Organisation Studies (2016): Autonomy & Organisation prize
Awarded to Simon Stevens for his essay:
Simon Stevens
Postgraduate Researcher, Loughborough University
Abstract
If I were to say that the
architecture in our public spaces is ‘really speaking to us’, you would
be forgiven for thinking this is a piece about the aesthetics of our
cities. In some ways in fact, it is, but not in any artistic sense. I am
not discussing a collection of monuments, town houses or grandiose
buildings. Alas, the architecture I talk of is more humble and yet
perhaps more sinister. There is a message encoded into it, within our
parks, streets and centres, which seems to be part of a wider narrative.
This essay is an attempt to read it, find out what it says, and
consider how that may affect our concept of autonomy, but also, to
encourage us to reflect on how we choose to read it: to think on what
theoretical framework we should discuss homelessness. The aim is not to
necessarily reconceptualise something then, but is more in the tradition
of making the familiar seem unfamiliar: not only in what we think, but
how we come to think what we do and the extent to which the former is
limited by the latter. To achieve this, the leading question I therefore
ask is: what does the organisation of public space in reaction to a
homeless presence tell us about autonomy, and how we think about
autonomy?
