10.6092/issn.2038-3460/17553
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2038-3460
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Barbara Pentimalli
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Tecnoscienza – Italian Journal of Science & Technology Studies
Sylvie Grosjean and Frédérik Matte (eds.), Organizational Video-Ethnography Revisited. Making Visible Material, Embodied and Sensory Practices, Palgrave, 2021
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Book Reviews
2022-03-26
2023-06-30
2022-03-26
2023-10-23
228-233
TS
Barbara Pentimalli
2021
10.6092/issn.2038-3460/17553
228
Sapienza University of Rome
2038-3460
2
en
233
Sylvie Grosjean and Frédérik Matte (eds.), Organizational Video-Ethnography Revisited. Making Visible Material, Embodied and Sensory Practices, Palgrave, 2021
https://tecnoscienza.unibo.it/article/download/17553/16401
12
228                                                            Tecnoscienza – 12 (2)
Estalella, A. and Sánchez Criado, T. (2018) Experimental Collaborations: Ethnog-
        raphy through Fieldwork Devices, New York, Berghahn.
Jensen, C. B. (2021) Thinking the Earth: Cosmo-Ecology and New Alliances in the
        Anthropocene (available at, https://www.academia.edu/28962338/Think-
        ing_the_Earth_Cosmo_Ecology_and_New_Alliances_in_the_Anthropo-
        cene)
Jensen C. B. and Morita A. (2020) Deltas in Crisis: From Systems to Sophisticated
       Conjunctions, in “Sustainability”, 12 (4), pp. 1-14.
Jungnickel, K. (ed.) (2020) Transmissions: Critical Tactics for Making and Com-
       municating Research. Cambridge, MA, the MIT Press.
Latour, B. (1999) Pandora’s Hope: Essays on the Reality of Science Studies, Cam-
       bridge, MA, Harvard University Press.
Latour, B. (2017) Down to Earth: Politics in the New Climate Regime. Cambridge,
       Polity.
Law, J. (2015) What’s Wrong with a One-World World?, in “Distinktion: Journal
        of Social Theory”, 16 (2), pp. 126-139.
Omura, K., Grant J. O., Shiho S. and Atsuro M. (2018) The World Multiple: The
      Quotidian Politics of Knowing and Generating Entangled Worlds, London,
      Routledge.
Ratto, M. (2011) Critical Making: Conceptual and Material Studies in Technology
       and Social Life, in “The Information Society”, 27 (4), pp. 252-260.
Schön, D. (1983) The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action,
       New York, Basic Books.
Viveiros de Castro, E. (2003) AND, in “Manchester Papers in Social Anthropol-
       ogy”, 7.

                                    ***

   S. Grosjean and F. Matte (eds.)
Organizational Video-Ethnography Revisited. Making Visible Material,
Embodied and Sensory Practices, Cham, Palgrave, 2021, pp. 182

Barbara Pentimalli Sapienza University of Rome
    In the last few years, we have witnessed a visual turn (Hassard et al.
2018) in organizational studies thanks to the flourishing Video-Ethnogra-
phy (VE) enabling to record and analyze the tacit, material, and embodied
aspects of workplace practices. As stated in the introduction of the book,
edited by Sylvie Grosjean and Frédérik Matte, both professors of Organi-
zational Communication at University of Ottawa in Canada, VE pursues
Book Review                                                                229
three objectives: to “zoom in” on social interactions; to “zoom out” to un-
derstand the context in which interactions occur; and to “zoom with” to
consider the participants’ perspectives (Nicolini 2009; Jarrett and Liu
2018). VE explores how workers perform their practices in/through inter-
action with others, using various artefacts and exploiting multimodal re-
sources as speech, gestures, body movements, and objects manipulations
(Streeck et al. 2011). Recently, video-based studies have integrated the mul-
tisensoriality of experience to capture affective atmospheres of places
(Gherardi 2019) and how workers use their body and rely on sensible
knowledge to orient their practices and learn their profession (Strati 2007).
The editors argue that “with the growing interest in sociomateriality (Or-
likowski and Scott 2008) and the development of research on the embod-
ied and sensory dimensions of organizational practices […] the methodo-
logical challenges of this type of research need to be addressed more thor-
oughly” (p. 3).
    The book is divided into three main sections. Each section contains two
or three chapters. For every section, this book review retraces the chapters’
contents to highlight their contribution and illustrate the concepts which
might be of interest for STS scholars.
    The first section – Video-Ethnography and Reflexivity-in-Practice: Mak-
ing Visible the Embodied and Sensory Dimensions of Work Practice – ex-
plores in three chapters how bodies, senses, and affects are essential in clin-
ical decision making and shows how to adopt a reflexive approach encour-
aging the participants’ interpretations of the video-recorded interactions.
Video-Ethnography and Video-Reflexive Ethnography: Investigating and Ex-
panding Learning About Complex Realities, written by Rick Iedema and
Jeff Bezemer, provides an overview of both VE and Video-Reflexive Eth-
nography (VRE). VE respects “the spatio-temporal integrity of social or-
ganizational phenomena, as well as the messy and complex aspects as they
unfold” to allow “the visualization and in depth-analysis of events that oth-
erwise might escape our attention” (p. 18). VRE, as a participatory method,
rather than researcher deciding what are the critical analytical categories,
invites participants to interpret footage portraying their practices. Two
case studies are presented. Using an outside perspective, the first one ana-
lyzes a trainee being guided by a mentor through a surgical procedure to
develop reflection in action. Adopting an inside perspective, the other case
involves nurses in reviewing video recordings of their infection control
practices encouraging reflection on action. In The Epistemic Use of the Body
in Medical Radiology: Insights from Interactional Video-Ethnography Lau-
rent Filliettaz adopts a multimodal interaction analysis of video data rec-
orded in a Geneva’s public hospital in Switzerland. He explores the learn-
ing of newcomers in medical radiology under the guidance of experienced
workers endorsing the role of mentors. Becoming medical radiology tech-
nicians implies to learn how to use technologies (X-rays, scanners, RMI)
and how to position the patients’ body to produce images for diagnostic or
230                                                          Tecnoscienza – 12 (2)
therapeutic purposes. The patient’s body acts as a resource and a means of
instruction. The sensory (visual and tactile) exploration of patient’s ankle
guided by the mentor makes of the ankle a new learning epistemic object.
The knowledge emerges as a multimodal experience jointly performed by
the student and mentor using different semiotic modes (verbal question,
pointing, gaze orientation, creation of a relevant visual space). “It is by
‘touching’ the malleoli that participants can learn to ‘look’ if they are su-
perimposed, and it is by learning to ‘look’ at them that they can understand
how to position the ankle in the case of a profile radiograph” (p. 53). The
ways in which practitioners use patients’ bodies for epistemic purposes
provide knowledge about professional practices. In The Two Sides of
Video-Ethnography for Studying “Sensing-at-Distance”, Sylvie Grosjean,
Frédérik Matte and Isaac Nahon-Serfaty explore the sensory work for
medical decision-making during teleconsultations in orthopedic post-op-
erative visits. The two sides mentioned in the title of this chapter corre-
spond to 1) video recordings of patient/physicians’ interactions and their
use of senses during teleconsultation (bright side) and to 2) self-confronta-
tion with physicians visualizing videos of their clinical practice (hidden
side). This approach identifies – as the same title suggests – various ways
of sensing at distance: 1) interactional constitution of a shared place to cre-
ate a sense of co-presence by reframing through technical means the doc-
tor/patient proxemics; 2) socio-technical arrangement of a clinical frame
to co-produce shared sensory cues through a cooperative work between
nurse and doctor compensating the impossibility of a physician’s direct
look or touch; 3) embodied engagements for creating an empathetic rela-
tionship at distance. Three dimensions of sensory awareness are revealed:
sensing-at-distance together by physicians and patients using touching and
seeing to reveal the sensory aspects of the telemedicine consultation; creat-
ing a sense of co-presence described by physician’s comments on gestures
to create close relation with the patient; be sensitive to the situation illus-
trated by physicians becoming aware that “Telemedicine is not a replica-
tion of existing face-to-face consultation practices, but rather developing
new types of interaction with the patients and new ways of sensing and
providing care” (p. 72). The video-in-use acts as a mediator in medical con-
sultations and solicitates the participants’ interpretations of their videore-
corded interactions. It also encourages a reflexive posture on the use of
senses and helps the researchers to analyze sensory work in telemedicine.
    The second section of the book, Video-Ethnography and Organizing
Spaces: Sensing Places and the Multiple Nature of Working Places, by refer-
ring to the growing attention to spaces and places in organization studies,
shows – over three chapters – the use of video shadowing and Participant
Viewpoint Ethnography (PVE) in the context of flexible, collaborative,
and mobile work. In Practicing Diffraction in Video-Based Research, Jeanne
Mengis and Davide Nicolini illustrate three ways of practicing diffractive
methodologies in health care setting: 1) reading and juxtaposing different
Book Review                                                               231
types of “data” and “texts” (ethnographic notes, videos); 2) reading the
performing of a video recording apparatus through another for data col-
lection and analysis to produce contrasting views and different phenom-
ena, becoming aware of the “interferences” and “reinforcements” created
by the use of various methodological practices (filming, taking pictures,
painting) and choices (camera angle); (3) creating interactions among dif-
ferent forms of participation in interventionist research. The authors video-
record the clinical practice with different camera angles (a steady camera,
using wide-angle and mid-angle, and a rowing camera following the trajec-
tory of practitioners by walking next to them or attaching a head-camera
on their forehead). When analyzing data, they found that each video re-
cording apparatus privileges a different understanding and visualization of
organizational space that is multiple, processual, and acts as mediator of
interactions constantly rearranged through the movement of machinery,
utensils, and people. PVE is used for academic purpose and for the im-
provement of clinical practice, as illustrated in the study on handover be-
tween two clinical teams. Researchers select some relevant scenes to be
shown to practitioners and consider different emerging interpretations.
This cross self-confrontation creates professional dispute and controversy
enabling workers to see “through the eyes of the others” (p. 93). Diffrac-
tion shows the performative interference of methods and apparatuses cho-
sen by researchers who must remain aware of what video does not make
them to see and about the “data” as results of an intra-action between phe-
nomena and apparatuses (Barad 2003). In Using Video Methods to Uncover
the Relational, Interactional and Practical Constitution of Space Nicolas
Bencherki suggests that both video and space are relational phenomena.
Through a video shadowing of a building manager in a Manhattan sky-
scraper, and by combining relational studies of space with Gilles Deleuze’s
writings on moving images, he proposes three sets of relationalities: 1) the
spatial relations visible in the videos; 2) the relations that are outside the
video-data but accessible to the researcher in the field; 3) the relations oc-
curring in the observation situation. Bencherki discovers that space is a
relational accomplishment, involving movements of bodies and material
elements, and that space and image are both experienced through the
body. The video shadowing shows how participants’ and researcher’s bod-
ily position matters for the interpretation of video data. In Participant
Viewpoint Ethnography and Mobile Organizing, Elisabeth Wilhoit Larson
uses PVE to explore bike commuters in a university town in the American
Midwest. First, bikers are involved in using a wearable GoPro camera to
film their journey to and from work, then researcher interviews them while
watching their video to allow them narrating their tacit, embodied, and
sensory experience (vulnerability, stress, the turning of their head to look
over the shoulder for oncoming traffic). Faced to increasingly moving or-
ganizations, with workers changing organizations more often, PVE offers
researchers new tools for analyzing the shifting world of work.
232                                                        Tecnoscienza – 12 (2)
    The third section of the book – “Outsider” and “Insider” Video-Ethnog-
rapher: Exploring Multimodal and Multisensorial Workplace Setting – con-
tains two chapters presenting VE as a useful device to capture multi-situ-
ated interactions in work contexts. Doing Video Ethnography Research with
Top Management Teams by Feng Liu, Michael Jarrett and Linda Rouleau
analyzes Top Management Team (TMT) strategic decision-making in
meetings. They propose three ways of including participants perspectives
to close the gap between “insider” (emic) and “outsider” (etic) views. The
refining approach consists in incorporating participants’ feelings and inter-
pretations of the video-recorded meetings to modify, enrich, and refine the
researchers’ interpretations. The distributive approach establishes a mutu-
ally enriching relationships between researcher and participants involved
in longitudinal research. The holistic approach engages participants in data
collection and interpreting results. This emic-etic approach rests on prox-
imal rather than distal relationships and creates collaborative data collec-
tion methods and interpretations. The study uses two types of cameras: a
video capturing a classic viewpoint of the action (outside/etic view) and a
light cam on the participants’ head to get their (insider/emic) view. This
dual perspective provides new and surprising results on emotions and pro-
duces novel insights for teams concerning their leadership and the TMT
dynamics. In Complementing Video-Ethnography: The Uses and Potential
of Mundane Data Collected on Social Media, Viviane Sergi and Claudine
Bonneau show that the pervasiveness of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram,
Snapchat, TikTok in all spheres of daily activities, including work, means
that they are “increasingly implicated in all kinds of workplace phenomena
that are within the areas of interest of organizational scholars” and that
they are “a site where the mundane experience of work can be explored”
(p. 156). The authors maintain that mundane life is relevant to understand
“dimensions of work that tend to be less visible, such as affective, sensory
and experiential dimensions” (ib.). Through posts combining photo and
texts, workers narrate how they view and feel their own working experi-
ence and shed light on the backstage. This allows video-ethnographers to
extend their presence and pursue their research through various channels,
temporalities, and spaces, having access and documenting aesthetic, affec-
tive, and sensorial facets of work.
    The book valorizes the potentialities of video-ethnography making vis-
ible material, spatial, emotional, and sensory dimensions of workplace
practices through the integration of participants’ perspectives. Its reading
can surely enrich the approach of STS scholars interested in these sensorial
dimensions and in the situatedness of knowledge produced in and through
intra- and inter-actions between human actors, heterogenous artifacts, vis-
ual technologies, and scientific practices.
Book Review                                                                    233
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                                       ***
    Andrés Jaque / Office for Political Innovation
Mies e la gatta Niebla. Saggi su architettura e cosmopolitica, Leonforte, Siké,
2021, pp. 226 [Mies and Niebla the kitten. Essays on architecture and cosmo-
politics; Italian translation edited by Gianluca Burgio and Ramon Rispoli of
Mies y la gata Niebla. Ensayos sobre architectura y cosmopolitica, Barcelona,
Puente, 2019]

Alvise Mattozzi Politecnico di Torino

   It happens rarely – at least to me – to be positively surprised by a
publication. The contrary – being startled and baffled – is more frequent.
But, I guess, the majority of the times one ends reading a book or an article
simply filing it under the “interesting-relevant-worth-taking-into-account-
and-discuss” label or the opposite one.
   Mies e la gatta Niebla. Saggi su architettura e cosmopolitica [Mies and
Niebla the kitten. Essays on architecture and cosmopolitics], Italian
