The anthropology of empty spaces

Jerzy Kociatkiewicz (1) , Monika Kostera (2)

1 UW - University of Warsaw
2 Faculty of Management [Warsaw]

We would like to tell an anthropologic story about how we see reality and how we feel about it, with no intention to generalize our re ections. Our version of anthropology is intentionally self-re exive and self-re ective. is text is a narrative study of the feelings of anthropologists out in the eld. e anthropologic frame of mind is a certain openness of the mind of the researcher/ observer of social reality (Czarniawska-Joerges, 1992). On the one hand, it means the openness to new realities and meanings, and on the other-a constant need to problematize, a refusal to take anything for granted, to treat things as obvious and familiar. e researcher makes use of her or his curiosity, the ability to be surprised by what she or he observes, even if it is "just" the everyday world. Our explorations concern an experience of space. It aims at investigating the space not belonging to anyone. While "anthropologically" moving around di erent organizations, we suddenly realized that we were part of stories of the space we were moving in. Areas of poetic emptiness can be experienced, often in the physical sense, on the boundaries and inside of organizations.

Mots clés: Stories; Feelings; Space; Anthropology; Sensemaking

Domaines: Gestion et management; Sociologie

Jerzy Kociatkiewicz, Monika Kostera. The anthropology of empty spaces. Qualitative Sociology, 1999, 22 (1), pp.37-50. ⟨10.1023/A:1022131215755⟩. ⟨hal-02423784⟩