Assemblage Theory Research Articles

Assembling tigers, dragons and hells: relational materialist geographies of curated themed spaces

Themed spaces and theme parks constitute of significant human-based desires and linguistic discourses that stabilises/destabilises their social identities and materialities. This paper draws on a relational materialist perspective to examine Singapore’s longstanding themed space, Haw Par Villa, to offer insights into its social and material stability and instabilities. Relational materialism facilitates observations and analysis of interactions of humans and their material worlds on the same ontological plane where human’s agencies are de-centred. Social and material objects are seen to operate in mutually constitutive fashions. The development of a site/theme park and its larger country context are conceptualised here as ‘assemblages’ using DeLanda’s brand of assemblage theory to reveal the operations of human-based ‘desires’ alongside material agencies. Specifically, the desires of the founder and the key discourses related to the founder’s name helped constitute and stabilise the social identity and materiality of the Haw Par Villa through its eventful history of physical destruction, reconstruction, rebranding and reimagining. Despite his eventual non-involvement with Haw Par Villa’s management due to his passing, the founder’s desires and discourses linger on in various forms, resulting in subsequent attempts to rework the identity and materiality of this themed space failing if the attempts are not congruent on some level with the founder’s desires and discourses. This resulted in the failure of first, the state and, subsequently, private endeavours in re-constituting the themed space. In doing so, this paper contributes to a socio-material understanding of the resilience and sustainability of themed spaces.

A global assemblage of tax haven clusters: profit shifting, tax dodging and money laundering

In this paper we explore a selection of tax haven clusters in the US and Europe as diverse but recognisable species of some fifty of the phenomena worldwide that have been seldom studied from an economic geography or spatial planning viewpoint. We treat the objects of study as being almost perfect expressions of the classical, canonical cluster configuration. They are: spatial agglomeration, untraded as well as market dependencies, small and medium-sized enterprise status, associative or agentic relationships, interaction with large firms inside or outside the cluster and knowledge acquisition, advisory, consultancy and knowledge translation services from research and innovation intermediaries - public and/or private. However, we think their characteristics demand further recognition of the interactive and often innovative communication networks by means of which these cluster incumbents interact globally. This is because they are set within a worldwide system that can be conceptualised as an exemplar of the well-known construct known as an ‘assemblage’ (Deleuze and Guattari, 2004a). Unlike more recent treatments from De Landa (2019) and others, we try to concentrate on the motive power of the ‘agentic’ impulses of ‘desire’ that motivate human action (e.g. regarding ‘God, Gold or Glory’ as commonly-rehearsed motivators for colonialism of various kinds). It has been more common to use ‘assemblage theory’ to analyse the interlocking ‘machinic’ elements of complex systems like power networks or laboratory interactions. To unlock the mysteries of system interlocking in our selected tax havens, which comprise Wilmington, Delaware (US), Ireland (EU) and Gibraltar (former EU, now British Overseas Territory) – post-Brexit - occupying a ‘quantum’ space ‘in which both the colonial and post-colonial find expression’ (Perera, 2021). Methodologically, we seek ‘pattern recognition’ to identify the lineaments that explain these clusters and the ‘agentic’ actors that motivate them.

The Garden and Its Walls

This essay examines the Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Classical Chinese Garden in Vancouver through a sociocultural lens. Positioned in Chinatown within Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside (DTES), the garden is the first authentic Ming Dynasty-style scholar’s garden outside of China. Operating as both a public park managed by the Vancouver Park Board, as well as a paid garden managed by a nonprofit organization, the garden symbolizes an intersection of Canadian and Chinese cultures, offering a distinctive lens for analyzing cultural interplay. The concepts of the «contact zone» as well as assemblage theory are central to understanding the garden’s role in facilitating cross-cultural dialogues. Influenced by scholars like James Clifford and Mary Louise Pratt, the garden serves as a physical and conceptual space where cultures converge, fostering interpersonal dialogue among visitors of varied backgrounds. Philipp Schorch’s expansion of the contact zone to museum spaces offers a framework for analyzing the garden as representing Chinese culture in Vancouver as well as tying the garden to its locality. The analysis of the garden extends beyond its own confines and over its walls, exposing and exploring the complex relationship the garden has to its surrounding space, the DTES, and Chinatown.

Galactica’s dis-assemblage: Meta’s beta and the omega of post-human science

AbstractReleased mid-November 2022, Galactica is a set of six large language models (LLMs) of different sizes (from 125 M to 120B parameters) designed by Meta AI to achieve the ultimate ambition of “a single neural network for powering scientific tasks”, according to its accompanying whitepaper. It aims to carry out knowledge-intensive tasks, such as publication summarization, information ordering and protein annotation. However, just a few days after the release, Meta had to pull back the demo due to the strong hallucinatory tendencies or underwhelming performances of the model. This article aims to study, through a critical threefold argument, the potential impacts of LLMs once deployed in the scientific value chain. Our first argument is a technical one. By examining the technicity of Galactica, it is possible to explain the descripancies between its promotional corporate discourse and abysmal outputs. Second, by going back to debates in both computer science and computational philosophy on the automation of abduction, we argue from the epistemological front that LLMs indeed cannot produce strong abductions and, therefore, claims about the automation of hypothesis generation remains chambering. Finally, our third argument is a sociological one. By conceptualizing the scientific field through Nancy Katherine Hayles’ cognitive assemblage theory, we aim to outline the potential steering of science by LLMs, mainly through information ordering. The core of our argument rests on the assertion that excessive control on information risks contravening a certain serendipitous aspect inherent to scientific discoveries.

International entrepreneurial culture of born global and non-born global family firms: a configurational approach

PurposeDelving into family business heterogeneity, this study applies fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analyses (fsQCA) to explain overlooked differences in the international performance of born global family firms (BGFFs) and non-born global family firms (n-BGFFs); through the lens of assemblage theory of family business internationalization, the study develops distinctive configurations of international entrepreneurial culture (IEC) for BGFFs and n-BGFFs.Design/methodology/approachThis study compares the theoretical tenets of IEC among 167 BGFFs versus 192 n-BGFFs in Malaysia using fsQCA – a configurational method. The study further deploys necessity analysis of fsQCA (NCA) to determine the necessity conditions within the identified configurations.FindingsBGFFs manifest elevated levels of international entrepreneurial orientation, international motivation and international non-competitor network orientation. In contrast, n-BGFFs rely on international markets, learning and competitor network orientations to secure international performance. Furthermore, necessary condition analysis (NCA) reveals that international entrepreneurial orientation and international motivation are the necessity conditions for BGFFs. In contrast, international market, learning and competitor network orientation are all required for n-BGFFs’ international performance.Originality/valueThis study is timely and contributes to advancing the international business theory of family firm internationalization. It also offers better theorizing for family firms’ heterogeneity, locating the source of that heterogeneity not just in the speed of internationalization but also in the composition of their different IECs.

포스트-평생학습과 학습의 존재론적 전환

In the various arguments that talk about the future of education, the six principles platform of the suburban education frame, which is still operating in the way of defining the learning style, is 'who, what, how, when, what, why' learning. It is expressed that the person can use it for the purpose of the indigenous people, is separated in time and space, and the object and method can be unique. The lifelong learning approach that can use concepts such as bearing environment learning, transformative learning, situated learning, and expanded learning is included in the scope of application from the moment of expanding the horizon of learning, and more new approaches are possible. In the view of researchers, it is necessary to understand from an independent and neutral perspective. Researchers attempt the generative ability of learning, that is, the '(object)-becoming' of learning, and unravel the new existential members of learning with Latour's owner network theory (ANT) and Gaia theory, which inherited Deleuze's assemblage theory. Through this, they try to refresh the image of “future lifelong education” through lifelong learning. The researchers argue that early lifelong education is futuristic, and what the 'abstract machine' is, and how it differs from the current fitness university signal configuration. Second, they analyze the future educational discourse being discused in the future into several turning points, and judge whether the ontological way of understanding learners will not deviate from the state university interpretation method despite the “future discussion” within it. Finally, the researchers introduce the post-lifelong learning perspective as a new way to replace it, and suggest methods and conditions that can define the existence and function of 'eco-global' learning.

Weaving the real and the virtual: young urban Indonesians’ lived experiences of making psychological homes

ABSTRACT Home-making processes have been an important subject of investigation for decades. This research furthers the scholarship in this area by exploring how young urban Indonesians develop psychological homes to create habitable spaces for themselves, with reference to their various relational networks, activities, objects, and pets. We draw on fieldwork conducted over a 16-week period with 45 young people in Surabaya and subsequently extended through diary analysis. To analyze and interpret the empirical materials generated, we drew insights from assemblage theory which revealed that the lived experiences of youth in developing psychological homes for themselves are fluid and dynamic processes, involving both human and physical elements. Our exploration began with the key elements that participants used to develop psychological homes. We then also explored their practices in weaving together these key elements to navigate everyday tensions within their broader relational networks. This article demonstrates the utility of assemblage thinking in unpacking the everyday practices of homemaking among youth.

Head in the clouds: A Deleuzoguattarian analysis of the environmental impacts of digital memory

Digital memory in the twenty-first century is a complex combination of human and nonhuman elements that interact in various combinations. In an era where environmental devastation is inundating the planet, it is vital to address the digital’s role in this degradation. This article explores various facets of the environmental implications of the digital storage of memory objects using Deleuze and Guattari’s assemblage theory. I identify the ways in which the digital realm is constructed, or ‘territorialised’ in Deleuzoguattarian terms. Beyond identifying the most common myths related to digital memory’s environmental impact, I expand on the work of information theorists such as Clements, Floridi, and Ess by forwarding three ways in which digital memory practices can be deterritorialised. These approaches include (1) knowledge acquisition, (2) taking response-ability, and (3) anti-redundancy movements. I argue that it is vital for cloud storage users, especially those who self-identify as environmentally conscious, to align their online memory practices with accurate understandings of the environmental impacts of the digital.

Critical geographies of disaster, and the geographical imagination

This paper combines assemblage theory, feminist ethics of care and decolonial theory to build on recent work in disaster studies that seeks to address the systematic and intersectional inequalities that underlie the emergence of disaster. We argue that Western logics of “risk” do not always have traction with communities, and so researchers must “stay with the trouble” in engaging with tensions between lifeworlds. We suggest that geographical imaginaries provide a means to analyze the diverse ways of being and knowing that are involved in this process.

Renegotiation, uncertainty, imagination: Assemblage perspectives on reproductive and family planning with an Inborn Error of immunity

Advances within the new genetics expand our understanding of the scope and presentation of inherited conditions, particularly to include incompletely penetrant and variably expressive conditions. These features can complicate patients’ reproductive and family planning processes, in part because they expand the possibilities of life with an inherited condition. Despite many inquiries into reproductive planning with an inherited condition, accounts of experiential knowledge and reproductive planning fail to adequately describe the uncertainties experienced by people living with incompletely penetrant and variably expressive conditions. To address this gap, we conducted a qualitative, cross-sectional study using assemblage theory to characterize the impacts of experiential knowledge on reproductive planning for individuals living with Inborn Errors of Immunity (IEI) that exhibit incomplete penetrance and variable expressivity.Eligible participants were between ages 18 and 48, with a diagnosis of either GATA2 deficiency, PIK3CD gain-of-function disorder, or CTLA4 deficiency. Using an abductive thematic approach, attention was paid to the people, ideas, and non-human objects embedded within participants’ accounts of disease experience and reproductive planning. Organized around the objects of genetic diagnosis, the body, and hypothetical children, this analysis illustrates how disease can be conceptualized as an assemblage of human and non-human objects which provoke numerous actions and affective engagements in reproductive planning. These engagements include renegotiation, uncertainty, and imagination. By emphasizing the distribution of agency and action across systems, processes, and relationships, assemblage theory invites novel ways of understanding the role of experiential knowledge on reproductive planning.

Biophilia and Adolescents’ Sense of Place in Australian Vertical Schools

This article describes the place relationships adolescents have with natural elements in recently developed ‘vertical schools’ in Australia: a relatively new school typology in the country, generally considered to be over four storeys high. Vertical schools are being built in Australia’s largest cities in response to the need for new schools where land is scarce. Drawing on qualitative research into the place relationships that adolescents have with their learning environments in two Australian vertical schools, this article explores the ways young people seek closer associations with nature in multi-storey educational settings. The research adopted a phenomenological approach to ‘place research’, asking what makes a place a place? Further, it recognised that places have the capacity to shape the ‘becoming’ of a person, that ‘becoming’ happens when there is a certain resonance between a place’s cycles, and that identity is created out of difference. As such, ‘place as complex adaptive assemblage theory’ was employed to study the interplay between location and experience in selected vertical schools, also drawing on the earlier theoretical work of Relph (1976), who suggested that the essence of a place lies in the unselfconscious intentionality that defines places as profound centres of human existence. Photovoice was employed as a method to elicit insights into the relationships adolescents have with their school as place. Students created photo essays to document their place relationships, revealing deeply insightful personal reflections on their school as place and the meanings they associate with it. Specifically, the article reports on what thirteen adolescent students communicated about the biophilic experiences afforded by their vertical school, including how it influenced their ‘becoming’. The findings demonstrated that the participating students not only valued relationships with natural elements, but actively sought biophilic experiences on a regular basis. The desire for more frequent and more significant interactions with natural materials and cycles was common across most students, indicating that the relatively limited biophilic experiences available to students in vertical schools is a challenge that should be addressed in future multi-level educational environments.

Fiscal extraction by sovereignty: Calculative bordering and differential entanglement in the Eurozone crisis

The article analyses the relationship between sovereignty and capitalist extraction using assemblage theory. It discusses dialectical variants of assemblage theory as tools to think about the entangled relations that make economic actors. The article proposes two concepts, calculative bordering and differential entanglement, to make sense of processes that responsibilised the Greek government for the 2010s Eurozone crisis and invoked its sovereignty as a tool for extraction value for financial markets. The article contributes to anthropological theorisations of sovereignty by showing how, as a political concept, sovereignty can serve to responsibilize governments to secure accumulation and ensure capitalist extraction. The article thus aims for a refined understanding of the changing relation between extraction and sovereignty and processes of fiscal responsibilization as a performance of sovereignty.

Producing accountability with autonomy in Denmark and England: the analytical potential of assemblage theory with critical realism in comparative education

ABSTRACT School autonomy with accountability (SAWA) reforms have developed in diverse forms in Northern Europe. Following processes of decentralization to the municipal and school levels, quality assurance and inspection became key to the test-based accountability agendas of Denmark and England respectively. With an abductive approach, we explore the epistemological potential of a hybrid theoretical framework, which combines assemblage theory with critical realism, to analyze the production stories of these two policy instruments. Drawing on data from an international comparative research project, and more recent policy document analyses, we examine the arrangement of social entities – discourses, instruments, technologies, artefacts, and actors – that led to particular accountability outcomes within these specific educational assemblages. We argue that, despite distinctions in their social entities, the dominant state assemblages of accountability in Denmark and England have been captured by the global SAWA and capitalist assemblages at distinct times. Although school actors are incorporated into, and antagonistic towards, the state assemblages, change is limited due to the resilience of the underlying logic of epistemic governance and the desire to improve educational standards for a global knowledge economy. We conclude briefly with an assessment of the utility of the hybrid framework to the comparison of SAWA.

The ethics of enhancement among image and performance enhancing drug coaches

ABSTRACT This research examines image and performance-enhancing drug (IPED) use, specifically focusing on the emerging role of IPED coaches. Situating drug use within broader assemblage theory, we investigated how these coaches, often operating in an online context, function as enabling environments, influencing practices, and contributing to harm reduction in a broader social context within and for IPED communities. Ten IPED coaches were interviewed, with this work focusing on their legal, ethical, and moral considerations, risk assessment, and harm reduction strategies of their practices. We employed a critical realist approach, following flexible coding to identify and develop themes which were further framed an enabling environments framework. Coaches operated along an ethical tightrope, emphasising the conscious regulation of conduct within established norms and the nuanced assessment of risks aligned with individual goals and motivations. Power dynamics and responsibility concerns unfolded through the lens of collaborative decision-making, where trust emerged as an essential element of these relations within contextual risk assessments. IPED coaches play a role in harm reduction by fostering trust and informed decision-making, balancing clients’ goals with health considerations. These findings emphasise the potential for collaboration between IPED coaches and the health workforce to enhance health promotion and support within IPED communities.

Continued Use Trajectories: How Entropy Work Sustains Technology Assemblages

Why do some technology products enjoy enduring continued use, whereas others are quickly discarded? Existing marketing research explains that continued use is motivated by cost–benefit decisions over how useful and easy to use a tech product is. Yet the interconnected nature of contemporary technologies means that continued use can depend on tech products’ capacities to interact with other devices, objects, infrastructures, and people as parts of assemblages that generate useful properties. By analyzing interview and observational data of technology consumption through the lens of assemblage theory, the authors identify four continued use trajectories. These explain different paths from adoption to discontinued use by distinguishing component parts’ capacities to interact and hold assemblages together to sustain emergent properties. In each trajectory, continued use is sustained by entropy work to support a tech product's usefulness and ease of use. The authors consider implications of entropy work for theories of continued use and broader marketing scholarship, and offer recommendations to help firms manage the opportunities and risks that accompany different continued use trajectories.

Desiring-futures in education policy: assemblage theory, artificial intelligence, and UNESCO’s futures of education

ABSTRACT The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) launched its Futures of Education policy initiative in early 2020. The process sought to open a sustained global policy debate on educational futures in a world typified by climatological instability, social inequity, and political unrest. Drawing on Deleuze and Guattari’s theory of assemblages, this paper explores how the Futures of Education initiative simultaneously produces, captures, and reroutes flows of desire by opening its policymaking process to global consultation. Following this line of thinking, the paper introduces a speculative method for critical policy analysis that utilises AI-powered tools to generate expressive images and imaginaries of education futures based on UNESCO’s three stages of policy development. The authors argue that this method enables a step beyond conventional interpretations of a policy’s discursive content toward a speculative analysis of its processual dynamics and expressive potentials. Ultimately, the paper underscores the generative possibilities of AI-assisted methods for tracking flows and expressions of desire within education policy assemblages under conditions of climatological and political upheaval. The authors encourage further experimentation with plugging emerging technologies into global policy assemblages to better understand how desire is invested into particular images and imaginaries of educational futures.

From Bangladesh Colony to Shanthinagar: housing rights, sexuality, and consumption in Keralam

As the developmental state attempted to transform the urban slum in Kerala into a model housing colony, narratives of decency, self-restraint, and sexual discipline became crucial for securing housing rights in the transformed space. ‘Bad’ and ‘good’ consumption; ‘bad’ and ‘good’ poor and images of ‘normality’ and the ‘normal home’ as the abode of the ideal citizen and worker were some of the strategies deployed by the residents of the Bangladesh Colony to encounter the quotidian world of moral non-acceptance. This article examines how neoliberal articulation of rights through government projects often have contradictory effects on the lives of differently positioned women. The moral economy of consumption hinders the realization of the neoliberal ideal of the consumer-citizen. Practices considered as ‘excess’ in consumption by female sex workers were perceived as a threat to this slum community lying on the urban margins, resulting in their expulsion. The article integrates theories of urban assemblage and queer temporality to understand how women sex workers resisted such expulsions. These theories converge on the notion of excess/abundance. Abundance of relationships, of political alliances and strategies, of consumption practices—exceeding heteronormative ideals—was deployed by women sex workers to resist their erasure and confinement into any single identity.

Planned pleasures: alcohol assemblages for ‘generation sensible’

ABSTRACT It has been suggested that a pivotal explanation for the drastic decrease in young people’s alcohol consumption is the younger generations concern with taking responsibility for a variety of areas in their lives. Emanating from this, the overall aim of this article is to consider how alcohol and drinking situations are enacted among a group of emerging adults in Sweden from this ‘generation sensible’, and how they describe the relation between alcohol, pleasure and control. The study is based on 23 qualitative interviews with people aged 19–23. Inspired by assemblage theory we analyzed how important human and non-human elements congregate in described drinking situations. The analysis showed that alcohol is enacted as a strong psychoactive substance and described like other (illegal) drugs, rather than being seen as more harmless and acceptable. Pleasure in drinking is made possible through control and planning, and in downplaying the importance of drinking and the transgressive power of intoxication. We suggest that the risk-taking element in drinking is stigmatized among groups of emerging adults. It is concluded that while alcohol is described as unimportant to several participants, alcohol assemblages are not, therefore participants work hard to shape drinking situations to counteract loss of control.

The typology of school mapping synergies: a diagrammatic morphological evaluation of middle schools in Iran

PurposeThis study introduces diagrammatic morphology as a novel method for analysing the synergistic interactions within school mapping. It seeks to reshape the evaluation of school mapping typologies, focusing on the interconnectedness of learning activities, social interactions, and spatial configurations. Aims: (1) To develop the morphological evaluation procedures for school mapping. (2) To evaluate the Iranian Middle Schools' Interior Architecture (IMSIA) using the diagrammatic morphological method.Design/methodology/approachThis qualitative study has been conducted in two steps: A review of the morphological method for school mapping evaluation. A case study analysis of fifty-five IMSIA samples.FindingsThe spatial typology of IMSIA were categorized into four distinct models. These models included ten distinct pattern categories within twenty-one different types. The case study evaluation identified three levels of synergistic complexity within the school mapping: primary, intermediate, and advanced. The advanced level displayed the strongest connection to pedagogies among the analysed models.Originality/valueThis research innovatively evaluates the synergistic context of schools based on the assemblage theory through an occupational analysis of the Iranian middle schools' interior architecture mapping diagrammatic morphological method.

Transgendering-assemblages: Sin Wai Kin’s trans techniques and acts of boybanding

This article investigates the artist Sin Wai Kin’s (單慧乾) speculative approach to drag through the prism of ‘transgendering-assemblages’. Influenced by the assemblage theory of Manuel DeLanda and Jasbir Puar, I propose that transgendering-assemblages actualize the properties of transness (Marquis Bey) through particular trans techniques (Grace E. Lavery). I introduce Sin’s more-than-human trans techniques, from make-up to costume, and approach to nonbinary storytelling to investigate identity assemblages more broadly. With explicit attention to their engagement with Chinese opera and Taoism, the speculative boyband in Sin’s Turner Prize nominated work It’s Always You (2021) prompts my proposal for ‘boybanding’ as a technique for investigating identity assemblages. The final section is focused on the genderings of East Asian masculinities in Sin’s work to argue how all gender-assemblages are also ‘racializing assemblages’ (Alexander G. Weheliye). I conclude with a provocation on what assemblage as a nonbinary concept (defined by what it does rather than what it is) can offer studies of gender.