Organizing technologies of vision: Making the invisible visible in media-laden observations

Sociomaterial practices produce, in many cases, opportunities for different modes of vision that further structure social practices. The very organization of the technologies of vision, or visual media, thus demands scholarly attention. Drawing on media theory, the article suggests that the materiality observed through the use of technology is not detached from these technologies but constitutes instances inextricably bound up with the particular technology. Following Barad (2003), matter is a practice, a set of doings accomplished through the mobilization of a heterogeneous body of resources. In the technosciences, species of nature (e.g. laboratory animals) are shaped to comply with operational hypotheses and underlying assumptions. Similarly, in financial trading, markets are constituted through the use of ensembles of technologies of vision. In this view, most vision is media-laden, intimately associated with the materialities organized to accomplish particular modes of seeing. Such mediated vision is a relevant object of study for organization theorists.