CCO in Practice: Spacing and Humanitarian Organizing

This chapter draws on the Communicative Constitution of Communication (CCO) approach to understand the implications of spacing for humanitarian organizing in a forced migration hotspot. Methodologically, the chapter builds upon multi-sited fieldwork in Lebanon. The chapter accounts for the different ways in which spacing assemblages (i.e., the relational weaving of practices, conversations, texts, territories, and other elements) exhibit volatile agencies and thus make a difference in the process of organizing. On the one hand, the findings show that assemblages control individuals’ work and movements in these settings. On the other hand, the findings illustrate that assemblages engender divergent identities for those organizing and dwelling in these spaces. Assemblages are also found to elicit resistance that results in feelings of meaninglessness, vulnerability, and cynicism. The chapter’s contribution is twofold. First, the chapter shows how agencies of spatial configurations are formed through communicative relations between agents, but also how these agencies are impeded, restricted, or constrained by other agents, relations, or assemblages. Secondly, the chapter shows how a CCO lens is relevant for practice in that a communicative understanding of space can help practitioners consider political and ethical aspects of humanitarian organizing.