Reintroducing light to the study of organizations : affective montages from the Cluny Monastery
Loading...
Access rights
openAccess
CC BY
CC BY
publishedVersion
URL
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
A1 Alkuperäisartikkeli tieteellisessä aikakauslehdessä
This publication is imported from Aalto University research portal.
View publication in the Research portal (opens in new window)
View/Open full text file from the Research portal (opens in new window)
View publication in the Research portal (opens in new window)
View/Open full text file from the Research portal (opens in new window)
Unless otherwise stated, all rights belong to the author. You may download, display and print this publication for Your own personal use. Commercial use is prohibited.
Authors
Date
Department
Major/Subject
Mcode
Degree programme
Language
en
Pages
25
Series
Organization Studies, Volume 46, issue 12, pp. 1733-1757
Abstract
This article revives the study of light and organization and explores how light, as a generator of organizational atmospheres, is part of organizational life. The study is set in the ruins of the 13th-century Cluny monastery north of Lyon, France, where I combine ethnographic detail, material from old Benedictine rule books, contemporary archaeological excavation data, and fictive videographic elements of a monk?s experience of light and work to produce affective montages of light experiences. The result is a collection of montages exhibiting both moments where light guides towards the pure, ideal and divine and moments where the surprising, embodied and neglected emerges. I suggest light as an important atmosphere generator and foreground an interplay between light experiences of both distance-based control and affective reactions that rely on an immersive body. The experiential light interplay oscillates between deliberately idealistic light control and visceral affective daydreaming under monastic light. Methodologically, I propose the technique of affective montage as a poetic approach for the study of light in organizations. Importantly, through a study of light at the Cluny monastery, this article reintroduces light as a central topic to organization research.Description
Keywords
Other note
Citation
Gylfe, P 2025, 'Reintroducing light to the study of organizations : affective montages from the Cluny Monastery', Organization Studies, vol. 46, no. 12, 01708406251370496, pp. 1733-1757. https://doi.org/10.1177/01708406251370496