Rhizomes for the Understanding of the Production of Social Sciences
Organization Management Journal
Rhizomes for the Understanding of the Production of Social Sciences
Gustavo L. Seijo
King’s College London
gustavo.seijo@kcl.ac.uk
a) Preliminary Notes1
DELOS stands for DEveloping Learning Organisation models in SME (i.e.
Small to Medium Enterprises) clusters. In order to try to disentangle this riddle, we
can point out that, technically, a cluster (which appears to have a central place in this
piece of work due to its title) is a group (which do not necessarily stand for
geographical concentration or agglomeration) of these small firms called SMEs.
DELOS was a social sciences and economics project that was carried out by seven
research-partners from the European Union between February 1996 and January
1998.
The seven research-partners in charge of DELOS were from six countries:
Austria, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain and the United Kingdom. The type of
organisations of these research-partners was very diverse. The spectrum of partners,
regarding the type of organisation, varied from institutes of research – i.e.
organisations that are strongly linked to universities and academic life – to
consultancy companies – i.e. organisations which legitimacy stems from their
involvement on regional development. These places in the world built forums. For
instance, some of the partners – in their own words – were more academic than
others.
Due to these entangled natures, not only the research-partners involved in
DELOS produced social sciences. ‘Organisational learning models’ are also included
in the DELOS acronym. ‘Organisational learning’ was the main theoretical
background the partners connected with the clusters of Small to Medium Enterprises.
Thus, a management conversation was incorporated into the clusters of SMEs the
researchers chose for the fieldwork. The most popular theoretical association for
regional development analysis comes from economics though. A few researchpartners also wanted to associate this other narrative with the object of analysis.
These bi-polar theoretical underpinnings also constructed forums investing the valid
interlocutors in the subject during the DELOS research process. Management and
economics struggled to mediate the relationship between the research-partners and
1
This section endeavours to sum up a description of the DELOS project and its circulating actors. A
broader description of the project can be found in my doctoral thesis ‘Translations and treasons as
organisational devices in the production of social scientific knowledge’.
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Rhizomes for the Understanding of the Production of Social Sciences
their object of study. These theoretical streams, therefore, produced partisans for the
two or more available theories on clusters. By and large, we can claim that every
researcher held a particular theory on clusters of SMEs and proper proceedings to
carry out research-projects.
My particular project started three years after DELOS was finished. The main
reasons for choosing an already-finished project lay in the availability of written
material from some of the researchers involved. Another advantage of choosing
DELOS was that most of the actors who participated in the project were available for
interviews. Most of the DELOS research-partners were still working together in
subsequent projects when I started my work. It was also privileged the possibility of
gathering as many voices as possible producing accounts about what happened during
the DELOS years. Interviews with members of all the research-partners were carried
out. Thus, in-depth face to face, phone or email interviews were the main sources of
data. Sometimes written and oral accounts diverged and some other times these
various testimonies from multiple sources converged. A contradiction in this sense
did not annul the research attempt though; the theory behind the methods used to
analyse the data from multiple sources praised precisely the emergence of these
contradictions. These contradictions or forking paths stand for signs of ruptures in a
continuum. Therefore, this diversity built interesting bridges to reach the coordination of actions or the organisational process in DELOS.
I was a researcher studying researchers. This type of observation naturally
generates parallelisms between the ‘object’ I choose to study and my work.
Nevertheless, both research processes – i.e. DELOS and the one producing these lines
– were completely different. Different research methods, theoretical underpinnings
and overall purposes of the research elaborated a healthy hiatus between these two
research processes.
The DELOS written accounts came from academic papers, books chapters,
material from oral presentations and webpages. The genres (behind the formats) differ
completely; they all have a different raison d’être and particular paths to approach the
project they endeavour to describe. My specific work entailed the elaboration of a
surface where all these multiple logics and raisons d’être could live together even in a
belligerent mood.
In order to devise a description of DELOS, we can start by borrowing one
from someone else. One of the more ‘academic’ research-partners presented DELOS
in an institutional publication in the following way:
DELOS is investigating the ways in which SMEs (small to medium enterprises)
acquire and diffuse know how. More particularly, it considers whether SMEs from a
common geographical or sectoral base act in a systematic, concerted way to
maximise their market position by pooling their know how and expertise.
At the heart of DELOS are two conceptual frameworks: the notion that SMEs
typically form spatial and organisational ‘clusters’, and the notion that they are
capable of organisational learning. Both these notions are highly contestable.
Excerpt from The Tavistock Institute Review 1996/97: p.6
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Rhizomes for the Understanding of the Production of Social Sciences
In this specific introduction of the project this organisation introduces all its
current and past projects from 1996 and 1997. This information is available for a
wide array of potential audiences such as commissioning organisations, sponsors or
researchers in general. This institutional ‘business card’ of a European research
institute tries to conjugate the ‘SME world’ and ‘organisational learning’ within the
gamut of activities of the organisation. The premises that made DELOS a possible
achievement in the first stages were based precisely on this same association. This
introduction tells us from the very beginning what is going to be the so-called ‘object
of analysis’ and which are ‘lenses’ the researchers planned to use or to construct to
approach it.
Thus the research-partners constructed their main ‘object of analysis’: the
cluster of SMEs as a possible and observable object. Management and economics
vocabularies were merged in the melting pot to enhance the faith of the potential
audiences: the ‘maximisation of a market position’ and the ‘pooling of know how’ act
as confirmations of the existence of the entities and its possible association. However,
most of the disputes during the first stages of DELOS questioned the existence of
clusters of SMEs seeking for new frames of analysis to complement the
aforementioned2.
During the DELOS project the big existential question was about the nature of
these clusters of Small to Medium Enterprises as a European phenomenon. In several
written accounts about DELOS concepts such as ‘institutional thickness’ (Amin and
Thirft, 1994), ‘embeddedness’ (Grabher,1993) or the Scottish knitwear industry case
(Porac et al,1989) came to help the researchers to give birth to this necessary being.
Several demarcation lines were suggested to attempt a possible definition of clusters
of SMEs. On the other hand, the possible demarcation lines should fold against the
actual groups of SMEs that the research-partners were able to find in the field. This
double ontology – i.e. concepts vis-à-vis SMEs in the field – moulded the political
skirmishing inside the partnership allocating the researchers in contested forums for
that particular debate.
The main ‘invention’ of DELOS was a typology of clusters that reflects how
organisational learning within SMEs is shaped according to the interrelationship of
the levels of organisational learning previously referred and the relationship between
the SMEs and their industrial milieu, as well as other structural characteristics such as
size, length of time established and decision-making style. Out of this analysis of
several components, the research-partners defined five broad types of ‘organisational
learning behaviour’: crisis-driven, endogenous, exogenous, embedded with limited
development of organisational learning and embedded focused on competence
development using formalised practices and processes (Cullen 2000: p.397-398). All
the previous constructs and the theoretical perspectives the research-partners used
flowed into this typology standing this movement for their encompassing description
of clusters of SMEs at a European level. This typology of clusters of SMEs is
supposed to be describing all the possible cases the research-partners found in the
field. The typology and the parameters the researchers agreed for identifying clusters
The so-called ‘traditional’ frames for studying clusters of SMEs come from economics following the
tradition of Marshall (1920). The research-partners explored alternative perspectives in order to be able
to produce a description comprising the diversity of the groups of SME they found in the field.
2
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Rhizomes for the Understanding of the Production of Social Sciences
were the main objects in the network of the partners: their importance overshadowed
even the human beings who were forced to comply with the outcome of those
agreements.
The main theoretical contribution from DELOS was the suggestion that
particular learning environments associated with the cluster types tended to promote a
particular type of ‘organisational learning’ (Cullen 1998: p.249-252). However, at the
level of the industrial cluster – i.e. the levels stated by the partners – success in terms
of turnover increase did not appear to be related to the embeddedness within the local
milieu (e.g. the cluster can even constitute a barrier to success). The research-partners
also found no real evidence supporting the fact that industrial clusters are effective
environments for institutional learning. Even when the promotion of social and
cultural community identity can be seen as part of an array of wider benefits of
learning, these benefits for the researchers were difficult to measure in conventional
economic terms. On the other hand, in the final report of DELOS these benefits were
presented as being connected with capacity building and the development of social
capital.
Far from being a hymn of praise of the idea of clusters of SMEs as a model
for economic development, DELOS passed unnoticed for most of the European
research and legislation. Most of the partners talk about DELOS as an interesting and
formative experience but the links connecting the outcomes of DELOS and further
research or European policies are difficult or impossible to trace. However, after
DELOS, most of the researchers involved in the project were commissioned
subsequent projects within the social sciences field. By and large, after DELOS the
trajectories of the actors – both human and non-human – forked following different
directions. Nevertheless, all the researchers who took part in DELOS are still
involved in the production of social sciences.
b) Rhizomes, Labyrinths and Burrows
[‘]As my connexion with the Court is such a close one, I can also tell
you how in the routine of the Law-Court offices the distinction
between definite and ostensible acquittal takes formal effect. In
definite acquittal the documents relating to the case are completely
annulled, they simply vanish from sight, not only the charge but also
the records of the case and even the acquittal are destroyed,
everything is destroyed. That’s not the case with ostensible acquittal.
The documents remain as they were, except that the affidavit is added
to them and a record of the acquittal and the grounds for granting it.
The whole dossier continues to circulate, as the regular official
routine demands, passing onto the higher Courts, being referred to
the lower ones again, and thus swinging backwards and forwards
with greater or smaller oscillations, longer or shorter delays. These
peregrinations are incalculable. A detached observer might
sometimes fancy that the whole case had been forgotten, the
documents lost, and the acquittal made absolute. No one really
acquainted with the Court could think such a thing. No document is
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Rhizomes for the Understanding of the Production of Social Sciences
ever lost, the Court never forgets anything. One day – quite
unexpectedly – some Judge will take up the documents and look at
them attentively, recognize that in this case the charge is still valid,
and order an immediate arrest. I have been speaking on the
assumption that a long time elapses between the ostensible acquittal
and the new arrest; that is possible and I have known of such cases,
but it is just as possible for the acquitted man to go straight home
from the Court and find the officers already waiting to arrest him
again. Then, of course, all his freedom is at an end.’
Excerpt from Franz Kafka ‘The Trial’ (1925/1992: p.92)
‘You haven’t once up till now come into real contact with the
authorities. All those contacts of yours have been illusory, but owing
to your ignorance of the circumstances you take them to be real. And
as for the telephone. As you see, in my place, though I’ve certainly
enough to do with the authorities, there’s no telephone. In inns and
suchlike places it may be of real use, as much use say as a penny-inthe-slot musical instrument, but it’s nothing more like that. Have you
ever telephoned here? Yes? Well, then perhaps you’ll understand
what I say. In the Castle the telephone works beautifully of course,
I’ve been told it’s going there all the time, that naturally speeds up
the work a great deal. We can hear this continual telephoning in our
telephones down here as a humming and singing, you must have
heard it too. Now this humming and singing transmitted by our
telephones is the only real and reliable thing you’ll hear, everything
else is deceptive. There’s no fixed connexion with the Castle, no
central exchange which transmits our calls further. When anybody
calls up the Castle from here the instruments in all the subordinate
departments ring, or rather they would all ring if practically all the
departments – I know it for a certainty – didn’t leave their receivers
off. Now and then, however, a fatigued official may feel the need of a
little distraction, especially in the evenings and at night and may
hang the receiver on. Then we get an answer, but an answer of
course that’s merely a practical joke. And that’s very understandable
too. For who would take the responsibility of interrupting, in the
middle of the night, the extremely important work up there that goes
on furiously the whole time, with a message about his own little
private troubles? I can’t comprehend how even a stranger can
imagine that when he calls up Sordini, for example, it’s really Sordini
that answers. For more probably it’s a little copying clerk from an
entirely different department. On the other hand, it may certainly
happen once in a blue moon that when one calls up the little copying
clerk Sordini will answer himself. Then finally the best thing is to fly
from the telephone before the first sound comes through.’
Excerpt from Franz Kafka ‘The Castle’ (1930/1992: p.316-317)
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Rhizomes for the Understanding of the Production of Social Sciences
Accordingly Karl said to the stoker: ‘You must put things more
simply, more clearly; the Captain can’t do justice to what you are
telling him. How can he know all the mechanics and ship’s boys by
name, far less by their first names, so that when you mention So-andso he can tell at once who is meant? Take your grievances in order,
tell the most important ones first and the lesser ones afterwards;
perhaps you’ll find that it won’t be necessary even to mention most of
them. You always explained them clearly enough to me!’ If boxes
could be stolen in America, one could surely tell a lie now and then
as well, he thought in self-excuse.
Excerpt from Franz Kafka ‘America’ (1938/1992: p.140-141)
Perhaps an important question will still be how do we connect with DELOS?
How does DELOS function with us; how does it reproduce itself in time? When we
talk about DELOS, where or who do we phone? What line do we use? What specific
order do we impose onto these actors, organisations, clusters, funding schemes and
research programmes in order to try to come to grips with them?
My first attempt to answer these questions will certainly include the rhizome
(which Deleuze and Guattari (1986, 1988) brought into social sciences). The authors
(1986) suggested the rhizome as a means for reading Franz Kafka’s literature and
social phenomena in general. By rhizome Deleuze and Guattari portrayed a burrow
with multiple entrances and exits with no beginning and end as well as lacking any
kind of hierarchical order. Kafka’s literature is fragmentary, a composition of loosely
coupled segments forming an assemblage through connectors. For instance,
Heraclites oeuvre was also fragmentary; only a few bits and pieces survived the
course of the years. Therefore, when we read Heraclites fragments we venerate those
surviving paragraphs thinking that they must have belonged to an extraordinarily
large and complete writing exercise. The universe of the ‘hinted’ or the ‘not-said’ is
always immensely greater than the universe of the ‘written’ or the ‘said’. Hence, any
book can be read as a fragmentary collage of short stories looking for a reader to
connect them. Leaving aside their limited amount of pages, most books can be said to
be infinite.
Endeavouring to answer our initial questions, we can point out that we can
only reach DELOS through a set of segments of text forming an incomplete
discursive universe. This is an example of how we ‘work’ together with DELOS. We
can only get connected to this social science project through the stories from the
research-partners or the excerpts from articles or books informing us about what
happened between 1996 and 1998. Time and again and implying the specific ActorNetwork Theory slant I always impose onto sensemaking, we can claim that this is
not a linguistic problem of contested meanings. What we are discussing is not a
semantics of a social science project according to various observers. Instead, we can
talk about an entire ontology of entities that has to be conjugated territorialising and
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Rhizomes for the Understanding of the Production of Social Sciences
deterritorialising beings3. The rhizomatic character of our construction called DELOS
requires the actors circulating in and constructing a burrow4. The actors have to be
substituted and associated several times in order to settle their ‘work’ or circulation.
The latter does not stand for a manipulation of the actors but for a possible
stabilisation of their actions. Desire mediates and keeps the actors circulating in a
particular gallery of a labyrinth. Stories gather together human and non-human actors
or ‘multiplicities’ in order to later on attempt to convey a meaning. Following
Deleuze and Guattari (1988) assemblage’s idea:
There is no longer a tripartite division between a field of reality (the world) and a
field of representation (the book) and a field of subjectivity (the author). Rather, an
assemblage establishes connections between certain multiplicities drawn from each
of these orders, so that a book has no sequel nor the world as its object nor one or
several authors as its subject. […] The book as assemblage with the outside, against
the book as image of the world. A rhizome-book, not a dichotomous pivotal, or
fascicular book (p.23).
Our explanatory texts form a rhizome with the world: they circulate following
a path in a burrow or a rhizome forming a map that includes both the researcher and
his or her object/s of analysis. A rhizome includes other rhizomes: a researcher
studying researchers studying clusters of Small to Medium Enterprises (SMEs). The
traces or the lines between both human and non-human actors settle, they become
organised and neutralised in the map. This map is – needless to say – movement and
circulation. The most basic law of the rhizome stipulates that any point is connected
to any other point, i.e. researchers, clusters of SMEs, journals, academic backgrounds
and organisational portfolios are all circulating within the same network or rhizome
and producing social science. Therefore, any definition of ‘social sciences’ will need
to include the universe of entities producing and reproducing it. According to this
perspective, the final report of the project or any episode from DELOS is not only
interesting in semantic terms, i.e. exploring the famous signifier / signified divide. In
addition, texts and episodes become ‘meaningful’ because they are attached to a
European social sciences machine, the agents ‘function’ according to the places they
both have been assigned and assumed within the rhizomatic territory.
In order to try to come to grips with this graft incorporated to social sciences,
we can bring back the rhizomatic territory to its original field. According to the Rost
et al (1998: p.101), rhizomes are ‘underground stems. They are usually light colored
and burrow into the ground just below the surface’. The same biology scholars
envisage rhizomes as stems that have nodes:
Deleuze and Guattari (1986, 1988) use the term ‘territorialization’ associated to their burrows,
assemblages and rhizomes. By the same token, Bruno Latour (1999: p. 127-133) talks about the
‘variable ontology’ of the actors in the network in order to account for the successive transformations
they undergo. Actors are being associated and substituted and each change in the collective transforms
all the circulating entities (Latour 1998: p.153-164). Being hooked-up to a burrow or a labyrinth entails
a necessary alienation of the self whereby ‘being’ can be translated as ‘being connected’.
4
According to Actor-Network theory, the distinction between the micro and the macro has to be
cancelled (Latour, 2001). Therefore, the actors are not ‘inside’ a big container called network (Latour
in Law and Hassard, 1999: p.15-25). This is exactly where the hyphen between ‘Actor’ and ‘Network’
plays a role. Neither are actor and network distant entities nor are the actors included into the network.
Between actor and network there is mutual implication and flow.
3
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Rhizomes for the Understanding of the Production of Social Sciences
Small scalelike leaves sometimes form at the nodes, but they don’t grow or become
photosynthetic. The buds in the axils of these leaves elongate, producing new
branches that extend to the soil surface and form new plants (p.101).
Rost et al, 1998, ‘Plant Biology’, Wadsworth Publishing Company: p.398
Hence, a rhizome is a ramified network growing horizontally in a
subterranean way. On the other hand, a rhizome through its nodes connects different
plants and leaves. Any point in the entire vegetal formation (e.g. the roots, the stems
or the leaves) is hooked up to same rhizome. No existence is more important than any
of the others. The elements all ‘are’ because they are related to each other.
In addition, Deleuze and Guattari (1988: p.21) draw an interesting distinction
between a ‘rhizome’ and a ‘tree’ (for the authors most social sciences are actually
based on the ‘tree’ metaphor). Unlike the ‘rhizome’ (where the connection among the
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Rhizomes for the Understanding of the Production of Social Sciences
many parts and not their status is at stake), a ‘tree’ is hierarchical. For the authors a
‘tree’ becomes its own image, its photograph or painting. A ‘rhizome’, on the other
hand, recoups the idea of multiplicities circulating in the galleries of a burrow where
paths can diverge, converge or even get blocked. A ‘tree’ is the object that once was a
seed whereas a burrow has always been a rhizome and its ontology stems from (in the
broadest possible sense) the circulation of nomad actors. The ‘rhizome’ can be said to
be a continuously constructed map of connections thanks to the efforts of mutant
actors.
Narrative segments or blocks standing for multiplicities are rhizomatically
connected to each other. As noted above, this trait highlights the fragmentary
condition of most texts and stories. Deleuze and Guattari (1988) took the term
‘plateau’ coined by Gregory Bateson in order to talk about these segments or
narrative units. The basic rule concerning these conceptual blocks lies in their
interchangeable order:
A plateau is always in the middle, not at the beginning or at the end. A rhizome is
made of plateaus. Gregory Bateson uses the word “plateau” to designate something
very special: a continuous, self-vibrating region of intensities whose development
avoids any orientation towards a culmination point or external end. […] We call a
“plateau” any multiplicity connected to other multiplicities by superficial
underground stems in such a way as to form or extend a rhizome. We are writing this
book as a rhizome. It is composed of plateaus. We have given it a circular form, but
only for laughs (p.21-22).
As plateaus have no beginning or end, each plateau can start anywhere
holding an infinite number of connections with other plateaus. There is an uncanny
resemblance between the rhizome and Kafka’s literature in general and ‘The Castle’
in particular where multiple changing entrances connected the village and the castle.
Even the telephone lines followed the same architectonic pattern. The nature of the
‘ostensible acquittal’ of Kafka’s ‘The Trial’ also carries the geography of a rhizome
where endless blocks of interaction between the accused and Court machinery take
place authorising and cancelling each other within the same legal map. The atelier of
the painter Titorelli, which is on the other end of the town where the Court is based,
leads inevitably through a back door to same judicial site. Titorelli is actually one of
the only persons knowing the proceedings of the Court. The rhizome grows
unexpectedly under the ground connecting all the different surfaces. While analysing
Kafka, Deleuze and Guattari (1986) are actually trying to find a passage to enter
Kafka’s work rather than treating his literature as a detached object of analysis: they
needed to get into these rhizomes in order to account for them. ‘Minor literature’ –
not in a pejorative sense – are the terms the authors used to talk about Kafka’s work.
Kafka writes like a dog digging a hole or a rodent constructing a burrow. Each
segment or narrative block inside Kafka’s minor literature is a machine in its own
right. For instance, the Stoker chapter at the beginning of ‘America’ is about the
machines in a ship (i.e. the place where the Stoker works) but it is also about the
stoker’s love life, dialogues or problems being part of the same mechanistic
assemblage, being produced through the same process. The characters are talking
about a past trip. At the time when they are speaking about the trip, the ship is already
anchored in America but the assemblage of machines in operation is still working.
The architecture, the love life, the design of the telephone lines or law proceedings
are all hooked-up together. The characters travel from one plateau to the other within
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Rhizomes for the Understanding of the Production of Social Sciences
the rhizome they are actually constructing. The assemblages organise and gather
multiplicities: there are no single or detached elements; the Kafkian syntagmatic
dimension can be explored ad infinitum. Speaking about a particular entity
immediately makes us drift into other entities. Contiguity builds. It actually is the
rhizome itself. There is always a near mismatch: something completely different or
inappropriate occupies the room next door. Something absent is actually present
somehow and in operation.
In Kafka’s literature, the narrative blocks are not just close to each other but
contiguous: inside the rhizome something – quite important most of the times – is
always happening in the room next door; the spaces are never too distant or too close,
everything is around or, to be more precise, in one of the rooms next door. When we
step on a particular space, we are immediately jumping into its intertext. The adjacent
rooms are the places where we are not allowed and their inhabitants are most of the
time inaccessible meaningful ‘Others’. In the middle of this connected divide between
the being and the ‘rest’ lies desire itself which is the great motor of all the Kafkian
mechanistic bureaucratic devices: the hidden law triggering the reproduction in time
of the same forms. Desire is assembled, unevenly distributed into rooms and
imprisoned in the galleries of a labyrinth where the actors wander. The actors are not
prisoners though; desire itself keeps them hooked-up digging their burrow. The many
narrative segments of a Kafkian novel capture desire territorialising it in the attire of a
Judge, the beauty of a secretary or the architecture of the Court (this aspect can also
be verified in the regime of enunciation of the author: some words, as we could see,
need to be written in capital letters). The only possible way to dismantle the machine
or this ‘body without organs’ is by circulating inside it, tackling the question ‘how
does it function?’ The ‘sense’, in the most semantic possible appreciation, comes only
after having answered the puzzles about the mechanics of the problem. Writing in this
sense entails the translation of all the action into assemblages of segments in order to
later on attempt to dismantle that construction. In fact, the last two procedures are the
same one. Following the Deleuze and Guattari (1986: p.43-52), every machine is a
machine because it can be disassembled. What dismantles the machine lives inside
the machine; desire itself builds up the legal system in ‘The Trial’: the employees are
corrupt, the secretaries fancy the accused people, the law-book contains porn pictures
and a painter and an abbot lie at the heart of this legal dispositif. Desire can be found
on every corner because all these scattered entities are the Law itself. There is a flux
and a counter-flux between Law and Desire, keeping them alive and accountable.
Even the trajectory of the Kafkian main characters (I would not dare to call
them ‘heroes’) is motorised by the same desire. They belong to the rhizomes of the
Court or the Castle. They seek admittance exploring what is forbidden for them. The
characters (both the newcomers and the old inhabitants of the burrows) never try to
escape those rhizomes. They travel exploring the galleries of the maze they have been
digging. They ‘function’ along with the power which in theory is oppressing them.
The Law or the power of the Castle before the inhabitants of the village is being
written in their sexual lives, jobs, interests, expectations and everyday talk. There is
no divide between the powerful and the powerless; the reader can easily travel from
one to the other. The powerful lives in and constructs the powerless. Desire keeps all
of them circulating inside the rhizome; there is always contiguity: other actors to be
acquainted, loved or feared.
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Having explored this thick narrative path, what can both Kafka and Deleuze
and Guattari tell us about our European social science project? This perspective will
help us framing our analysis in order to both distinguish and define DELOS as a
multiplicity. Perhaps the most important contribution of this perspective will be the
elaboration of a path that will lead to the interconnected surfaces, standpoints or
plateaus producing social sciences at the same time. The researchers produce research
deliverables or reports but also their organisational backgrounds, academic
perspectives, parallel projects and future undertakings elaborate social sciences
(hooked-up to the same rhizome). These constructs will set detours and obligatory
passage points forking and twisting the paths of the researchers. On the other hand, a
project and a partnership running European research projects has no beginning or end,
it also develops in series linked with connectors. A gamut of continuities reproduces
itself from project to project establishing patterns and forging narratives giving a
precise definition to the blurred European research.
c) Production across Multiple Plateaus
Deleuze and Guattari’s (1988: p.3-25) rhizome was composed of a myriad of
plateaus. By ‘plateau’ the authors implied the many circulating multiplicities (or the
generic ‘actants’ of Actor-Network Theory (Latour, 1987: p.83-85)) connected across
the stems of a rhizome. As a theoretical exercise, we can very easily translate Deleuze
and Guattari’s ideas in terms of Actor-Network Theory. Circulation and functioning
(i.e. ‘action’ itself) are at the heart of both perspectives. The rodents dig their burrow
while the actors build the network holding them together.
Reading DELOS through these two lenses will certainly allow us to
incorporate some ‘invisible agents’ when we talk about social sciences production.
Human beings are usually placed at the centre of any scientific development. In this
vein, the picture of the table where the researchers are sitting discussing their findings
can nearly replace the overall production of social sciences. We can even explore
every second of the conversations and the movements of the scientists mapping their
interaction.
Our approach towards the social is quite different though. Bruno Latour and
Steve Woolgar (1979) showed us a while ago that, for instance, we could account for
the process of being awarded a Nobel prize studying the architectonical layout of a
laboratory or the inscription devices scientists use. A complete different configuration
of plateaus for the production of natural sciences emerged out of that particular study
asking the question ‘what or who do we need to follow in order to reach a Nobel
prize?’ A few years later, Bruno Latour (1996b: p.94) would endeavour to answer this
question repeating time and again: ‘…stick to the actors. If they drift, we’ll drift along
with them’. Human beings produce connected to non-human actors and the outcome
of the conjunct work should be studied incorporating the correct assemblage of
agencies at work. Thus, we will need to link the table where the scientists sit and talk
to the procedures and principles of good practice they use. Each of these actors makes
all the other ones different transforming them through the connections. Being part of
the collective changes the different member-actants investing them with particular
ontologies.
11
Rhizomes for the Understanding of the Production of Social Sciences
It is far more difficult to follow social than natural scientists. The array of
non-human actors surrounding social scientists – and stabilising their actions – is not
vast enough and, therefore, the paths where their actions drift are far more difficult to
trace. Nevertheless, there is text everywhere: we can find a research proposal, a
questionnaire, a deliverable, a review, an article in a journal or an interview. All such
objects emerge time and again within the surface called DELOS. Following Taylor
and Van Every’s (2000) idea of text:
Conversation is the site of organizational emergence, text, its surface. We assume, in
other words, that the structure of organization is a property of communication. […]
We see the role of language in this realization as providing the surface on which
organization can be read. […] Text in this sense is the necessary input to and
inevitable output from communication: both raw material and product (p.37-39).
Taking into account this strictly Derridian view on ‘text’, we can find DELOS
scattered in the questionnaires for the fieldwork, in the answers of the researchpartners or in the organisational presentation of a research institute on the internet.
DELOS was a tiny unimportant project for most of the actors involved but it also –
and this is not a paradox – can be found everywhere. DELOS also produced its
machines and constructs mediating human action and speaking on behalf of human
beings. These machines seek to inscribe their action in European policy, in the
research background of an institute or in the final report of a project. Text connects
the different human beings working together stabilising their actions.
One of the research-partners involved in DELOS talked in his interview about
the diverse ‘starting points’ of the actors involved in the project. The actors since the
first stages of DELOS were placed in various plateaus or circulating standpoints.
DELOS itself can be understood as the historical reproduction of these asymmetrical
distances between the actors. The hiatuses among the actors can be filled with local
organisational backgrounds, theoretical perspectives or procedures for carrying out
European research. These constructs organise the actors enabling and constraining
their possible actions. The project meetings of the partners or the researchers
delivering questionnaires were only a few of the episodes deserving attention in order
to understand the reproduction in time of a project called DELOS. Text articulates
actions, dividing them into phases and bringing coherence to the entire experience.
Contiguously, in the room next door where we are not allowed, we will listen to
organisational tales about previous projects, the type of publications forging
reputations and future projects which acceptances are coming out of the pipeline.
DELOS is also being written from the many research perspectives of the partners,
their academic lives, the promises of potential projects with solid partnerships and the
maintenance of longstanding relationships with the clusters of SMEs of a particular
region. The surface holding DELOS together is irregular: too many voices speak at
the same time and these parallel productions continuously mould the DELOS
network.
Nearly as a by-product of the machines of the previous paragraph we can
claim that DELOS transcends its own definition. The beginning and the end of the
project are open-ended: new undertakings appear in the middle and at the end of the
stipulated schedule of the project, new associations among the researchers emerged
12
Rhizomes for the Understanding of the Production of Social Sciences
and other academic or professional interests appealed the taste of the actors.
However, a few ceremonies tried to signpost the course of the open-ended action:
there were a final report, a presentation before the European Commission and a few
further projects quoting DELOS as its predecessor. By and large, the definition of
‘time’ for European projects widely transcends the unidirectional set of ceremonies
signalling the different stages or the end of a particular project. DELOS is also other
parallel or further projects, a popular academic perspective, research at a European
level or the settlement of a solid partnership. Each plateau of this hypertext called
DELOS (that can be double-clicked a few times) carries a particular time dimension
that mingles on top or under all the others.
Nonetheless, DELOS is not only the assemblage of a single machine tirelessly
producing deliverables for the European Commission. Several machines connected in
an assemblage are working in parallel and most of the organisational efforts demand a
series of adjustments to the joint action of the entire dispositif. In Kafka’s minor
literature, desire was the big motor of the entire rhizome. In DELOS, several
components – such as the academic prestige or the conformation of a business
portfolio – motorise the various machines assembled together. However, these
components do not necessarily circulate across the entire assemblage. This array of
required machines for the production of social sciences has to be continuously
compensated and calibrated. The various motors had to learn to live together with the
research-partners moulding their expectations, friendships and disputes.
d) Associations and Substitutions
Within DELOS, we can find multiple and overlapped – as well as contested –
ideas of the self. Taking into account the human beings, the research-partners can be
found in their national organisations (e.g. a research institute or a chamber of
commerce depending on the case), in their regional field (establishing a symbiotic
and longstanding relationships with clusters of SMEs of their regions) or within the
partnership itself. The various entangled motors from the previous section produce
these contested holographic identities which are at stake for the production of social
sciences. For instance, the questions in an interview can be answered assuming any of
these roles. The many motors or ideas about desire stem from the tensions between
the many others and alternative ideas of the self. The distinction between the self and
the other/s is not a gap or a thick line separating entities though. It stands for a tension
between narratives, an expression of what makes the actors tick.
There are two main difficulties to explore DELOS as a rhizome or an
assemblage producing social sciences. First and coming from the previous paragraph,
the researchers or any other actant involved in DELOS can assume many different
roles at the same time. Time and again, ‘being’ is actually ‘being connected’. Every
entity is only an inconstant being forging its raison d’être according to the
associations it signed. Each of the actors holds a variable ontology (Latour, 1999:
p.127-133). By and large, most actors – both human and non-human – are difficult to
stabilise.
13
Rhizomes for the Understanding of the Production of Social Sciences
Second, we need to tackle in our exploration two dimensions together.
Associations and substitutions (Latour in Law, 1991: p.103-131) or the syntagm and
the paradigm (Latour, 1999: p.159-164) have to be analysed together. The actors can
enrol (Callon, 1986a) themselves through a process of interessment in the same
programme of action and change roles at the same time.
Taking simultaneously into account these two dimensions, we can devise a
map or a rhizome of the actors we haven been presenting so far:
Future
Undertakings
Academic
Publications
Project
Portfolios
Research
Backgrounds
Project
Reports
Theoretical
Perspectives
Researchers
SME clusters
This is our rhizome. These are the actors problematising and constructing
DELOS5. They all construct; they are all in operation. The main dispositif only
articulates the many machines. As noted above this not only a map: the graphic
entails movement and circulation. A programme of action lies behind this agreement
among entities of variable ontology and writes, for instance, the final report of the
project. The researchers in order to bring DELOS to a desirable end needed to run
DELOS in parallel with other projects, bringing forth their research backgrounds and
theoretical perspectives in order to write the many deliverables. Apart from these
associations, they had to enrol the many Small to Medium Enterprises where the
fieldwork – and future projects in a few cases – took place and to plan future projects
inside or outside of the same rhizome. For some of the actors the reproduction in time
of rhizome was a proper vehicle for the production of social sciences whereas for
some others new assemblages had to be found or constructed for that purpose. The
rhizome summons and expels researchers, theories, methodologies or lines of enquiry
every time it reproduces itself.
5
The list of actors or actants of the graphic is not exhaustive at all. A few other agents such as the
European Commission can be mentioned and included. Please, take this particular group of actors as a
working device in order to show what Deleuze and Guattari and Actor-Network theory can tell us
about DELOS. Perhaps the greatest omission was not to include myself as both observer and author of
these lines in the map. I am actually circulating with all these actants for my practical purposes. As we
all know by now, rhizomes are included in other rhizomes. My presentation pointed out ‘this is our
rhizome’, not ‘this is the rhizome’.
14
Rhizomes for the Understanding of the Production of Social Sciences
According to this map, the famous project picture showing the table where the
researchers are gathered discussing the final wording of a report is just one of the
many plateaus inside the rhizome producing social sciences. Contiguous chambers
also produce a longstanding consortium, articles seeking admittance in journals or a
typology of clusters of Small to Medium Enterprises as the main outcome of a
project. The organisational backgrounds, the theoretical perspectives or the editors of
the journals also speak and produce DELOS. Many ideas about success and failure try
to build a surface where these multiplicities can live together. The various plateaus
have to discover and invent some other existences connected to them in order to
secure the schedule of ceremonies guaranteeing the reproduction in time of the
rhizome.
As noted above, this map entails movement and circulation. There is a
syntagmatic but also a paradigmatic dimension which is intertwined, inseparable. A
few researchers are theoretically solid actors, but they are also the organisations
which can fund DELOS in part, the consortium that is going to run subsequent
projects for the same research programme or the consultancy companies that have
been working on a group of SMEs in a region for decades. The actors are many and
inseparable; not even ‘time’ can divide these multiple intertwined beings. They are all
in operation at the same time, in unison. A few poor theoretical perspectives
incorporated state-of-the-art underpinnings in regional development and
organisational learning. Some other more enlighted perspectives learned some aspects
about previously unknown clusters of Small to Medium enterprises. Most research
backgrounds learnt what does it mean to run a project at a European level, in a
consortium conjugating different epistemological trends with punctual meetings for
the so-called ‘co-ordination’. But this rhizome is also text: it is a report, a presentation
to third parties, a business card, an article in a journal or a web page. These multiple
translations reshuffle the actors, forge new agreements stabilising the actions
promoting alternative programmes of action: e.g. being commissioned new projects,
incorporating theories and methodologies or working in other environments using
different methodologies. In a strictly Kafkian way, the actors become bigger or
smaller, their beings change as the burrow is being constructed. A theory becomes the
universal truth, a group of Small to Medium enterprises a treasure island for research
activities and certain researchers someone to be avoided in the future.
The paradigmatic dimension is as wide as the syntagmantic one. The
associations and substitutions of the actors happen at the same time. The AND and
the OR articulate entities co-ordinating actions and stabilising heterodoxies. We
portrayed DELOS as a multiplicity but each of the actors is also many actors looking
for a continuity in time according to a shifting desire or interessment. As illusory as
trying to phone Sordini, perceptions about theoretical underpinnings, good research
practice or future projects keep the actors circulating acknowledging their particular
place in history and rhizomatic continuity. Articles, reports and research reputations
swing backwards and forwards and they can even stop but ‘the Court never forgets’;
the acquittal is going to be endlessly ostensible. The many inconstant beings required
for the production of social sciences can alter their associations and identities time
and again. However, their incalculable peregrination can never come to a halt.
15
Rhizomes for the Understanding of the Production of Social Sciences
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