Martina Eberle

Martina Eberle

Martina Eberle’s research interest is centered around forms of configuration of knowledge and construction of expertise as well as around practices resulting from these in inter- and trans-disciplinary contexts. In her research activities she studies practices of evaluation, economization and capitalization focusing on moral and political orders as well as strategies of governmentality and subjectivation embedded in these practices. In the current research project she is pursuing as a doctoral candidate at the Institute of Social Anthropology at the University of Bern and as a member of Graduate School of the Arts she analyzes the discursive objects ‚culture’ and ‚value’ as actors in transformational processes in corporate organizations and studies those with regard to their characteristics, relevance and agency.  

Martina Eberle’s professional experiences encompass activities in innovation management, market and business development, sponsoring, fundraising and stakeholder management as well as in communication and exhibition design – covering the following areas of business: information and communication technologies, mobility, sustainability and social entrepreneurship. Furthermore, she has been teaching as a senior lecturer and mentor at national and international universities of the arts. Martina Eberle holds a Diploma degree in Product Design from the Zurich University of the Arts, a Master degree in Communication Design and a Master in Research on the Arts from the University of Bern as well as an Executive MBA from both, the London Business School and Columbia Business School New York.

Supervisors

Prof. Dr. Heinzpeter Znoj, Universität Bern, Institut für Sozialanthropologie
Prof. Dr. Arne Scheuermann, Hochschule der Künste Bern HKB, Forschungsschwerpunkt Kommunikationsdesign

Doctoral project

Regimes of Harmonization

In the past decades various scientific contributions have emerged in the humanities and social sciences analyzing the characteristics of neoliberal forms of capitalism. Situated in such a thematic field of analysis this research project focuses on the use of the discursive objects ‘culture’ and ‘value’ in contemporary management practice.

Based on the argument that the discursive objects ‘culture’ and ‘value’ act as instruments of governance, this project analyses how social norms and disciplinary techniques are deployed to configure moral infrastructures in corporate organizations to foster the definition of a fixed identity, the creation of a normative community and the design of standard business practices, procedures and processes.

Guided by the question “What kind of agency do the discursive objects ‘culture’ and ‘value’ hold?” this project analyses the practices of creation of meaning and value in economic systems through the use of the discursive objects ‘culture’ and ‘value’ based on an empirical study performed across multiple locations of a mid-sized multi-national fintech enterprise developing software and operating business process outsourcing centers for the global financial industry.

Research priorities

Research Context: Social Studies of Finance, Valuation Studies, Critique of Capitalism, Critique of Neoliberalism, Critique of Design
Theoretical Perspectives: Post-colonial theory, political theory, critical social theory
Disciplines: anthropology of business, anthropology of morals, anthropology of knowledge and thought
Keywords: governmentality, subjectivation, normative ethics, disciplinary techniques