ANTi-History : toward an historiographical approach to (re)assembling knowledge of the past

Abstract

This dissertation sets out to answer the call for the historic turn in organization studies by creating an alternative methodology for history, one that I have come to call ANTi-History . In the development of this alternative historiographic approach (viz. ANTiHistory) I have drawn on insights from three distinct literatures: (1) the sociology of knowledge, (2) Marxist and cultural theory historiography, and (3) actor-network theory. The collective and iterative insights drawn from these literatures are developed over the first 4 chapters to constitute ANTi-History in chapter 5. The viability and performativity of this new approach is then explored in the following three chapters (chapters 6-8) by way of analysis of archival and other materials relating to the history of a specific organization - Pan American Airways (PAA). The three empirical applications of ANTi-History seek to historicize different facets of PAA' s past, including an early attempt by key players to write a founder-funded history of the organization (chapter 6), its founding (chapter 7), and representations of its development in the early years, from 1927 to 1940 (chapter 8). The ultimate aim of the thesis is to develop a new approach to historiography that stresses the need for history to be understood as the socially constructed effect of the interest-driven politics of actor-networks; a crafting of history through the privileging of empirical traces over pre-existing theoretical assumptions; an emphasis on following actors around to understand how a socio-past holds together as a network; and a realization of the emancipatory potential of history through its situation in a process of the pluralization of history. Originally a response to Booth and Rowlinson' s (2006) call for a historic turn in management and organizational studies, the development of ANTi-History sets out to meet the challenge of developing a methodology capable of simultaneously historicizing and theoretically engaging the field. In the process, I argue, this thesis has implications for business history in particular and historiography in general in the development of an alternative methodology for studying the past.