Project work strategies in fusion research

Abstract

In this article, we examine and discuss observations on projectification from organizational and management studies and contextualize them with recent insights from the discourse around social acceleration. Against the backdrop of these debates, we ethnographically inquire into project work strategies in fusion research. First, we briefly survey existing scholarship that interrogates acceleration and projectification of research. Second, we explain why we focus on projects in fusion research and introduce the site of our investigation. In the third section, we identify three project work strategies in fusion research: content adjusting, temporal stretching, and (de)consolidation. In the final part, we argue that the highlighted project work strategies emerge as a product of the dialectical interplay of projectification and stabilization contexts that yields new spaces and opportunities for crafting agency and negotiating time in research that go beyond the reductive fast/slow dichotomy that nowadays tends to characterize contemporary accounts of temporality in and of research.

Suspending failure: temporalities, ontologies, and gigantism in fusion energy development

“…Here I touch on two effects: the need to 'sell' fusion and the multiplication of ITER's aims, both of which contributed to labels of failure that have haunted the ITER project's development and construction. Virtová and Vostal (2021) suggest that inflated claims to attract grants for proposed research projects are now so widespread that no one expects projects to achieve their initial aims; failure is therefore not so much unexpected as par for the course. The problem intensifies with something of ITER's size.…”

“…Anthropological nuclear studies are typically concerned with high‐energy physics (e.g. Roy 2012; Traweek 1988) or fission: weapons, contamination, and wastes.…”

Public Sector Projectification – A Systematic Review of the Literature

“…Dollinger (2021) applies the concept of projectified time, exhibiting projects as time-consuming and affecting the university teacher's routine work. Projects require timely output production of research (Torka, 2018), and Virtova and Vostal (2021) suggest that workers apply a strategy of "time stretching," where the boundaries of projects are stretched in time. Hubmann (2021) argues for "time-tricking" in the same manner.…”

“…Hubmann (2021) argues for "time-tricking" in the same manner. Virtova and Vostal (2021) investigate project work strategies in fusion research and argue increased projectification may reduce one's presence in the workplace. This is supported by Ekstedt (2019), who-supported by IT solutions-notes that project work may take place almost anywhere.…”