Emil A. Røyrvik Directors of Creation An Anthropology of Capitalist Conjunctures in the Contemporary Doctoral thesis for the degree of Philosophiae Doctor Trondheim, November 2008 Norwegian University of Science and Technology Faculty of Social Sciences and Technology Management Department of Social Anthropology NTNU Norwegian University of Science and Technology Doctoral thesis for the degree of Philosophiae Doctor Faculty of Social Sciences and Technology Management Department of Social Anthropology Emil A. Røyrvik ISBN 978-82-471-1301-1 (printed version) ISBN 978-82-471-1302-8 (electronic version) ISSN 1503-8181 Doctoral theses at NTNU, 2008: 299 Printed by NTNU-trykk ‘As the world, deep down lay at God’s eternal breast, He arranged for the first hour With sublime joy of creation (Schöpfungslust), And he spoke the word: let there be light! Then a cry of pain sounded, As reality with all its power broke into being.’ Goethe, Divan, Buch Suleika.1 ‘Als die Welt im tiefsten Grunde Lag an Gottes ewger Brust Ordnet er die erste Stunde Mit erhabner Schöpfungslust Und er sprach das Wort: Es werde! Da erklang ein schmerzlich Ach! Als das All mit Machtgebärde In die Wirklichkeiten brach’ 1 Quoted in Reinert and Reinert (2006: 59-60). Contents Acknowledgements......................................................................................................................................ii Prologue ....................................................................................................................................................xiii Introduction: Investment Projects, Corporations and Capitalism.........................................................1 Cultural analysis of corporate and capitalist organization .......................................................................4 Production capital and finance capital ...............................................................................................9 The “global” corporation and its corollaries ..........................................................................................14 Managing projects as “global assemblages” ...................................................................................18 Contextualizing the study within Hydro ................................................................................................22 Organization of the thesis.......................................................................................................................29 PART I: SITUATING “THE PROJECTS” IN THEORY AND METHOD 1. Managing, Modernization and Economic Rationality.......................................................................37 Instrumental rationality and the mediums of modernity ........................................................................40 “The other canon” – knowledge and production back at the core..........................................................47 Economic anthropology revisited...........................................................................................................50 The neoliberal triumph and the neo-classical legitimation ....................................................................54 2. An Anthropology of Global Corporate Managing.............................................................................61 Anthropology of “global industry”.........................................................................................................69 Managing as “knowledge work”.......................................................................................................71 Organizational knowledge and the “knowledge economy” ...................................................................75 Knowledge and changing configurations of value ............................................................................78 Why an anthropology of managing? ......................................................................................................83 Research design and analytical strategy: Anthropological discovering.................................................84 3. Troops, Tropes and Troubles: Rendering Managing a Privileged Ethnographic Object..............97 From “enfants terribles” to management elites ....................................................................................100 Who’s elite anyway? ............................................................................................................................104 The ambivalence of the management object ........................................................................................109 Para-ethnographic interactions .............................................................................................................114 Reconfiguring ethnography..................................................................................................................120 Abductive discovering......................................................................................................................132 Tropes of trouble ..................................................................................................................................134 Resolve or beyond redemption? ...........................................................................................................136 Anthropology and/or ethnography ..................................................................................................137 A last resort .....................................................................................................................................141 4. Mesmerizing Methodology: Narrative Knowledge and Anthropology Engaged..........................143 Narrative knowledge ............................................................................................................................148 Straight to the bone: the quality of presence ........................................................................................152 A trivial pursuit?...................................................................................................................................158 Polyphony and polysemy: rich descriptions.........................................................................................160 Faction: the value of tropes ..................................................................................................................165 Finding new truths................................................................................................................................169 Two and three cultures .........................................................................................................................172 PART II: TECHNOLOGY, ONTOLOGY AND CULTURE/NATURE 5. Managing in the Middle Kingdom.....................................................................................................175 Technology, art and truth .....................................................................................................................181 Counterfeiting, strategic secrecy and emergent learning .....................................................................187 The GM relay .......................................................................................................................................189 The Mercedes and the carriage.............................................................................................................194 Circulating safety – dodging danger ....................................................................................................198 The carriage cum Mercedes .................................................................................................................202 Social organization and forms of authority ..........................................................................................207 Organizing authority .......................................................................................................................213 Translating and transducing .................................................................................................................220 From socio-technical to ontological truth.......................................................................................221 Elements of a differential ontology..................................................................................................223 6. Presencing Projects: The “Social Reality of Construction”............................................................231 The tragedy of big projects...................................................................................................................233 Entanglement and the seamless whole .................................................................................................238 Keepers of gold and processes of “structuring” ...................................................................................246 Goldkeepers and the CVP................................................................................................................247 Project organizing “structures”......................................................................................................253 Concentrating conceptual flows ......................................................................................................260 The ambience of enabling ....................................................................................................................263 The