grouped together based on similarity, or, conversely, the similarities between the tombs divided into different groups. In this paper, ‘network visualization’ was presented a san alternative method of organizing data to compensate for such problems. First of all, a theoretical review of ‘categorization’ and ‘classification’ was conducted in order to suggest how ‘network visualization’ could provide an alternative method of categorization. This possibility was demonstrated using the case study of the burials of the Sangwoon-ri site, in Wanju. In addition, Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of Assemblage was introduced, as a means of supporting a break away from essentialism in categorization. As a result, a new perspective on archaeological style, form, and type was proposed and it was argued, using the example of the Nangnang (Lelang) tombs, that the ‘sub-types’ of the tombs could be viewed as ‘events’ that appear in the ‘creation process of types’, rather than as fixed entities. Finally, visualization methods of multivariate statistical analysis results were also examined to confirm whether the methodological and epistemological possibilities of network visualization presented in this paper are unique to it. By presenting the archaeological usefulness of the concept of network visualization and Assemblage, the paper aims to stimulate further critical thought on the possibility of alternative methods of categorization that can consider similarities and differences together, or indeed the fluidity of styles, forms, and types.

Re-aligning market and hospitality assemblages: the case of peer-to-peer hospitality in Japan

ABSTRACT This study investigates how non-professional hosts affect market formation in the hospitality industry. The data collected was derived from peer-to-peer (P2P) hospitality practices in Japan via platforms like Airbnb. The data showed a tension between market and hospitality principles of profit-making and welcoming strangers, respectively. Initially, it appeared that non-professional hosts would conduct business based on economic calculations or focussed on hospitality which may include uncosted incidental services. However, the empirical analysis reveals that whilst the market framings facilitate accommodation creation, in practice non-professional hosts forge an avenue between hospitality and commerce, at a distance from initial hospitality and market framings. In this way, the practices of non-professional actors challenge the purpose of both market exchange and private hospitality and actualise alternative forms of commercial hospitality. This study revisits Deleuze and Guattari’s concept of assemblage to contribute to explicate market formation at the intersection with non-market spheres.

The doctorate unbound: relationality in doctoral literacy research

AbstractWhat do literacy events look and feel like for doctoral students, and how do these events overlap intertextually, materially and relationally? The last three decades have seen a rapid diversification in doctoral education where new opportunities for study, combined with an increasingly competitive landscape, have disrupted what it means to undertake a doctorate, as well as reshaping the literacy practices that comprise doctoral experiences in new ways that have not been fully explored. To understand literacies in new ways, we put to work the construct of literacy‐as‐event, and engage ideas from assemblage theory, to theorise the relationality of literacy practices. Crucially, our study seeks to examine how literacies are emergent and entangled within a wider network of relations. This article draws on data from interviews involving critical incidents with 12 doctoral students, in order to unpack the literacy moments, beyond the thesis, that comprise students' experiences. Our data suggest that we can understand doctoral literacies, not as bounded occurrences, but as assemblages of practices. We contend that thinking with concepts of assemblage and of event offers new insights into the evolving experiences of doctoral students, as well as offering an enriched understanding of literacies and literacy research.

Regional assemblage in the postwar Czechoslovakia: Another piece to the puzzle of other geographical traditions?

The paper adds to the concept of other geographical traditions through linking the study of the history of geographical knowledge to the regional assemblage concept, and post-war Czechoslovakia is taken as the example. The paper expands discussion on the inclusiveness of the history of geography with the geographical traditions practised in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe in the second half of the 20th century during the period of state socialism. The analysis of regional assemblage allows me to reconstruct the process of conceptualisation and role of a ‘good’ region. I claim that a ‘good’ region was closely connected to the post-war project of transformation of the society on the discursive level, and that a region was considered a solely practical tool to serve this purpose. The most important part of the whole process of conceptualisation of the region was the map representation depicting the borders of the defined regions. The concept of assemblage enabled me to analyse the limits of the possible, that is, to analyse the way limits of geographical knowledge were set in concrete time and space. Thus, the concept of assemblage has a potential to add to, so far very fragmented, state of knowledge of the history of global geography.

Musicking assemblages and non-human becomings: Mapping morphogenetic processes and distributed agencies in Wolfgang Buttress’ the Hive

AbstractThe paper introduces the concept of musicking assemblages to account for the agency of non-human actants in a project by contemporary artist, Wolfgang Buttress, that involved creating a musical soundscape together with bees. Collapsing distinctions between popular music, contemporary art and scientific research, the project exhibits musicking not as a result of human action but as emerging from intensive flows of matter-energy circulating between a multiplicity of actants, both human and non-human. Consequently, it presupposes a materialist ontology that breaks with anthropocentric hierarchies and encourages us to rethink popular music as always already involving ‘becoming with’ non-human others, in a way that overcomes the division between culture and nature, as well as its epistemological corollaries.

A new feminist materialist analysis of girls and the sexual violence assemblage

Inspired by Deleuze and Guattari's (1988) concept of assemblage, in this paper we address 12-13-y ear-old girls' experience of sexual violence as a materially embedded, relational, and affective event. In doing so, we contribute to the understanding of how girls are both constrained by violent gendered cultures in school and of their capacity to resist such violence. We give attention to sexual violence as an assemblage of materialities in the form of bodies, objects, expressions, spaces, and ideas that connect in ways that affect what girls can and cannot do within a specific place and moment in time. Drawing on semi-structured interviews, we show how the assemblage creates the potential to challenge dominant gendered scripts that structure girls' experience in schools but also point to the disabling environments that curtail such potential. We argue that while the assemblage produces agentive capacities, it may simultaneously constrain them. We conclude by offering possibilities to address sexual violence through addressing gender norms while including boys in gender transformative work.

Becoming a park: The assemblage of Olomouc parks in the 19th and first half of the 20th century

We conceptualize an urban park as an assemblage, and we use the urban parks in Olomouc as examples. We do not understand a park as a complete product, but we approach it as a never-finished process, which results from the mutual relationships between material and discursive practices. Using local newspapers, we have studied the process of becoming a park. During this process, concrete space acquires characteristics that are related to a park in a given place and given time. Inquiring into this process, we focused on three closely connected problems: 1) How was the material and discursive limitation of parks distinguished from the wider urban structure? 2) What role did the material design of parks play in the analysed process? 3) What were the means of regulating park visitors and what were its objectives? The use of the concept of assemblage in the research into the history of urban parks results in a more differentiated view of urban greenspace, and thus it can contribute to a better understanding of the current state of the urban greenspace.

Poststructuralism and Skill Learning for Fitness Instruction

ABSTRACT Skill learning is considered an essential component of physical education, dance, and sport and consequently, there is an existing body of literature with concepts to be applied to teaching and coaching practices. However, research into skill learning in fitness is largely absent. In this article, I provide a poststructuralist informed approach to skill learning that places the body in the center of social and political inquiry. To do this, I first introduce the main tenets of poststructuralism and then discuss how Michel Foucault’s work, particularly his concept of dispositive, has informed research in fitness instruction. Finally, I highlight how Gilles Deleuze’s concept of assemblage can inform skill learning in the commercialized contexts of women’s fitness.

Advancing AKIS with assemblage thinking

The establishment of effective national agricultural knowledge and innovation systems (AKIS) became a European policy imperative in the 2010s, lodged in a political ideology which emphasised the importance of innovation to economic growth. We argue that the recent deployment of the AKIS concept in EU policy presents important opportunities for the agricultural sector and associated academic research but has significant weaknesses in terms of the scale of analysis (over emphasis on national levels) and disconnection from academic thinking on innovation processes. In this paper we progress the AKIS approach by utilising assemblage theory. We argue that assemblage concepts – in line with other ‘more-than-human’ approaches - offer mechanisms for recognising and integrating the role of non-human actants in innovation processes. Inclusion of these actants highlight the co-constructed nature of farm knowledge and associated transition processes. Assemblage concepts of historicity and rupture demonstrate how the path dependencies of farming are embedded in the material conditions of production, and the learning processes which occur when path dependencies are interrupted. We illustrate these contentions with empirical case studies of the ‘microAKIS’ – self-assembled farmer knowledge networks and associated processes - characterising four innovations across Europe: the introduction of a new commodity (avocado) in Greece, mainstreaming of robotic milking in Norway, retro-innovation of direct marketing in Latvia, and outsourcing of (dehumanised) farm labour in France.

From Linguistic Landscape to Semiotic Assemblages in a Local Market

Abstract Landscape can be seen as a set of signs, landscape is foreground rather than background, and signs are semiotic items rather than just forms of public signage (Pennycook 2021), therefore the present research moves away from the traditional, text-centred approach of landscape analysis in order to examine not only the linguistic signs but the non-linguistic elements as artefacts, which take place in the brand identity construction of a local small and medium-sized enterprise (SME). The article argues that these elements as assembling artefacts become parts of semiotic assemblages inhabiting the space and represent a key feature of brand identity construction with a focus on the commodification of languages, cultures, and identities. The data consist of observation notes, photographs, and interviews obtained from an ethnographic fieldwork in Sfântu Gheorghe, Romania. The analysis presents a case study based on the concept of semiotic assemblages. The assemblage of linguistic and other resources, such as the smell of smoked meat products, the tune of Szekler folk songs, together with assembling artefacts such as sausages and other Szekler products attract customers to participate in meaning making. The effects generated by an assemblage have the ability to make something happen, in our case attract customers to SMEs.

Althusserian Interpellations: Intellectual Trajectory and New Avenues

This essay proposes an approach to thinking and analyzing identification processes through the application of recent theoretical developments linked to the work of Deleuze and Guattari—specifically the concept of “assemblage”—in conjunction with Althusser’s concept of interpellation. The latter serves as a point of departure as the essay first summarizes Althusser’s argument to highlight the complexity of the original interpellation proposal. The essay then traces the trajectory of the assemblage concept through varying critiques and modifications over the past several decades, above all that advanced by Won Choi. The essay concludes by discussing the idea of “identitarian articulations” as a potential approach for using interpellation to understand processes of identification.