Anthropology of Organizations

At the end of 2010 the British Museum unveiled the final artefact in their exhibition ‘A History of the World in 100 Objects’: a portable solar powered lamp designed for and sold to people living without access to mains electricity in Africa and Asia. Solar powered lights have become iconic objects of social entrepreneurship in Africa and Asia and this article explores the work involved in producing them as humanitarian goods. Following the 100th object from its conception in a Stanford University classroom to points of sale and use in rural India the article explores how it has been made to materialise both an ethic of care and an ethic of commercial interest. Drawing from traditions in the social study of technology and the conceptual vocabulary of Michel Callon the article argues that the significance of objects like the ultra affordable solar lamp lies in their capacity to make and define markets at the ‘bottom of the pyramid’.

O projecto de investigação parte de um estudo maior intitulado COPP-LAB: Circulações de Polícias em Portugal, África Lusófona e Brasil, financiado pela Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (FCT), actualmente em curso (até 2015) e pretende explorar alguns temas que não têm sido abordados até ao momento presente.

As questões em análise centram-se fundamentalmente na cooperação técnico-policial entre Portugal e São-Tomé e Príncipe ao abrigo dos protocolos estabelecidos entre o actual Instituto Superior de Ciências Policiais e Segurança Interna (ISCPSI) localizado no Calvário em Lisboa e na exportação para São Tomé e Príncipe de um modelo policial típico de países “ocidentais” como é o Modelo de Policiamento de Proximidade presente na polícia portuguesa – a Polícia de Segurança Pública (PSP), desde os anos 90 até à actualidade.

Neste sentido, pretende-se reflectir e examinar o modus operandi da Polícia Nacional de São Tomé e Príncipe (PNSTP), fazendo uma pesquisa etnográfica com recurso à observação participante junto de Agentes, Comissários e demais chefias pertencentes àquela instituição policial que se considerem para o efeito pertinente, visando compreender se a polícia são-tomense encontra-se organizada e suficientemente preparada para lidar com os desafios actuais e vindouros do seu país em questões como a segurança, policiamento, manutenção da ordem pública, entre outros.

Em simultâneo, procura-se percepcionar o enquadramento e a aplicação do Modelo de Policiamento de Proximidade na sociedade são-tomense a partir de uma nova geração de agentes policiais formados em Lisboa e que neste momento são comissários no seu país de origem. Para esse efeito, procurar-se-á fazer um trabalho quer próximo destes comissários que oportunamente foram entrevistados no início deste ano na capital de São-Tomé e Príncipe, São-Tomé, quer junto dos autóctones e nas interacções destes com as forças policiais, maioritariamente em locais públicos como recintos desportivos, praças, avenidas, arruamentos, instituições culturais, entre outros locais que sejam alvo de patrulha e supervisionamento da PNSTP.

Numa primeira fase, deseja-se examinar a génese dos protocolos estabelecidos entre o ISCPSI e a entidade responsável pela sua tutela – o Ministério da Administração Interna e a Polícia Nacional de São Tomé e Príncipe tutelada por seu lado pelo Ministério da Defesa e Ordem Interna. Neste primeiro momento procura-se responder a algumas questões que foram sendo elencadas e que julgamos serem pertinentes: i) Qual a justificação para o surgimento destes protocolos; ii) Em que data foram assinados e aplicados inicialmente? iii) Que pressupostos compreendiam? iv) Que configurações tiveram desde o seu surgimento até ao momento presente?

Com efeito, foi possível apurar que as primeiras entradas dos alunos dos PALOP (designados por cadetes cooperantes) no ISCPSI, datam de finais da década de 80, mais concretamente em 1988 (dados fornecidos pelo instituto), embora não se consiga responder até ao momento às questões acima formuladas. Julgamos portanto existirem enormes lacunas nesses campos que deverão ser respondidas a breve trecho.

Para se conseguir atingir tal objectivo, far-se-á uma pesquisa aprofundada relativamente à constituição do ISCPSI no Calvário, ao teor dos seus conteúdos programáticos, ao seu corpo docente e discente, ao regime de internato de 5 anos que aí vigora e que de acordo com a literatura apurada se encontra em desuso, aos objectivos a que essa instituição de ensino superior se propunha e se propõe actualmente, descodificando as alterações que foram sendo realizadas a esse nível.

Em simultâneo, serão efectuadas entrevistas semi-estruturadas a decisores políticos que foram responsáveis pela fundação daquela instituição de ensino superior, docentes e discentes actuais e passados que aí trabalharam e estudaram respectivamente entre outros que porventura se considerem fundamentais para os temas em questão.

Numa fase posterior, serão realizadas algumas viagens a São Tomé e Príncipe com o objectivo de fazer trabalho de campo. Com efeito, a etnografia terá aqui enorme relevância e espaço na medida em que se pretende registar o dia-a-dia de agentes e comissários policiais nas suas missões de controlo de tráfego rodoviário, no patrulhamento de ruas, aeroportos e outros locais, o trabalho administrativo, workshops e palestras em escolas e outras instituições em que PNSTP se desloca regularmente para informar a população sobre temas de interesse público.

Social anthropology has some claims to have discovered ethnography as a method and certainly to be the only discipline to put it unequivocally at the centre of its research activity. More and more it has begun to apply that method to the many organizations that are so common in the modern world. This chapter is the introduction to a series of case studies in which experienced anthropologists reflect on doing the ethnography of organizations. Eleven characteristics of good ethnography are listed.

Antropologia organizacji jest subdyscypliną sytuującą się na dwóch pograniczach: nauk o zarządzaniu i antropologii oraz antropologii akademickiej i antropologii stosowanej. Z jednej strony uprawiają ją przedstawiciele nauk o zarządzaniu, zainteresowani przede wszystkim aplikowaniem metody etnograficznej i teorii nauk społecznych do zgłębiania zagadnienia organizacji. Z drugiej – organizacja jest przedmiotem badań antropologów, którzy – tak jak m.in. antropolożki Marietta L. Baba i Susan Wright – uważają antropologiczne zainteresowanie organizacjami za tradycję odrębną od interdyscyplinarnej teorii organizacji i chcą odnosić swoją działalność badawczą do „głównego nurtu” akademickiej antropologii. W niniejszym tekście analizuję strategie, za pomocą których autorki wpisują trzy wczesne epizody badawcze (projekt Hawthorne, badania W. Lloyda Warnera w Yankee City oraz manchesterskie studia nad brytyjskimi organizacjami przemysłowymi) w historię „głównego nurtu” antropologii. Podejmuję również próbę zdefiniowania „głównego nurtu” antropologii oraz zastanawiam się, czy można mówić o „wyparciu” albo „wymazaniu” z niego owych trzech epizodów, co mogłoby świadczyć o istnieniu lęków antropologii przed utratą własnej tożsamości, jasnych granic i statusu dyscypliny naukowej.

Ethnographic fieldwork as a key anthropological method has been successfully applied to organisations, and this working paper argues that it can also be used profitably for the structured ‘arenas’ unfolding between organisations, in this case the UNESCO World Heritage Convention of 1972. After a brief description of its rise to global prominence, I describe the constituent organisations and their patterns of interaction, refuting the idea of a centralised system. There are
few obstacles to doing ethnographic research at World Heritage Committee sessions and meetings, and doing so is rewarding not only during official session time but also for following the intense informal conversations around it. Formal interviews with key participants both profit from session insights and motivate new observational sensibilities. Written documents remain a key source of information but omit important aspects of the sessions and read differently with background knowledge of the people and issues involved. Feeding back into the arena through one's comments and publications is impossible to avoid but adds only one further voice to a dense discursive field. Particularly when studying the constituent organisations in great depth is not an option, concentrating on the arena between them is therefore a fruitful ethnographic option.

In the ethnographically and critically conceived study the core topics derive from the author’s examination of discourse on local tourism around the year 2000 in Tolmin, a town in W Slovenia of approximately 3.500 inhabitants, with as many living in its immediate surroundings, which has only recently began to appear as a possible tourist destination. The core topics concern the following questions: what represents tourism in situ?; which historic events co-shape(d) the present discourse on local tourism in Tomin?; how do the local landscape and “tourism landscapes” influence the present discourse on local tourism?; how are geographies of “place branding” connecting the global and the local levels of contemporary “tourism processes”?; how does contemporary local identification function within the global-local nexus?; and, what kind of discourse guided/s the newly established local tourism organisation, which began its work in the Tolminska region in the year 2000?

In the book, tourism is in the first place examined as a discourse in the Foucauldian sense, pertaining to power relations and strategic practices for organising social relations, while its uses are contextualised within historical, institutional and folk contexts. Thus, the author provides insight into the history of local tourism and the institutionalisation of tourism in the area around the year 2000, and also discusses the existing local grass-roots practices designed on the basis of more or less explicit tourism agendas.

The study is based on the “anthropology of tourism” paradigm, as well as on the emerging “anthropology of space and place” paradigm. The author brings new research topics into the field of anthropology of tourism, especially those derived from the phenomenon of proliferating tourist destinations in the modern world, their marketing strategies, and the identification processes of local inhabitants in relation to place branding within the global arena.

The success of UNESCO’s 1972 World Heritage Convention has made an entry into the World Heritage List a coveted distinction for tourism, nationbuilding and economic development. This article traces the evolution of the
treaty from sharing responsibility for humanity’s most prized sites to sharing the World Heritage List as an exercise in global representation. Growing North–South tensions within the World Heritage Committee are currently producing yet another shift, towards sharing the right among treaty states to
have their candidate sites listed and wishes fulfilled. While formerly an especially cosmopolitan section of normally often nationally oriented heritage experts was in command, the new turn coincides with the ascendancy of career diplomats, that is people with cosmopolitan aspirations who, conversely,
strive to serve national interests. They too are cosmopolitan at times, but typically for broader concerns such as world peace or global equity that transcend the focus of the Convention.

In the more than two decades since the first international climate negotiations, many thinkers and actors have identified a divisive rift between ambitious language and binding agreements, between expertise and activism, information and engagement, abstract scientific knowledge and actionable policy agendas—in short, a gap between climate science and climate action. This thesis takes this observation as a starting point to ask what constitutes “science,” and what is meant by “action” in the realms of climate change research and activism. Moreover, what worlds of possibility are implicit in these understandings? What new conceptions of the human, the Earth and human-Earth relations does the gap between climate science and action produce? Calling into question how climate change challenges and exceeds conventional technical and conceptual frameworks, this thesis is an exploration of the anthropological stakes of climate change. One part literature-based research and another part fieldwork-based research, it takes as its concrete ethnographic object three programs of research in North America whose work situates them within the emergent and mercurial gap between climate science and climate action: the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication (YPCCC), the Dynamic Integrated Climate Economy model project (DICE) and the Economics for the Anthropocene project (E4A). Located in the murky intermediate domain between scientific and managerial knowledge, these researchers are mid-range climate change problem solvers, who thrive among the assemblages of people, processes, tools, objects and events through which climate change knowledge is made actionable. Investigating the practical and conceptual details that make up their engagements with science, technology, policy and the public, this thesis examines how each project produces the very possibilities for politics and activism, human being and belonging, in an era of a changing global climate.

This chapter provides an ethnograpic account of the UN Security Council. The analysis is inspired by Marc Galanter’s argument about the advantages of the “repeat players.” (1974. “Why the ‘Haves’ Come Out Ahead”). Whereas the permanent member states resemble the “repeat players,” the elected member states play a similar role to the ones
Galanter calls “the one-shotters.”  Building on this, I combine aspects of expertise as sources of power and levels of formality as entry-points to my account of how the Security Council works. I continue by describing how the permanent members of the UN’s Security Council know the rules
of the game better than the elected member states, how they have shaped the rules and local codes and  know how to phrase the questions and play the probabilities. Based on this, I argue that the five permanent members are able to effectively take control of situations and dominate the Security Council without making use of their veto power.

Aufbauend auf der Beobachtung, dass die postfordistische Arbeitswelt und deren arbeitende Subjekte durch ästhetisierte Kreativitätsdispositive gekennzeichnet sind (siehe dazu Boltanski/Chiapello 2007 [1999]; Reckwitz 2012 [1995]), skizziert dieser Beitrag eine weitere Dimension postfordistischer Arbeitsverhältnisse, die leider häufig bloß anekdotisch erwähnt wird: die Beziehung von Künstler_Innen zu ihrer Arbeit. Genauer gesagt geht es im Folgenden um die Beziehung von Künstler_innen zu Aspekten ihrer Arbeit, die als prototypisch für das kreative „unternehmerische Selbst“ (Bröckling 2007) stehen. Zum Prototypischen dieser Form von Arbeit zählt vor allem die authentische und selbstbestimmte Organisation, Flexibilität, sowie die Projektarbeit. In diesem Beitrag diskutiere ich unter anderem, inwiefern solche Formen von Arbeit in künstlerischen Prozessen re ektiert, aber auch kritisiert und neu entworfen werden. Ich setze mich als Forschungsgegenstand mit einem Netzwerk aus der sogenannten Freien Szene der darstellenden Künstler_innen in Deutschland auseinander, da in diesem Milieu zentrale Aspekte der post-fordistischen Arbeitsweise nicht nur arbeitsbestimmend sind, sondern auch auf eine komplexe Weise ambivalent.

This book examines a new type of state formation evoked by the rise of transnational rule, what Schia calls franchised states. Turning the UN into a field site and drawing on an anthropological fieldwork of the UN organization, he demonstrates how peacebuilding activities turned Liberia into an object of governing, whereby the UN, in seeking to build the state, also became the state. The sovereign state of Liberia here emerges as a franchise rather than a self-contained entity. Two implications follow: First, that international peacebuilding turns post-conflict countries into clients of the international community. Second, that “sovereignty” is no longer exclusively associated with the state: it is organized in and through specific practices of governing where a state actor is only one among a range of actors. With these findings, the book moves beyond previous work on peacebuilding by focusing on the unbundling of sovereignty. It contributes to the literature on the changing forms of sovereignty by showing the specific ways in which sovereignty is organized, packaged and enacted, often by actors working under international auspices.

How do small states behave once they have a seat at the table? In this article, I describe how one small state—Norway—operated when it was a member of the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) in 2001–02. From my anthropological fieldwork in this period, I present a number of arguments. The first one is that, substantively, Norwegian diplomats at the Council were caught in a bind between representing national interests, on the one hand, and being “team players” vis-a-vis the permanent members, on the other. I also argue that institutionally organizational designs shape political decisions in significant and often unexpected ways. Finally, in terms of theory and method, even in highly formalized diplomatic settings, such as the UNSC, informal processes are central to understanding how states operate, as well as how the Council functions.
[International organizations, diplomacy, the United
Nations Security Council, informal processes, anthropology of policy]

This is a reprint appearing in the ES&P Special Issue "Into the Fray. Strategic Perspectives on Biodiversity Sciences and Politics" edited by Aleksandar Rankovic, Audrey Coreau, Yann Laurans, Laurent Mermet, Sébastien Treyer. The rest of the article collection is thought-provoking and exciting! https://www.sciencedirect.com/journal/environmental-science-and-policy/vol/113/suppl/C

What does a science of environmental conservation look like? Though we often see it as a contemporary problem, engineering the interface of science and decision-making bodies has been a question since the founding of ecology. This study traces the creation of new conservation initiatives via the repeated splintering of the Ecological Society of America since the early 1900s and compares these against the results of a network analysis of contemporary scientists and their affiliations. Notwithstanding the new terminology of science-policy interfaces,
brokers, and gaps, these questions often hinge on the same dilemmas as they did at the beginning of 20th century. The history of these groups shows how divisive distinctions between ecology and conservation, pure
and applied research, science and politics, and facts versus values can quickly become integrated into the structure of organizations—even those that are created specifically to bridge gaps in what today would be called the science-policy interface. Meanwhile, a social network analysis of present-day scientists suggests that individual researchers are finding ways to informally “jump” across science-policy gaps at a sub-organizational level. Remarkably, these science-policy conflicts can pose major problems for organizations, even when the actual activities of members traverse these boundaries on an individual basis. When designing science policy interfaces, formal bridging mechanisms between organizations remain important but these should also support
the ongoing, if under-the-radar, ways that individuals negotiate gaps between conservation research and policy advocacy.

This paper looks at the way in which the flexibilization of the Mexican economy has been accompanied by neoliberalism as its mode of regulation, and the importance that macroeconomic changes have had for indigenous weavers in the Mexican state of Chiapas. Under the new regime of flexible accu- mulation, old forms of work are making a comeback. Indigenous organizations are adapting to the new times, with the help of non- indigenous advisors. Using examples from the field, this paper examines the opportunities and constraints weavers’ cooperatives are facing in Chiapas, under flexible accumulation capitalism.

This paper discusses a research project in which social scientists were involved both as analysts and supporters during a pilot with a new wireless nursing call system. The case thus exemplifies an attempt to participate in developing dependable health care systems and offers insight into the challenges of developing and supporting such systems. The analysis proposes that while dependability is not simply a technical issue, neither is it something, which can be improved merely by adding a social dimension. Instead, it argues that dependability is a relative concept, which may mean different things conditional on how it is specified in practice and who gets to do this. This relativity makes it important to relate the question of how to support dependable health care systems to an analysis of both the politics of technology within specific projects and to the politics of discourse, through which the researcher becomes involved in such projects.

The book sets out the major social scientific approaches to the study of Special Operations Forces (SOF). The increased presence and unprecedented expansion for SOF is largely a result of the ‘new’ kinds of conflicts that have emerged in the 21st century. At the same time, even with this high profile in the military, policy and media and popular cultural arenas, there is relatively little social scientific research on SOF. This book aims to fill the gap by providing a series of studies and analyses of SOF across the globe, since the end of World War II. Filling a clear gap in the literature, this book will be of much interest to students of strategic studies, civil-military relations, irregular warfare, security studies, and international relations.

In the chapter ‘Seamen’s Council – a SOFish way of making decisions’ describes and discusses a unique, collective, informal, and egalitarian way of decision-making at all levels Norwegian Naval Special Command (MJK). As inn all military units there is a formal hierarchy of decision-making, but both systems and practices exist in parallel and are complementary. The main point is that important decisions in SOF units are generally made collectively, not by its commanders in splendid isolation. The chapter explains how and why leadership and decision-making in SOF units are unique, and why and how it is different from leadership in conventional military units. The practice of informal decision-making is found in most SOF units, known by other names (the SAS calls it Chinese parliament). The main purpose of the council is operational: long and thorough discussions before missions create room for creative thinking, initiative, and to avoid group thinking. The practice of the Seamen’s council also seems to make MJK operators better prepared for uncertainties, strengthens risk analysis, as well as gives trust and cohesion within the unit.

Celem pracy jest antropologiczna (etnologiczna) prezentacja tzw. neopogańskiego nacjonalizmu w skali mikro, czyli w ograniczeniu do jednej tylko grupy społecznej występującej na terenach Polski. Przedmiotem mojego zainteresowania stał się pomorski Zakon Zadrugi "Północny Wilk" z siedzibą w Koszalinie, nawiązujący do ideologii Jana Stachniuka i jego antychrześcijańskiego Ruchu Nacjonalistów Polskich - Zadruga. W związku z tym ZZPW należy włączyć w obręb szeregu (kilkunastu-kilkudziesięciu) prawicowych polskich organizacji nacjonalistycznych o profilu rodzimowierczym, które w literaturze przedmiotu przyjęło się określać mianem post-Zadrugi.
Na kartach opracowania nie dokonuję rekonstrukcji nacjonalizmu, który jest podstawowym pierwiastkiem budującym tożsamość opisywanej organizacji, opierając się tylko o źródła pisane; wręcz przeciwnie: podstawową metodą pozyskiwania informacji na temat nacjonalizmu ZZPW stały się dla mnie badania terenowe. Pozwala to wyjście poza oficjalną doktrynę prezentowaną w oficjalnym organie prasowym organizacji o tytule "Securius", którą tworzą wątki nacjonalizmu, rasologii (rasizm i antysemityzm), rodzimowierstwa oraz elitaryzmu.
Tezą pracy jest stwierdzenie, iż nacjonalizm przejawia się na trzech płaszczyznach: formalnej, ideologicznej (wyobrażenia członków grupy na temat rzeczywistości, wyrażane słowami), behawioralnej (praktyka społeczna, realizacja ideologii); temu też przyporządkowany jest tok pracy. W pierwszej kolejności przedstawiam szeroko pojęty wizerunek grupy, interpretując nazwę grupy, jej logo oraz nakreślając powierzchowność członków grupy. Następnie dokonuję analizy ideologii grupy wykazując, że poza sferą słów nacjonalizm wyraża się także sztuką. Na zakończenie dokonuję opracowania materiałów zebranych na temat życia codziennego i odświętnego ZZPW.
Sądzę, że całość studium dobitnie dowodzi, że nacjonalizm posiada znacznie głębszy wymiar, niż tylko ideologię. Mniemam, że wzbogacenie badań nacjonalizmu o obserwację uczestniczącą wydatnie zwiększa dokładność wyobrażenia nauki na temat tego zjawiska. Między innymi z tego powodu, istotną częścią mojej pracy jest "autorska" propozycja wizji antropologii, jako nauki, której cechą szczególną są badania terenowe.

This chapter draws on empirical data from an in-depth case study of a UK mutual life insurance company given the pseudonym Pensco. 1 The company was undergoing a period of transformation: in their own terms, they were evolving out of a system of 'paternalistic'managerial control towards a more 'professional'and commercial mode of management. This was happening within the context of a changing environment for personal financial services. We are, however, less concerned with these changes in the industry per se than ...

This chapter draws from the findings of research conducted from 2008 to 2010 by a group composed of five postgraduate students in political sciences whom I supervised. The aim of the research was to produce an ethnographic study of the local institutions in the city of Ravenna, Italy, in charge of the 'protection and social integration' of refugees and asylum seekers, and to analyse the way the national asylum system functions from an anthropological perspective. In particular, the objective was to understand how national and trans-national policies turned into everyday practices at the local urban level within a specific refugees' reception project, how bureaucratic procedures for refugee status determination affected the lives and needs of asylum seekers, and how local administrative practices addressed issues such as housing, employment, and health. An ethnographic approach was adopted to examine everyday life inside local offices and organizations in charge of what was referred to as the 'reception and integration' process for asylum seekers and refugees-including voluntary organizations.

This dissertation is based on anthropological fieldwork conducted in three London based ICT companies. I explore the complex issue of gender and culture in regards to under representation of women in the ICT industry. I discuss the argument that the ICT industry is meritocratic due to the nature of programming being either 'right or wrong', whether this frees women in the working environment to be 'free from gender'. I argue this is a problematic standpoint through examining the perceptions of gender, and gender performances of the employees, as well as their organisational cultures and how they relate to gender.

If institutions are "the more enduring features of social life" (Giddens, The Constitution of Society, 1984), then how do they come into being? What kinds of collective practices and intersubjective aspirations bring them about, and how do they maintain them? This article investigates these questions through the lens of instituting processes, that is, practices that structure and underpin institutional formations. Based on long-term ethnographic fieldwork with the Theater an der Ruhr, a public theatre in the German post-industrial Ruhr valley, this article examines the role of rehearsals as a key instituting practice in theatres. In this case study, the ideals and actions associated with long-term rehearsals serve not merely a professional purpose as principal form of artistic labour; rather, rehearsals constitute the aesthetic, ethical, and political modus operandi of the institution. As the core work of art in the institution, rehearsals facilitate the long-term development of a collective aesthetic in an ensemble as well as the ethical cultivation of actors' artistic sensibilities. This article thereby also examines how the theatre conceptualises collective rehearsing as a political practice by distinguishing it from the project-based and flexible modalities propagated by post-Fordist policies in the arts. Artistic critique is articulated through and not against the formation of an institution. Based on this account, this article proposes to treat artistic institutions and instituting processes as significant subjects of anthropological research and as prisms for the study of aesthetic, ethical, and political practices.   

http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13528165.2015.1071041

What does a science of environmental conservation look like? Though we often see it as a contemporary problem,
engineering the interface of science and decision-making bodies has been a question since the founding of
ecology. This study traces the creation of new conservation initiatives via the repeated splintering of the
Ecological Society of America since the early 1900s and compares these against the results of a network analysis
of contemporary scientists and their affiliations. Notwithstanding the new terminology of science-policy interfaces,
brokers, and gaps, these questions often hinge on the same dilemmas as they did at the beginning of 20th
century. The history of these groups shows how divisive distinctions between ecology and conservation, pure
and applied research, science and politics, and facts versus values can quickly become integrated into the
structure of organizations—even those that are created specifically to bridge gaps in what today would be called
the science-policy interface. Meanwhile, a social network analysis of present-day scientists suggests that individual
researchers are finding ways to informally “jump” across science-policy gaps at a sub-organizational
level. Remarkably, these science-policy conflicts can pose major problems for organizations, even when the
actual activities of members traverse these boundaries on an individual basis. When designing science policy
interfaces, formal bridging mechanisms between organizations remain important but these should also support
the ongoing, if under-the-radar, ways that individuals negotiate gaps between conservation research and policy
advocacy.

This article contributes to understanding the material culture of contemporary political practice, especially in a context of large sociopolitical inequality, by focusing on the spatiality and materiality of political brokerage. Its central question is where brokers mediate between different worlds and with what material artifacts. I present the case of community leaders in a favela in Recife, Brazil, who operate at the boundary between different worlds separated by class, race and place. Their offices, with their material artifacts, form brokerage spaces. I introduce these offices as boundary places: privileged spatial and material contexts in which worlds that would be incompatible in other circumstances become temporarily compatible. Simultaneously, in these boundary places, the differences between these worlds are reproduced. Through an in-depth analysis, I show how brokers’ practices “take place” in the spatiality and materiality of their offices, which become a stage for both the convergence and divergence of different worlds.

Herstructurering van achterstandswijken is in volle gang. Er wordt gerenoveerd, gesloopt en nieuw gebouwd. Wat de jongeren die in deze herstructureringswijken wonen hiervan vinden, blijft onderbelicht. Hoe vinden zij het om in de wijk te wonen? Wat vinden ze mooi en wat kan er beter? Wat vinden zij van de veranderingen? Welke invloed heeft de herstructurering op hun activiteiten, hun vriendschappen en hun toekomst? Jongeren vinden hun wijk gezellig. Hun beelden van de wijk zijn positiever dan die van de publieke opinie waarin deze wijken worden geassocieerd met criminaliteit en onveiligheid. Jongeren zijn gewend aan de goede, maar ook de slechte kanten van de wijk. Toch willen veel van hen later liever in een betere wijk wonen. Dit boek laat zien hoe toekomstdromen van jongeren verschillen van de plannen die gemeente en woningcorporaties hebben met herstructureringswijken. Dit zet aan tot een kritische discussie over de bestaande plannen.

Dr ir Martijn Koster (antropoloog, Universiteit Utrecht) en Dr Karel J. Mulderij (pedagoog, Hogeschool Utrecht) schreven dit boek voor iedereen die zich interesseert in de problematiek van jongeren in herstructureringswijken. Zij deden onderzoek onder jongeren tussen 12 en 19 jaar oud in de Utrechtse wijk Overvecht.