nucleation

ARG-044: The MSF meeting reanalysed by Bencherki, Brummans and Vézy shows that an interaction can make available a way of relating its participants did not hold, and names the condition under which it lasts; it does not show that taking part comes before the reinterpretation

2 min read

Properties7
StatusProposed
Formevidence
Tagssocial-ontology, agency
Linedistributed-agency
GroundsLIT-1902 — Agency Without Agents: Affective Forces, Communicative Events, and Organizational Becomings, THEORY-1279 — Organizational categories are radially structured, so applying them to nonprototypical cases extends and changes them; this is one source of continuous change in routine organizational action, THEORY-1284 — Organization is a secondary accomplishment of change: change in organizations is continuous, as actors reweave their webs of beliefs and habits to accommodate new experience, and organization is both the attempt to stabilize that flux and the pattern that emerges from it
ConcludesCLAIM-430 — An interaction can make available a way of relating that its participants' operative perspectives did not hold, by giving each a role to enact in it, so that taking part can come before, and help produce, the reinterpretation it later seems to express; whether the change stays with the partner, generalizes to a category, or is reproduced beyond the encounter are further questions
Rendered intodocs/arguments-by-conclusion.md

Graph View

The inference

In the meeting, two health officials ask MSF to train their physicians (LIT-1902, pp. 1359–1363).

  • Part 1. The request offers a role that MSF’s operative perspective refuses: “MSF … not a university” (p. 1362). Robert reaches agreement on an “ad hoc training program”, so the interaction made available a way of relating that was not held before.
  • Part 3. Whether this lasts beyond the encounter is CLAIM-430’s third part. Tsoukas and Chia name the condition: institutionalization, which may fail (THEORY-1284).
  • Part 2. Here the reinterpretation is made in talk so that taking part becomes possible. That is the reverse of part 2, where taking part comes first.

Critical questions

  • Would the evidence be expected if the conclusion were false? For part 1, less so. Without the claim’s mechanism a refusal was the expected outcome, and the transcript shows the representative beginning one (lines 43–46).
  • Does it tell the claim apart from its rivals? For part 1, partly. A rival on which Robert simply complied with a request he already accepted is weakened by the marks of resistance. Nothing separates part 2 from its reverse except the order observed, and that order goes against part 2.
  • Does the measure measure what it is said to? Only in part. The episode is a published excerpt, reread by authors who interpret its pauses by supposition (NOTE-1484, Limitations), and the source chapter (LIT-1914) is unread. So this is Proposed, and holds for parts 1 and 3 only.

Backlinks