Visual and Multimodal Research in Organization and Management Studies

5The Practice Approach

5.1 Core Ideas

Whereas scholarly work pursuing an archaeological approach aims at the reconstruction of relevant cultural contexts and meaning structures through the detailed interpretation of multimodal artefacts as types of text, the practice approach enables their study in situ. Consequently, visual artefacts are not only seen as carriers of social (or subjective) meaning, but also as objects to be constructed, employed, and manipulated in various processes of organizing. In contrast to the archaeological approach, this approach is therefore not so much interested in the sedimented social meaning(s) and structure(s) that visual artefacts embody as in the processes of inscribing such meaning, the ‘careers’ that such ...