Being Followed by an Organization

Abstract

This chapters proposes to reverse the conventional assumption regarding research methods, according to which researchers follow their object of study. When studying an organization, researchers must let themselves be followed – we voluntarily use the passive voice – and make their body available as a surface where different principles, artefacts, sensations, feelings and other figures are articulated and therefore get organized. We use the case of the first author’s experience in a Doctor’s Without Borders field hospital at a refugee camp in South Sudan to describe and analyze the ways in which the organization and its extreme environment affected him. The organization, rather than an external object available for his observation, took shape and became available for study as he experienced it in an embodied way.