Affective Sensemaking of Relational Precarities: Resilience as Becoming in Pandemic Shifting to Remote Work

Abstract

Our study explored 13 university members’ sensemaking and resilience around remote work during the COVID-19 pandemic. We found that “affective sensemaking” ran throughout our data and exposed the vulnerabilities and uncertainties that we called relational precarities. Affective sensemaking of relational precarities encapsulated sensate experiences or intensities entangled with the fragmented, fluid, and non-linear nature of processes in the Communication Theory of Resilience (CTR) and their adaptive-transformative dynamics. Evidence of how participants adapted, transformed, and embodied resilience during moments fraught with relational precarity emerged through three themes or practices: (dis)connecting relationally precarious networks, intertwining contradictory affect-place-self-presentation, and performing and feeling (in)visible. We contribute to CTR and organizing by centering fragility, affect, and relational precarity as key to understanding the being-becoming of resilience.

Keywords

organizational communication communication theory of resilience affect relational precarities COVID-19 pandemic becoming

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