PhD Sustainability Academy
Ca’ Foscari University, Italy
Living artefacts as organizing Growing living root bridges
Abstract
The purpose of this paper is to offer a theoretical perspective to ‘read’ the process shaping living artefacts as a case of organizing involving multiple heterogeneous agents, both human and non-human. Grounding on the definition of organizing (Weick, 1969), the paper aims at enlarging such definition to offer a theoretical framework to unlock the ecological dynamics of shaping as organizing, adopting the notions of Umwelt and affordances as conceptual standpoints to read human and non-human interactions. Moreover, it critically reflects on the methodologies needed to see the ‘point of view’ of non-human entities involved in these organizing processes. Living root bridges of the War populations of Meghalaya, in North-eastern India, are analyzed as an example of living artefacts shaped by an ongoing organizing process between humans and plants. The case illustrates Wars and plants’ Umwelten, key affordances, and three interlocked behaviors generating the ever-evolving shape of living root bridges.
Biography
Costanza Sartoris is a PhD student in management at Ca’ Foscari University, in Venice, Italy. Her current research aims at rethinking the relationship humans have toward non-human entities in order to better understand and to take into consideration the systemic implications these relationships entail. Her research project focuses mainly on plants, at the moment examining living root bridges form the Wars population of Meghalaya, North-Eastern India, and traditional vine growing techniques in Italian vineyards. She holds a bachelor’s in management for the arts at Bocconi University (2013) and a master’s degree in visual culture and curatorial studies at Brera Academy of Fine Arts (2016). In 2020, she co-authored with Severino Salvemini and Arianna Riacciardi a book ‘sketching the Italian Jazz festivals’ panorama, while in 2021, she has co-edited with Luc Steels the book ‘Aqua Granda. A digital community memory’ in the framework of the EU FET Open ODYCCEUS.
Costanza Sartoris
