Anika Wiese: Alternative Organising: Imagining and Forming Social Relationships in Contemporary Circus

Abstract

Across many empirical settings, people attempt to organise their work and lives in ways they believe are distinct from current ways of organising: private ownership, hierarchies, monitoring, and common strivings for efficiency, growth, and profit maximisation. These collective attempts are described in research as “alternative organising.” A central concern is how people relate to one another to coordinate their work and lives. It is essentially about how people imagine and form social relationships to live out desired but seemingly forgotten values (e.g., solidarity, responsibility, autonomy). Furthermore, through “new” types of social relationships, values are believed to be translated into dinstinct organising practices (e.g., consensus-based decision-making). Despite recognising the role of social relationships, however, a key question remains: How do social relationships work in practice? Or, asked differently, what happens when people try to organise differently for social change?

In this thesis, I explore how people try to organise differently in practice through an in-depth qualitative case study of Alterra, a project in which people attempted to establish an alternative way of organising artistic productions within contemporary circus. Drawing on documents, interviews, and observations, I analyse how project organisers and participants imagined and practised ideas about organising differently, and how the external organisation funding the project affected their ambitions. Using concepts from partial organising and social theory, I distinguish between two distinct ways of forming social relationships: organising and emerging ways, tracing how desired values and intentions to organise unfold. In the analysis, I identify friendship and unpack four facets that make friendship a special, emerging social relationship.

This thesis contributes with three key insights. First, “alternative organising” involves both organising and emerging ways of forming social relationships, and it is important to distinguish between these two to discuss their implications for collective attempts to organise differently. Second, it advances an understanding of friendship as an ambivalent relationship that is sometimes used to substitute organising while also introducing new risks. Third, by revealing the drawbacks of an emerging relationship that particularly show when demands to organise arise, the analysis offers an understanding of choices people can make to organise differently today.