Biomateriality and Organizing: Towards an Organizational Perspective on Food

TY - JOUR

T1 - Biomateriality and Organizing

T2 - Towards an Organizational Perspective on Food

AU - Moser, Christine

AU - Reinecke, Juliane

AU - den Hond, Frank

AU - Svejenova, Silviya

AU - Croidieu, Grégoire

N1 - Funding Information: We are grateful for the editorial support of Daniel Hjorth and Renate Meyer in developing our manuscript. We want to thank the department of Organization Sciences for sponsoring an editorial meeting. Christine Moser thanks Dirk Deichmann for continued support and many shared meals that have inspired parts of this introduction. Silviya Svejenova gratefully acknowledges financial support from the Velux Foundation (Velux Project #00021807 ?The Temporality of Food Innovation?) for her work on this introduction. The rest of the authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. Funding Information: Silviya Svejenova gratefully acknowledges financial support from the Velux Foundation (Velux Project #00021807 ‘The Temporality of Food Innovation’) for her work on this introduction. The rest of the authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article. Publisher Copyright: © The Author(s) 2021. Copyright: Copyright 2021 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.

PY - 2021/2

Y1 - 2021/2

N2 - In this introduction to the special issue, we first provide an illustrative overview of how food has been approached in organization studies. We focus on the organizing of food, that is the organizational efforts that leverage, shape and transform food. Against this backdrop, we distinguish the agency of organizations and the agency of food and explore their intersection. We argue that the ‘biomateriality’ of food, i.e. its biomaterial qualities, plays a distinctive role in shaping and affecting organizing and organizations. To do so, we present a conceptual framework for analysing food organizing, which highlights the biomateriality of food and its agentic effects on organizational efforts. Thus, we provide researchers with an analytical toolkit to disentangle the different agents (people, organizations, food itself) and the associated processes and mechanisms that play a role in food organizing. We use this analytical toolkit to introduce the different articles in the special issue and put forward some lines of future research.

AB - In this introduction to the special issue, we first provide an illustrative overview of how food has been approached in organization studies. We focus on the organizing of food, that is the organizational efforts that leverage, shape and transform food. Against this backdrop, we distinguish the agency of organizations and the agency of food and explore their intersection. We argue that the ‘biomateriality’ of food, i.e. its biomaterial qualities, plays a distinctive role in shaping and affecting organizing and organizations. To do so, we present a conceptual framework for analysing food organizing, which highlights the biomateriality of food and its agentic effects on organizational efforts. Thus, we provide researchers with an analytical toolkit to disentangle the different agents (people, organizations, food itself) and the associated processes and mechanisms that play a role in food organizing. We use this analytical toolkit to introduce the different articles in the special issue and put forward some lines of future research.

KW - agency

KW - biomateriality

KW - food

KW - food organizing

KW - materiality

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85101116976&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1177/0170840621991343

DO - 10.1177/0170840621991343

M3 - Article

AN - SCOPUS:85101116976

SN - 0170-8406

VL - 42

SP - 175

EP - 193

JO - Organization Studies

JF - Organization Studies

IS - 2

ER -