Vidaillet, Benedicte creator Youcef Bousalham, France text Organization monographic eng

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27(1), Jan 2019. p. 60-87 This article reports a qualitative study of several coworking spaces conducted over 3 years. We build on Foucault’s reflection concerning heterotopias to develop a new concept – that of ‘syntopia’ – for theorizing this type of space, whose main characteristic is that its alternative potential lies in enabling its users to articulate economic diversity. Our contribution is twofold: on one hand, our theorization of coworking spaces helps better account for their complexity, for the tensions that can arise within them and for their impacts; on the other hand, with the concept of syntopia, we provide a concept that could help identify other places of a post capitalocentric economy, likely to be a source of profound change in our society. We propose to develop a ‘syntopology’ whose object would be to study systematically the different forms of syntopias, their characteristics, potentials and limitations. Capitalism, Coworking, Gibson-Graham, Heterotopia, Post capitalocentric, Syntopia Organization 200904