The Emergence of Heterotopia as a Heuristic Concept to Study Organization

• Published date: 01 September 2016
• Author: Philippe Naccache,Yoann Bazin
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/emre.12082
• Date: 01 September 2016

The Emergence of Heterotopia as a Heuristic

Concept to Study Organization

YOANN BAZIN

1

and PHILIPPE NACCACHE

2

1

ISTEC, Paris, France

2

University of Toulouse, Toulouse BusinessSchool, France

Ever since Michel Foucault shared a number of intuitions on ‘other spaces’at a conference in 1967, a growing

number of studiesin social sciences have been focusing on what he then called heterotopias. Over the past 10years,

organization scholars have started to use the concept in their analysis, from leadership and marketing to queer

practices and critical management studies (CMS). This article presents the origin and diffusion of the concept of

heterotopia in management, using social movements as an illustration of its heuristic potential. We conclude by

presenting two promising future avenues of research in our field: heterotopic entrepreneurship and organizational

heterotopology.

Keywords: heterotopia; foucault; social movements; global cities

Introduction

Ever since Michel Foucault shared a number of intuitions

on ‘other spaces’at a conference in 1967, a growing

number of studies in social sciences have been focusing

on what he then called heterotopias.

1

He defines them as

places ‘which are something like counter-sites […]

absolutely different from all the sites that they reflect

and speak about’(Foucault, 1986: 24). His call for a

science calledheterotopology has been partiallyanswered

through dozens of articles and books in disciplines as

diverse as architecture, geography, and urban studies

(Defert, 1997; Bonazzi, 2002; Dehaene and De Cauter,

2008; Fontana-Giusti, 2013; Johnson, 2013), as well as

political science, philosophy, anthropology, and

sociology (Kahn, 1995; Schinkel, 2009; Wagenaar et al.,

2012; Garrett, 2012; Marlin-Bennett and Thornton,

2012). More recently, management and organization

scholars have started to contribute to this already

flourishing area of research (Hjorth, 2005; Spicer et al.,

2009; Steyaert, 2010). In our field, however, heterotopia

remains an emerging notion that is still in need of strong

conceptual foundations. This is in part because the idea

of heterotopia is often used as a metaphor, rather than as

an actual theoretical framework. Nevertheless, heterotopia

has allowed organizational scholarsto shed new light on a

wide array of spatial dynamics, such as resistance,

deviance, contestation, entrepreneurship, creativity,

playfulness,and innovation. As Foucault originallynoted,

heterotopiashave always existed and they are not new per

se; but taken as a concept, heterotopia allows scholars to

understand phenomena that had not necessarily been

coupled before, thus providing a framework to connect

and integrate them. The aim of this paper is therefore not

to add a further definition or an application, but rather to

account for this early emergence of heterotopia as a

heuristic concept to study organizations.

In the following section, we expose what Michel

Foucault meantregarding these ‘other spaces’and explore

how organization scholars have placed the concept more

or less at the centre of their studies. Then, in order to

clarify the concept and illustrate its heuristic power, we

show how it can be used to understand recent tactics used

by social movement organizations (SMOs) in modern

globalized capitalism. Finally, we present two promising

future avenues of research: heterotopic entrepreneurship

and organizational heterotopology.

Heterotopia, an emerging notion searching

for conceptual foundations

Michel Foucault firstpresented the concept of heterotopia

in a conference he gave in 1967 at the Cercle d’études

architecturales, published in the now famous text ‘Des

Correspondence: Yoann Bazin, ISTEC, 128 Quai de Jemmapes, 75010

Paris, France.E-mail: y.bazin@istec.fr

1

Foucault (1986)builds on the idea of utopia ‘a placeless place’to create the

word heterotopias,which would describe ‘otherspaces’.

European Management Review, Vol. 13, 225–233, (2016)

DOI: 10.1111/emre.12082

© 2016 European Academy of Management