Assemblage Theory: utility or futility?
Any reader of this blog will have gathered that I have a propensity for abstract theory. I enjoy it. I always loved that line from A Beautiful Mind, referring to the joys of “cerebral revellery.” I know what that’s about. However, I hope it’s also clear that I have no patience for sterile abstruseness – especially of the smug, holier than though, Frankfurt School or postmodernist variety. I’m interested in abstract theory precisely because I believe it presents the opportunity to approach practical problems with fresh eyes and thereby can contribute to solutions to real world problems. Clearly I’m never about to have a lot of sympathizers. The abstruse theorists would consider me a sell-out to the culture industry, while the pragmatic realists would consider me some self-indulgent mentalist. So be it. Still, I do believe there is value in the kind of approach that I promote. The case of assemblage theory offers an interesting test.
Here’s a case of an immensely abstract theory, which is unapologetically theoretically constructed, and might well, at first blush, appear to be the height of academic self-indulgent and abstract sterility from the perspective of real life organizational practice. Once understood, though, might even it offer some concrete lessons for the practical application of organizational strategy?
To be clear: there is no doubt that assemblage theory is totally theoretically constructed. That, though, is true of all social and organizational theory. This is not to deny that there are objective, material realities always at work in organizations. Any understanding of those realities, though, which is not merely a detailed description of specific forces and intensities, that aspires to understand how or why things are happening, has to start with imagining a model that might make sense of the material reality and testing it out on the facts. This is no different than in the physical sciences. All knowledge is deductive: we create the models first in our heads. This doesn’t mean that it’s all make-believe. The most promising models are invariably those arising from considerable learning and reflection; they are informed guesses and speculations. What Newton or Einstein did, inventing the models in their heads, before testing those models out against the material world, is no different in that regard from what we are doing here with assemblage theory.
I draw my understanding of assemblage theory from the work of Manuel DeLanda. However, just as he both acknowledges his debt and disowns any obligation to the inspiration of Deleuze, I feel exactly the same way about DeLanda. I want to give him credit for his contribution and influence, but feel no need to defend my explication of the theory as an accurate expression of his elaboration. That sort of thing, to my mind, is insipid. I describe below what I consider to be assemblage theory. Anyone who feels I’ve not been true to either Deleuze or DeLanda are welcome to complain, but it’s of no interest to me. As Popper used to say, the theoretical position I’m describing is the one I want to discuss, call it something else if you want. What it’s called has nothing to do with the qualities I want to explore.
In assemblage theory, social phenomena (and, though, not intrinsically restricted to the social, that’s the restriction I’ll be employing here) can be divided into three categories: entities, components and assemblages. No sooner is that statement made as it demands clarification and qualification. These three categories are, in fact, not separate things, but denote shifting forms of identity and relationship. Entities come together to create assemblages. In that capacity, entities are components of those assemblages. Assemblages, however, exist for differing lengths of time and for different purposes. It is, thus, perfectly reasonable to regard assemblages as entities in their own right. And, as such entities, they too can come together with other entities to create yet new assemblages. These identities and relationships, therefore, are occurring at multiple levels.
To expand a bit on an analogy that DeLanda invokes, Lance Armstrong at work could be thought of as an assemblage comprised of the following components: a man, a bicycle, a firm strip of ground and forces of gravitational balance. All these different entities have to be assembled in the right way to achieve the assemblage which is Lance Armstrong at work. Though, of course, far more complex in its components, the same thing is true of any organization. A complex of people, rituals, routines, mechanisms, values, resources and so on come together in a certain way to constitute the assemblage which is any particular organization. This isn’t a particularly startling observation. Also, not especially novel is the recognition that organizations can then themselves become entities in their own right, which, among other things, can come together with other such entities to form new assemblages. Commercial firms can join industry or trade associations, sports leagues can join federations of leagues, political lobbying groups can join issue alliances, national governments can join international regulatory bodies, and so on. Likewise, the process can be unfolded in the other direction. Organizations can be regarded, at least in part, as the assembly of other smaller entity organizations, such as task forces, special operating units, interdepartmental committees, etc. Clearly, there’s modularity to organizational structure and practice. If this was all that assemblage theory had to teach, it would be of little consequence.
However, before going straight to that, we need to remind ourselves that not all assemblages are treated the same. A conversation is an assemblage of at least two people, a context, at least one language and a set of concepts. However, this is true of all conversations: the one between a customer and a cashier in the grocery store and another that goes on for years or even decades, such as that between Freud and Fliess or between Adams and Jefferson. The fleeting assemblage that was my brief discussion with the cashier at my local mini-mart this morning has come and gone and no one has paid it much attention. Indeed, I’m here paying it far more attention than the overwhelming majority of people who had such conversations today are likely doing. And even this examination has become exhausted after a few sentences. Those other conversations, mentioned above, though, have of course been the subject of study, analysis, books and conferences of many kinds, over many years. We don’t treat all assemblages the same and consequently their perceived significance weighs upon us quite differently. This, take note, is not merely a function of duration or quantity. 9/11 was an assemblage, involving office towers, early bird workers, hijacked airplanes and religious fanatic mass murderers, to cite only the most salient components. Yet, horrific as its death toll was, in purely quantitative terms and as a matter of enduring process, the annual U.S. death toll from car collisions or heart disease dwarves that of 9/11. Those, too, despite how spread they are in time and space, are assemblages, say, of cars, roads, sometimes weather, sometimes alcohol, sometimes sleep deprivation, sometimes recklessness. And yet for obvious psychological and strategic reasons 9/11 is the assemblage that has far and away attracted the most attention from a diversity of perspectives.
So, while all assemblages are ultimately the same – an assembly of entities as components to constitute this new whole – they are not regarded with equal attention. Though this is usually understandable, it also can have unrecognized consequences. So, returning to the point above, the existence of organizations and the fact that there can be hierarchies or modules in the relation between organizations is well recognized. These are assemblages that have attracted much attention. We spent a lot of time thinking about organizations: organizational structure, organizational strategy, organizational behaviour, organizational communications, organizational change, and so on. We compare degrees of centralization and decentralization. We examine their interaction with networks and their system complexity. But the assemblages that we call organizations are not co-terminus with the assemblages that impact the purpose and objectives of those organizations.
Sometimes organizations have to deal with a government regulator, or more than one. Indeed, sometimes the rules of those regulators reinforce or contradict each other. Some organizations co-produce services or goods with other organizations requiring institutions such as cross-organizational teams, standards committees, shared staff, etc. Some organizations have to negotiate with professional associations. Some organizations have their work coupled with other organizations in a variety of ways. Managers have to balance vertical and horizontal demands and expectations. Auditors have to assess intersecting financial responsibilities. Engineers have to divulge proprietary information. Some organizations integrate feedback of customers, clients or citizens. Some have to cooperate across barriers of very different organizational sensibilities: public sector, private sector, non-profit sector, etc. Some share knowledge, some share processes, some share resources. All of these are kinds of assemblages. Each one is no less an entity in its own right than are any of the organizations that serves as components in them. It is not our habit to think this way. But, like the component organizations, these other assemblages have a material reality. They too have specific structures, strategies, communication and behaviour patterns and dynamics of change.
If these processes, which are all part of the larger MIFO age, are to be successful, we will have to start thinking much more deliberately and consistently about these assemblages as entities in themselves. As much attention as is shown to organizations – how and why they do and don’t work, what are their various forms, when and where do those forms transform – we have to start applying with equal seriousness to these other assemblages. Those who might protest that these other assemblages are far more diverse and complex than organizations simply are blind to the reality of organizations. The term organization is a simplifying abstraction that gives us a handle with which to get an initial grip. But to take such a term at face value is to entirely miss the diversity of styles, regimes and codes of the many organizations of contemporary life, to say nothing of the even greater fecundity and conflict embodied in the constant flow and flux of these elements through the history of any particular organization. Simplification is perhaps inevitably a function of striving to understand, but it shouldn’t be allowed to inhibit our capacity to see the actual assemblages of contemporary organizational life for what they are and what their important is.
And, it seems to me, that thinking of them as assemblages, emerging as new entities, is the first step in that direction. So, at least for now, I’m going to come down on the side of utility.