Blood’s ontologies-entangled: qualitative inquiry into the enactment, representation, and organizational modes of coordination of blood’s multiplicity in a Belgian blood establishment
Since British sociologist Titmuss authoritatively conceived blood donation as an altruistic ‘gift relationship’, blood establishments have adopted blood’s highly symbolic status as a core professional belief. However, important developments since the 1970s have resulted in blood’s bio-objectification, making blood a renewed object of concern. Because different versions of this bio-object are simultaneously present and interfere with one another, we ask how the organization renders this multiplicity workable? Studying how ontological versions are enacted in a specific blood establishment and ho... Mehr ...
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Dokumenttyp: | journalarticle |
Erscheinungsdatum: | 2019 |
Schlagwörter: | Social Sciences / Law and Political Science / Business and Economics / Blood-supply management / enactment / modes of coordination / multiplicity / organization / praxiography / renewed object of concern |
Sprache: | Englisch |
Permalink: | https://search.fid-benelux.de/Record/base-26529009 |
Datenquelle: | BASE; Originalkatalog |
Powered By: | BASE |
Link(s) : | https://biblio.ugent.be/publication/8582542 |
Since British sociologist Titmuss authoritatively conceived blood donation as an altruistic ‘gift relationship’, blood establishments have adopted blood’s highly symbolic status as a core professional belief. However, important developments since the 1970s have resulted in blood’s bio-objectification, making blood a renewed object of concern. Because different versions of this bio-object are simultaneously present and interfere with one another, we ask how the organization renders this multiplicity workable? Studying how ontological versions are enacted in a specific blood establishment and how the organizational model of a blood establishment functions as a mode of coordination, we develop a praxiographic appreciation of blood in the context of a specific Belgian blood establishment. We show how the organizational mode of coordination allocates versions of blood in specific departments along functional and chronological dimensions. Blood remains the object of a gift relationship but is accompanied by blood’s enactment and representation as the object of suspicion, management, research/biology, and a blood economy. Furthermore, the organizational mode of coordination also allocates personalized and depersonalized enactments according to the level of contact with the donor population. This reflects a third dimension: (de)personalization of blood. Whereas the organizational mode of coordination is successful in rendering blood’s multiplicity workable, at times, it causes suboptimal practices. Moreover, we showed how sometimes a focus on intra-departmental modes of coordination is necessary to understand how blood’s multiplicity complicates the practices of the blood establishment.