Profile
Biography
Rolland is Honorary Professor, University of York, and Professor of Philosophy of Organisation, University of Leicester. His field studies of power and ethos draw anthropological ideas together with continental philosophy and he has since published widely on accountability and materials, affect and dwelling, cultural performance and consumption, identity and belonging, language and technology. Key contributions to contemporary understandings of culture include his theorising of disposal, motility and relational extension. Books include Ideas of Difference: Social Spaces & the Labour of Division, Accountability, The Consumption of Mass, Contemporary Organisation Theory, Sociological Routes & Political Roots. After lecturing at Edinburgh University, he co-founded the Centre for Social Theory & Technology with John Law at Keele University and was the Managing Editor of The Sociological Review for seven years.
Publications
Selected publications
2017 ‘Creativity, organisation and entrepreneurship: Power and play in the ecological press of money’, Organisation Studies.
2017 (in press) ‘Generalisability’ (with J. Latimer). In C. Lury et al, Routledge Handbook of Interdisciplinary Research Methods, London: Routledge.
2016 ‘Extension and the Disposal of the World: Double-crossing systems, culture, self and language’, The Sociological Review, 63(3): 424-446.
2016 ‘About “Aboutness”: Extensionality, Dwelling and the Turn to Language’ (with J. Latimer). In: Letiche H. G. Lightfoot and J.-L. Moriceau (eds.) Demo(s), pp.71-84. Rotterdam: Sense Publishers.
2015 ‘Uprooting Class? Culture, world-making and reform’ (with J. Latimer), The Sociological Review, 63(2): 415-432.
2015 ‘Identity and Consumption’. In D.T. Cook and J.M. Ryan (eds), The Wiley-Blackwell Encyclopaedia of Consumption and Consumer Studies.
2013 ‘The Disposal of Place: facing modernity in the kitchen-diner’, The Sociological Review, Special Issue (eds D.Evans, H. Campbell & A.Murcott), 60, s2: 212-231.
2012 ‘Agency and “Worlds” of Accounts’: Erasing the trace or rephrasing the action?’ In J-H Passoth, B. Peuker and M.Schillmeier (eds) Agency Without Actors? New Approaches to Collective Action, pp. 67-86. London: Routledge.
2011 ‘Unfolding Social Construction’. In M. Benson and R. Munro (eds) Sociological Routes and Political Roots. Sociological Review Monograph, pp. 1-21. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.
2011 ‘Exploring the sociological re-imagining of politics’ (with R. Collins), The Sociological Review, Special Issue (eds N. Charles and D. Smith), Vol. 58, 4: 548-562.
2010 ‘Identity: culture and technology’. In M. Wetherell & C. Talpade Mohanty (eds), Handbook of Identities, pp. 201-215. London: Sage.
2010 ‘Not for Turning? Power, institutional ethos and the ethics of irreversibility’, Business Ethics: A European Review, 19, 3: 292-307.
2010 ‘Accountability’. In E. Parsons, M. Tadajewski, M. Parker & P. Maclaran (eds) Key Concepts in Critical Management Studies, pp. 7-11. London: Sage.
2010 ‘Identity’. In E. Parsons, M. Tadajewski, M. Parker & P. Maclaran (eds) Key Concepts in Critical Management Studies, pp.138-143. London: Sage.
2009 ‘Keeping & Dwelling: relational extension, the idea of home, and Otherness’ (with J. Latimer). Space & Culture, Vol. 12: 317-331.
2009 ‘Actor-Network Theory’. In M. Haugaard & S. Clegg (eds), Handbook of Power, pp. 125-139. London: Sage.
2008 ‘The Body in Time: Affect and the ‘interruption’ of narrative’ (with O. Belova). The Sociological Review, 55, s2: 87-99.
2007 ‘Organisation, Listening and the Aesthetics of Disposal’, Tamara: Journal of Critical Organization Science, Vol. 6, No. 2.
2007 ‘Anti-Realism’. International Encyclopaedia of Organisation Studies, S. R. Clegg & J. R. Bailey (eds). London: Sage.
2006 ‘Driving the Social’ (with J. Latimer). The Sociological Review, 54, s1: 32-53.
2006 ‘Double-crossing the Landscapes of Philosophy: Conjoining the transparency of ‘things’ with the veil of language’. In C. Jones & R. tenBos, Philosophy and Organisation, pp. 184-200. London: Routledge.
2005 ‘Outside Paradise: Melancholy and the Follies of Modernisation’, Culture and Organisation, 11, 4: 275-289.
2005 ‘Partial Organisation: Marilyn Strathern and the elicitation of relations’. The Sociological Review, 53, s1: 245-266.
2005 ‘Organisation Theory, 1985-2005’ (with C. Jones). In C. Jones & R. Munro (eds) Contemporary Organization Theory, pp. 1-15. Sociological Review Monograph, Oxford: Blackwell.
2004 ‘Zero and Literature’, Journal for Cultural Research, 8, 2: 99-113.
2004 ‘Punctualising Identity: Time and the demanding relation’, Sociology, 38, 2: 293-311.
2004 ‘The Remains of the Say: Zero, double-crossing and the landscaping of language’, Journal for Cultural Research, 8, 2: 183-200.
2004 ‘Just Waiting: The social injustice of suspending participants between bidding and deferral’. In R. Lippens (ed.) Imaginary Boundaries: social justice across disciplines. Oxford and Portland, pp. 51-67. Oregon: Hart.
2001 ‘Unmanaging/Disorganization’, ephemera: critical dialogues on organization, 1, 4: 395-403.
2001 ‘Calling for Accounts: Numbers, monsters and membership’, The Sociological Review, 49, 4: 473-493.
2001 ‘Disposal of the Body: Upending postmodernism’, ephemera: critical dialogues on organization, 1, 2: 108-130.
