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2013 20: 596 originally published online 27 August 2012OrganizationSebastian Ureta

Waiting for the Barbarians: disciplinary devices on Metro de Santiago

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Waiting for the Barbarians:disciplinary devices on Metro deSantiago

Sebastian UretaUniversidad Alberto Hurtado, Chile

Abstract

Bodies are currently recognized as central to organizations. However, until now certain kinds of

bodies have remained largely outside the concerns of organization studies, especially the ones ofthe human beings who use the products/services provided by organizations. Using a conceptualframework that mixes elements of Foucaults developments on discipline and science and

technology studies, this article attempts to contribute to filling this void by proposing to see themanagement of these bodies as a matter of performing disciplinary devices, understanding them as

sociotechnical devices designed with the explicit aim of disciplining users bodies in accordancewith certain predetermined programs or plans. In order to explore the empirical validity of thisconceptualization, the article will study the performance of disciplinary devices by Metro deSantiago, Santiago de Chiles underground railway, during preparations for a substantive increasein the number of daily users. Making a historical genealogy based on interviews with involved

actors and document analysis, the article demonstrates disciplinary devices as always existing ina double way: as inscriptions of future users that the involved actors develop during the designphase and as incorporations when human beings have to start behaving in certain ways to deal with

the organization. In the daily management of such disciplinary devices, never absent of conflict andresistances, lies a central way in which organizations exerts power over human bodies.

Keywords

bodies, disciplinary devices, Metro de Santiago, users

Introduction: organizations, bodies, discipline

In the introduction to an edited collection on bodies and organizations, Hassard et al. (2000)claimed that organizing is an embodied practice (p. 2) meaning that organizing practices always

Corresponding author:Sebastian Ureta, Departamento de Sociologa, Universidad Alberto Hurtado, Cienfuegos 46, Santiago, Chile.

Email: [email protected]

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involve the management of human bodies with the aim of reaching certain status or end. However,until quite recent the body was an absent presence (Dale, 2001) in organization studies, beingfrequently ignored or taken as a secondary element in the analyses on organizational dynamics and

power. In challenging such absence the work of Michel Foucault on discipline and governmental-ity has proven to be highly influential.

Deriving from his study of institutions such as prisons and hospitals, Foucault famously identi-fied discipline as a type of power, a modality for its exercise, comprising a whole set of instru-ments, techniques, procedures, levels of application, targets; it is a physics or an anatomy of

power, a technology (Foucault, 1979: 205). From this understanding, he developed the conceptionof bio-power as a form of power that effectively optimized the capabilities of the body, simultane-ously enhancing its economic utility whilst ensuring its political docility (Smart, 1985: 89). Inmodern societies bio-power is usually practiced in two interrelated forms: anatomo-politics and

biopolitics (Foucault, 1990: 139). Anatomo-politics is based on the direct management of humanbodies through the usage of a series of devices and practices in order to align their physical behav-ior with the objectives of organizations such as factories or schools. Biopolitics, appearing a little

bit later in historical terms, deals with the management of whole human populations through theusage of devices such as statistics and plans. However, power in relation to subjects did not onlyoperate externally. It is also internalized by individuals in the form of what Foucault called tech-nologies of the self or technologies whereby individuals act upon themselves, rendering them-selves subjects of government (Nadesan, 2008: 9). The meeting of both biopower and technologiesof the self gave birth to the form of power characteristic of modern society, or governmentality(Foucault, 2008). Under governmentality the ultimate object of government is transformed, fromthe search of sovereignty over a territory to the detailed control upon the details of the conduct ofthe individuals and populations who were their subjects, individually and collectively, in order toincrease their good order, their security, their tranquility, their prosperity, health and happiness

(Rose, 1999: 6).As a consequence of the mobilization of this approach into organization studies several

scholars started to locate the body and its disciplining at the very centre of organizationaldynamics (Ball, 2005; Dale, 2005; Edenius and Yakhlef, 2007; Hofbauer, 2000; Holliday andThompson, 2001; Wolkowitz 2006). The usual starting point has been the realization thatorganization, obviously, is much more than a technical matter of goal achievement throughcooperative effort. Organization also means organizing people in space, which exposes them toa complex ensemble of visional impression, acoustic and olfactory experience (Hofbauer,2000: 168). Deriving from this view the research question increasingly becomes how various,and sometimes contradictory, forms of control are incorporated into the spatial and material

sites of organization, and enacted and embodied by workers, and indeed how resistance to theseforms of control are enacted (Dale, 2005: 661). However, and following Foucaults identifica-tion of technologies of the self as running in parallel with biopower, there has also been anemphasis on studying the processes through which organizational power is exerted by the sub-

jects on their own bodies as self-discipline (Holliday and Thompson, 2001; McGillivray, 2005)and/or resisted (Shilling, 2005: 9098). Then a central theme in these studies has been how

power in organizations was exercised not only onbut also throughthe bodies of the involvedhuman beings.

Such studies have contributed importantly to explore the place of the body in organizationaldynamics. However, there are still several key issues that remain largely untouched. One of them

is the connection between organizational power and bodies in situations different than theemployee status. Up to this point there has been a strong bias towards identify working personnel

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as the only bodies that matter (Butler, 1993) for organization studies. However, there are severalmore bodies over and through which organizations exert power, with different degrees of success.Chiefly among them are the bodies of the subjects who use the products or services of the organi-zation for any reason. Although such users, usually seen as consumers, have received an impor-tant amount of attention in organization studies, commonly such attention has tended to replicatethe kind of disembodied analysis which the current literature opposes. In those analyses, the bod-ies of such users, and their connection with organizational power, remain largely absent,untouched, immaterial.

This article wants to fill this gap by emphasizing a specific focus on the embodiment anddisciplining of users by a large and complex organization. In doing so it will complimentFoucauldian theory on discipline with Science and Technology Studies (STS), in particularwith the research on users of technology. As its name reveals, such literature takes the issue ofthe users bodies and the connection with power as its main focus of interest. The starting pointof the literature is the consideration that users are not a monolithic or straightforward group,

but are complex and fragmented in nature, and are attributed with varying significance (Mackayet al., 2000: 738). Such multiplicity is not inconsequential, as recalled by Oudshoorn and Pinch(2003: 6):

As Cowan (1987) suggested, users come in many different shapes and sizes. Who is the user? is farfrom a trivial question. The very act of identifying specific individuals or groups as users may facilitate orconstrain the actual roles of specific groups of users in shaping the development and use of technologies. Gender, age, socio-economic, and ethnic differences among users may all be relevant. Because of thisheterogeneity, not all users will have the same position in relation to a specific technology. For some users,the room for maneuvering will be great; for others, it will be very slight.

As they identify, the particular characteristics of users, chiefly among them their embodiment,represent one of the key aspects in the configurations of power surrounding technologies. Such aconscience gave birth to an array of studies dealing with the analysis of different kinds on user

bodies, such as gendered (Oudshoorn et al., 2004; van Kammen 1999; Weber, 1997) or disabledones (Davidson, 2006; Moser, 2005).

Then the user is not a solid or unitary entity with a particular human ontology but the emergentresult of encounters between human beings and technologies in different moments of time andlocations. Commonly such encounters have been seen as dividing into two broad kinds. At first,during the design phase, the user is mostly seen as a particular script (Akrich, 1992) of a humansubject/s made by the members of a certain organization in order to represent and simplify the

actors who are supposedly going to use the device they are developing. Such scripts usually includea representation of users bodies on the basis of the material and cognitive resources of their vari-ous disciplines (van Kammen 1999: 329).

Users of technology are rarely only inscriptions. As soon as the technology leaves the designphase a new kind of user emerges. Following Hayles (1999), we can understand such a process asincorporation or the practices through which the usage of a particular technology is encoded into

bodily memory by repeated performances until it becomes habitual (p. 199). In contrast withinscriptions an incorporating practice cannot be separated from its embodied medium, for itexists as such only when it is instantiated [in practice] (Hayles, 1999). Then users body and themultiple technologies that surround it cannot be separated, they both emerge when such devices are

continually incorporated into practices, as the concept of the cyborg (Haraway, 1991) reminds us.In some cases such incorporations could follow step-by-step the inscriptions embedded in the



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technology, but also, and much more commonly, they produce unexpected results or overflowings,using Callons (1998) term, that could even challenge the organizations own existence. In sum, weshould see users as continually emerging in the interplay between practices of inscription andincorporation of multiple devices.

This conceptual framework, when applied to the issue of bodies and organizations, directs ourattention towards a conception of discipline as always performed in the relationship between aseries of technical devices and its inscribed/incorporated users. In this article I am going to callsuch technologies disciplinary devices, understanding them simply as technical devices designedwith the explicit aim of disciplining subject bodies in accordance with certain predetermined pro-gram or plan.

The option of calling them devices is not casual. In contrast with common usages of the termtechnology, disciplinary devices are not to be understood as stable or well defined materialobjects but as heterogeneous assemblages of materials and textuality spread across diverse and (insome parts) nonlocalizable networks and flows of discourse and practice. It is an ongoing projectin perpetual flux and continuous variation (Lee and Brown, 1994: 786). This definition has threemain consequences. First, disciplinary devices are heterogeneous. Any device is formed by a highvariety of elements, both material and semiotic, widely spread in different locations and times.Second, disciplinary devices have agency. Even the most simple ones should always be consid-ered as objects with agency: whether they might just help (in a minimalist, instrumental fashion)or force (in a maximalist, determinist version), devices do things. They articulate actions; they actor make others act (Muniesa et al., 2007: 2). Third, disciplinary devices areperformative. They arenot created or constructed once and for all and then used to perform docile human subjects

because they cannot be moved without transformation (de Laet, 2000). In order to exist they haveto be continually performed into being and each performance produces a device that is, slightly orsignificantly, different from the ones performed before. Instead of a single device that moves

around as a solid entity we always have multiple ones (Mol, 2002), performing new users withevery mobilization. Such devices are then never only material and technical, but also behavioraland lived. Then to understand the configurations of discipline in organizations we must put thefocus on the very concrete processes through which such disciplinary devicesand its embodiedusers, as inscriptions/ incorporations, are performed into being.

In order to explore the empirical applicability of this conceptualization in the rest of the articleI am going to analyse one particular case: the representation and disciplining of new users carriedout by Metro de Santiago (Santiago de Chiles underground system) at a particular moment in itshistory. After briefly explaining the research methods, the article will introduce the case of Metrode Santiago and its preparations to deal with a substantive increase in usage given by the start of

Transantiago in 2007, the new public transport plan of the city. The main scripts made about thesefuture users and how they were materialized in a series of disciplinary devices will then be ana-lysed. There will then be a discussion of how these new users incorporated in daily practice theirrole as users of Metro in relation with such devices. Finally, I will conclude by highlighting howthis conceptual framework allows us to see the case under study in a different way.

Methods

In terms of research methods this article will make a genealogical reconstruction of the processesthrough which Metro tried to discipline new users by performing disciplinary devices. A geneal-ogy, Foucault tell us, is a form of history which can account for the constitution of knowledges,discourses, domains of objects, etc., without having to make reference to a subject which is either



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transcendental in relation to the field of events or runs in its empty sameness throughout the courseof history (Foucault, 1984: 59). Choosing to perform a genealogy of disciplinary devices in termsof methodology meant a dual operation. On the one hand, it looks to reconstruct historically themultiple disciplinary devices performed by the organization (in this case Metro de Santiago) in the

period under study. On the other hand, it allows specific focus to be placed on the multiple humansubjects embedded in each version of the device. In doing so both disciplinary devices and its sub-

jects are understood neither as a transcendental ontology (a real thing) nor as an stable entity, butas the precarious and constantly evolving result of particular practices whose result are neverknown from the onset and in which several entities participate.

The fieldwork for this article, part of a larger project, was carried out by the author with the helpof two research assistants in Santiago, between March 2007 and May 2009. Following the distinc-tion between users as inscriptions and incorporations a dual approach was taken. In relation tousers as inscriptions, it consisted in the collection of the heterogeneous devices (such as researchreports, memos, media images, etc.) through which the inscriptions of the future Metro users andits related disciplinary devices were performed into being. In order to understand the practicesthrough which they were developed, 18 in-depth interviews with different key actors involved inthe process where conducted including former Metro CEOs, managers from various Metro areasand external consultants hired by Metro to collaborate in the process.

In parallel, and in order to study users as incorporations, several sessions of participant observa-tion of daily usages of the Metro were carried out, involving both following complete trips of sin-gle users and particular observations of the usage of specific spaces such as trains and stations.Also nine in-depth interviews were carried out with actors in charge of the daily functioning ofMetro at the station level (mainly administrative and security personnel) in order to explore howthey were dealing with the new users, especially in relation with disciplinary devices on a daily

basis.

The information collected was later transcribed and coded in relation to a set of categoriesemerging from the interplay between the characteristics of the data collected and the research inter-ests of the project. Based on this information a sequential and multi-located narrative about thedevelopment disciplinary devices by Metro de Santiago in the period under analysis was elabo-rated. Following the genealogical approach, the practices and discourses analysed were seen as

productivein the sense of not only relating to the design of particular technical devices but also tothe performance into being of multiple human subjects, both as inscriptions and incorporations.

Finally it is relevant to note that all the names of the actors involved have been changed in orderto protect their anonymity.

Barbarians

Transantiago was a monumental experiment in technoscientific policymaking even being calledthe most ambitious transport reform undertaken by a developing country (Hidalgo and Grafiteaux,2007). Planning started in 2000 and the aim was to radically transform the whole public transportsystem of Santiago (the capital of Chile with six million inhabitants), using the most up-to-dateknowledge and technologies from transport planning and engineering. From one day to the nextalmost every single aspect of the public transport system of the city was going to change: buses,routes, payment system, actors involved, information system, etc. The promise was to produce aworld-classpublic transport system that would show the successes of Chilean development in thelast two decades.



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However, Transantiago was not only focused on the creation of a completely new public trans-port system. It was also about making better use of the available transport infrastructure, especiallythe Metro network. This position was clearly presented in the Programa de Transporte Urbano deSantiago (PTUS), the original proposal for Transantiago published in 2000:

The metro network must occupy a fundamental place in urban transport policy. Nevertheless, until now,this has not been the case. In fact, despite contrary announcements, since the beginning the Metronetwork has been operating within a context of virtual autonomy from the rest of the public transportmeans. In practice there is an underutilization of the important public investment made. It is time,however, for this to change. Metro must definitely integrate with the rest of the public transport systemwith the objective to, on the one hand, maximize the economic efficiency of an important public investmentlike this, and, on the other hand, supply the global public transport system as a whole with efficiency,substantially improving the quality of life of the inhabitants of the city. (Correa et al. 2000: 18)

Echoing an extended view, both from government actors and transport experts, that the Metro

network had quite low levels of usage, the PTUS proposed an operational and financial integrationof the Metro with the surface bus-based public transport system.Metro authorities actively resisted this proposition. From the very first discussions and propos-

als, their general perception was that Transantiago represented an unnecessary hassle, even anoutright risk, to the organization. This critical position was based on the comfortable positionoccupied by Metro at the time. Ten years after becoming a Public Limited Corporation owned bythe state it enjoyed the benefits of being at the same time financially autonomous (at least in opera-tional terms) while being commonly identified in surveys as one of the best public services in thecountry. This positive self-image was strengthened when compared with the surface public trans-

port system, colloquially known as Micros, usually presented as providing a service of very low

quality.1

Metro initial resistance, though, proved to be fruitless and in 2004 contracts were signed withTransantiago for the provision of transport services and financial integration. After a period of rela-tive inaction,2a new management team arriving in March of 2006 took as its main task the prepara-tion for the integration of Metro with Transantiago, planned to start just six months later. 3Suchintegration was not only related to developing the financial and logistic mechanisms necessary to

become part of a larger and much complex transport system. As with any radical transformation, italso required changing forms of control incorporated into different spatial and material arrange-ments (Dale, 2005: 659). Among such forms of control the development of new disciplinary devicesto control the users of the system under the conditions set by Transantiago appeared as critical.

A first step to design such disciplinary devices was to make scripts of these future users. Theneed for this inscription was heightened by the extended perception among Metro authorities thatthe user script with whom they had worked since the beginning of the system in mid-1970s was nolonger attainable. Such a script performed the user of Metro as a client with middle to high incomewho traveled comfortably, usually seated. For this reason he/she had an emotional attachment withthe system, which turned into caring behavior while traveling, both towards the system and to fel-low passengers. He/she, so to say, was a highly civilized passenger who knew exactly how to

behave during a trip, traveling in comfort and taking advantage of the time to carry out entertainingactivities such as reading a newspaper. As defined by one of the marketing consultants interviewed,Metro offered a business or first class service for a first class client.

The first version of the new user script was provided by a confidential document summarizingthe findings of an exercise carried out to commensurate the future working conditions of the net-work under Transantiago made public in January 2006.



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As of next February, Metro de Santiago will transport about 820 million passengers a year. That figureis 250% more than what Metro transports today (), while the number of trains and wagons for next yearwill increase only 10%. This will imply a very sharp increase in occupation density on underground trains. This drastic and sudden increase in the use of Metro will mean, to be direct, a dramatic change in theperceived quality of service.

As of March next year (), even considering all mitigating actions that Metro is developing, the modelpredicts a situation of full usage at the peak hour of every weekday in different parts of the undergroundnetwork. Full usage means that all wagons from all the trains traveling at that time will be occupied at thelevel of six passengers per m2, which is a level of occupation that has rarely been experienced at Metro. Full usage means that passengers on the platform waiting to board the underground will have to wait foranother train, and in many cases for several more trains

As you can imagine, this amount of passengers, even moving in an orderly flow and even after users have

developed a certain rational behavior, will severely congest many of Metros stations. According to ourengineers, most of Metros stations were not designed to absorb this quantity and temporal concentrationof passengers. At Metro we believe that in some cases this could lead to harsh expressions of discontent(seizure of stations, obstructing trains, protests in the surroundings of the stations?) and unfavorable mediacoverage. (Source: Metro 2006, Confidential Report)

The version of the users of metro under Transantiago presented here is highly critical: 820 mil-lion a year, an increase of 250% from their current usage, travelling in absolutely overcrowdedconditions during peak times, their rational behavior was doubtful and they would probably expresstheir anger violently. Clearly this overcrowded, irrational and potentially violent subject repre-

sented a radical brake from Metros traditional clients.Besides being huge quantities, the inscription of the new user under Transantiago differentiatedfrom the client in other attributes, as was explained by Raimundo Izquierdo, a manager from themarketing area of Metro.

What diagnosis did you have about the new users that were going to arrive? What did you expect from

them?

We already had some hints when we inaugurated line 4, we already perceived certain changes in ourclients portfolio, I mean, we could see, so to say, more friction between the public and our personnel,we could see, so to say, that the Metro culture was being somewhat disrupted, there were more pieces

of rubbish on the floor, in fact we started to spend more on cleaning, we started to have more faredodging and some other particular events that showed us that when integrating certain socioeconomicsegments hey Im not going to refer to them as socioeconomic groups, we were integrating peoplethat did not have the Metro culture, and for the Metro it was not simple to maintain the stability of thesystem in the long run, I mean, we had to take charge of integrating them in a way of educating themon how to use the Metro, these non-declared but widely used codes to access Metro services, so wewere conscious of what was going to happen with the integration, because we knew that most of thepeople who were going to access the service were people who didnt have a lot of experience usingMetro

Line 4 of Metro was inaugurated in November of 2005 and crosses through several low-income

areas of the city, at least in comparison with the rest of network. As Izquierdo notes the opening ofthis line meant the arrival of a new kind of user characterized by lacking what he calls Metro



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culture, mainly presented as knowledge about proper ways to behave while using the Metro net-work in terms of paying the fare and cleanliness.

In replacement of the Metro culture these subjects brought with them their culture as users ofthe much-maligned surface public transport system, as Victor Mendez, a marketing consultant whoworked for Metro in this period, recalled.

[The start of Transantiago] was going to sum up people who belonged to another culture, you see, to thenon-Metro culture, people who didnt know how to travel by Metro and probably people who had alwaystravelled on the lousy Micros, you see, scratching everything, spitting on the floor, throwing pieces ofrubbish on the floor, urinating on the buses, and that didnt correspond to this national pride that wasMetro.

As Mendez recalls, the culture of Micros was characterized by exactly the same badhabitsidentified by Izquierdo.

However, the perceived problems of future users were not only related to their bad behavior

while travelling. As Alejandro Alvarez, a manager of the operational area of Metro, recalled in ourinterview, there was also an issue of lack of coordination:

here, customers discipline is fundamental, in a system as massive, discipline is essential, in Europe andeverywhere it works because people stop, get off where they have to get off, and thus work with disciplineand works very well. Our culture is not very disciplined and thats one of our greatest ongoing concerns.Nowadays, with this new customer we have multiplied many controls, the controls that we had of thatsituation, because while we have historically worried about the area of education, lets say, today there isa user that has a far greater difficulties.

The Metro system working under the conditions set by Transantiago will require users whobehave in a highly coordinated way. The problem is that new users, presumably given their lack ofMetro culture, dont seem to be as disciplined as users in Europe and elsewhere in the manage-ment of their bodies while traveling on the network.

Following the cultural denomination that occupied a central place in Metro inscriptions, thesefuture users can be defined as barbarians, given the usual definition of this term as relating to aland, culture, or people alien and usually believed to be inferior to another land, culture, or people(Merriam-Webster, 2003: 98). Such a definition includes a key notion that is quite evident in thewords of Izquierdo, Mendez and Alvarez: such a culture is of inferiorvalue or quality than theexistent one, the culture of clients. Thus by performing them as barbarians, future users weredefined not only as different, but also abnormal.

Such abnormalization was not causal. Deriving from the work of Georges Canguilhem (1978),the concept of normal has been seen, in the words of Foucault (1979: 184), as one of the greatinstruments of power at the end of the classical age. The power of such a concept lies on the factthat [o]ne can, then, use the word normal to say how things are, but also to say how they oughtto be (Hacking, 1990: 163). So the abnormal always lies in this tension; it describes a supposedlyexisting reality while at the same time it indicates a desirable state towards which the existent situ-ation should evolve.

In this case the abnormalization of the future user opened the ground to the deployment byMetro authorities of different disciplinary devices in order to normalize them. Given their incapa-

bility to self-govern in the way clients do, barbarians were going to be targeted for increased sur-veillance and disciplinary normalization (Nadesan, 2008: 213), as recognized by Alvarez. Thenthe successful integration of Metro into Transantiago would depend centrally on the development



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of disciplinary devices through which these barbarians could be civilized/normalized by turningthem into beings that behave as much as possible as the former clients while using Metroinfrastructures.

Performing disciplinary devicesOnce this inscription of the future user was accepted, the following task was to properly design thedisciplinary devices that would allow the organization to start normalizing them. The first step inthis process was to visit several foreign underground networks that function in conditions similarto the ones expected with Transantiago, such as Sao Paulo, Mexico City, Hong Kong and Tokyo.After studying these cases, along with other materials, an action plan was produced with the titlePlan for the Integration of Metro in Transantiago consisting of 60 measures to be implemented inorder to prepare the network. These measures were quite diverse, from an optimization in the man-agement of the trains fleet to hiring more personnel. Several of these interventions included differ-ent kinds of disciplinary devices through which the organization wanted to act effectively over the

bodies of the users aligning them with certain pre-established normal behaviors.However, given time pressures, after all Transantiago was scheduled to start only a few months

later, most of the measures involving the transformation and/or acquisition of infrastructures suchas redesigning stations and new trains would be implemented only partially (in the best cases)when the system started. So the design of softer disciplinary devices occupied a central place,meaning devices that could be easily implemented and widely distributed in the network before thestart of the plan. Two of these devicesnew signage/ads and contenciones (blockages) are ana-lysed in the following sections.

Signage and adsFrom the beginning it was clear to Metro authorities that the new disciplinary devices could notrest only on the direct control of the bodies of barbarians, or anatomo-power using Foucaultsterms. Besides the huge costs that such control would entail, there was the issue of visibility. Inorder to function, anatomo-power needs to have good visibility over the bodies to be disciplined,such as in Benthams panopticon, so it can intervene as soon as there is any deviance. However,large parts of the Metro network, critically the trains while travelling between stations, remainnormally beyond the view, and hence direct control, of the actors in charge of discipline. Then

besides direct control, technologies of the self should be introduced through which barbarianswould learn to govern themselves while using Metro infrastructures.

Among such devices a key role was given to new signage and ads or different sets of graphicalinformation displayed ubiquitously in trains and stations focusing mainly on the two differentaspects that sum up what the organization understood as a Metro culture: rules of circulation andgood manners.

Regarding the first program, rules of circulation, given that the substantial increase in usage wasa key component for the success of the integration of Metro in Transantiago, was speed. As noted,the system would not be able to cope with the increase in demand without users behaving in highlycoordinated fashion, moving through stations and taking trains in a fast and orderly way. In orderto help users peform in this way, stations and trains were filled with new signage directly aimed atcoordinating the movement of bodies, both in terms of encouraging practices that might increasetheir speed and forbidding others that may detain or slow them down. In particular, signage con-sisted of several highly visible and pervasive campaigns that through stickers and ads reminded the



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user of how they should behave with messages like For a safe trip: cross the yellow line only whenboarding the train, Metro in action: Dont put your hands in between the carriage doors, For anexpedite Metro: let [other passengers] get off before getting on, etc.

As can be seen in Figures 1 and 2, signage was located in highly visible places in trains and sta-tions, with signs very close to each other with the result that it was almost impossible for users totravel without constantly seeing them. For example, in Figure 2, eight different signs containingspecified behaviors can be seen on the pictured corner of an average carriage. They transformedMetro into highly visually congested spaces,4almost completely filled with messages about howusers should self-govern in trains and stations.

The second program, good manners, aimed at transforming the way barbarians relate to fellowpassengers and metro personnel/infrastructure. In particular it looked to develop on them whatseveral interviewees called the Metro effect. The Metro effect, a key characteristic attached toformer clients, was the belief that when people enter Metro stations they start behaving differentlyfrom outside, being nice and tolerant to each other and Metro personnel, giving their seat to people

Figure 1.Rules of circulation signage.Source: Sebastian Ureta.

Figure 2.Rules of circulation signage.Source: Sebastian Ureta.



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in need, avoiding dropping litter or damaging the infrastructure. This program was translated intoads that invited users to be polite and tolerant to each other in order to make their trips nicer, asillustrated in Figures 3 and 4. In Figure 3 a smiley presides over the message if we are kind andtolerant our trip will be much nicer, while in Figure 4 the picture of a man dressed as a punk (anepitome of urban aggression) is next to the caption Im kind by nature with good vibes we alltravel better.

On first sight signage and ads appeared as relatively solid, albeit multiple, disciplinary devices.However, such solidity is misleading. To properly become disciplinary devices they also need to be

performed in certain ways and no others. First of all, they needed to be seen, to be effective onimposing on users a certain policy of attention in which everyone is supposed to be aware ofgraphical objects that have been placed in the environment (Denis and Pontille, 2008: 15). Thisattention must necessarily be paired with understanding, with a relative degree of literacy on the

part of the users so they can make a sense of the message that the designers wanted to communicateto them. On the contrary they are not disciplinary devices at all, just stickers or images on the wall.

Contenciones

In clear contrast to the self-governing power of signage, other devices where designed to exertdiscipline in a more directly, physical, way over users bodies. Among them the most important

Figure 4.Good manners ads.Source: Sebastian Ureta.

Figure 3.Good manners ads.Source: Sebastian Ureta.



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where known internally as Contenciones or blockades. The use of this term is revealing. InDiscipline and PunishmentFoucault identifies blockades as the strongest form of discipline carriedout by the enclosed institution, established on the edges of society, turned inwards towards nega-tive functions: arresting evil, breaking communications, suspending time (Foucault, 1979: 209).Although not reaching the levels of the disciplinary institutions analysed by Foucault, Metroscontenciones included several of these elements. In practical terms they consisted in stopping a

particular group people (breaking communications) inside stations (an enclosed space) for sometime (suspending time), when the stations platforms appeared to be too crowded to allow the safecirculation of passengers. By doing this they temporarily transform the station from a space offlows into a space of stagnation, even imprisonment.

Pedro Arrieta, the manager of Tobalaba station (one of the busiest of the network), explained inone of our interviews the complexities involved in implementing this device. The first one was theselection of the particular place where the contencin would be carried out. After all, Metro sta-tions were originally designed to enhance constant mobility, not to accommodate groups that usu-ally reach more than 100 people. After carrying out a detailed study of users flows while accessingand leaving the trains, the stations mezzanine and some corridors were chosen as the location ofthe contenciones given that they offered no alternatives for people other than to stay there, not even

being able to see what was happening on the platform.A second key element of the contenciones was the decision regarding when to start the

procedure.

[The decision is based on] an approximate degree of saturation the amount of people per square meter our maximum is six people per square meter, I mean, its a perception because you're not going to bemeasuring the square meter there, no, you know three [floor] tiles are about one meter, then if, on nine[tiles] you have more than six people, it must be saturated we have a raised area where we stand, and

we can see more, because sometimes you see that it is crowded here, but further ahead isnt, becausepeople do not move once [people] are better distributed you step up there and if its still too crowded,ok, we are going to start a contencin.

By Metro normative a contencin must be implemented when a certain fixed degree of satura-tion, six passengers per square meter, is reached at the stations mezzanine. However, as Arrietarecognizes, to calculate such saturation in practice is not an easy task, because they cannot justmeasure the square meter. Instead they calculate it based both on the number of people per ninefloor tiles, measuring approximately one square meter, and a view of the crowd inside the stationfrom a raised area. So the existence of a level of saturation, and its subsequent contencin, involve

an active interplay between the distributions of users bodies, the infrastructure of stations and thesight of the actors involved.A third element, already present in the above quote, is that a contencin requires the active

agency of several human and nonhuman actors.

And how were those contenciones?

We had raised areas, security personnel, and after they [users] started to attack some platform assistantsand guards, we had to use security guards of an external company, then our security personnel, besideshaving big signs saying STOP, even sometimes had a megaphone saying ladies and gentlemen we arecarrying out a contencin for security reasons because the platform is full, once the train departs we are

going to allow circulation again and, in coordination, when we make contenciones in the corridors wealso stop people upstairs, so they do not continue coming down here, because this sector here [mezzanine],this sector is completely full, so we must try and stop people there so it wont be too full down here. We



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have also had to vacate and stop the escalators, because when it is saturated here and the people continuearriving, this could cause an accident and we coordinate that if the line on the floor between the wallsis trespassed [by people] we had complete saturation and the escalator was stopped, and we also made acontenciones upstairs so they wouldnt keep coming down, I mean, it is completely coordinated teamwork.

So, a successful contencin is the product of the action of an important heterogeneity of actors:Metro personnel, technical knowledge, security guards, the bodies of users, floor tiles, signs, meg-aphones, audio-systems, raised areas, escalators, etc. Also the contencin is not an event that islocated in a single place, but it is carried out simultaneously on the different floors of the station,in order not to concentrate too many waiting people in a single space. In this sense contencioneswere a quite different disciplinary device than signage and ads, much more heterogeneous andwidely distributed, depending on multiple agencies and performed differently on each singleoccasion.

Both signage/ads and contenciones, along with several others, strove to inscribe the bodies of

barbarians with certain dispositions, striving to make them act while using Metro in a manner assimilar as possible to the former clients. In order to do so, they exert different kinds of power, frominducing self-government in a relatively soft way to direct, physical, control. Nevertheless, theirultimate success was never secure. After all, users of technology never exist solely as inscriptions,reacting mechanically to the dictates of designers. Devices have to be incorporated into concrete

practices, and in doing so its disciplining capabilities are commonly overflowed as I am going toexplore in the next section.

Incorporating disciplinary devices

In several aspects the daily operation of Metro after the start of Transantiago in February of 2007seemed to coincide with the diagnosis made beforehand. Given the serious shortcomings that thesurface bus system had to satisfy users demand, even with minimum standards of quality (on thisissue see Muoz and Gschwender, 2008), an important amount of former bus users reorganizedtheir trips using the Metro network as their main means of transport. As a result, from one day tothe next, the network started to work at full capacity, as predicted by the 2006 report. However, itkept functioning and by midyear the actors within the organization started to talk about havingreached certain equilibrium in the daily operation of the service while the nightmare of the totalcollapse, feared in the first weeks, started to vanish.

In reaching this state the active participation of disciplinary devices on the adaptation by new

(and old) users to the working conditions under Transantiago was key. Nevertheless, several over-flowings on the scripts embedded into the devices occurred from the beginning, causing outcomesthat were not expected from the beginning. In order to explore this issue I am going to brieflyanalyse two examples of the material collected while doing participant observation on Metro trainsand stations.

The first are the fieldnotes taken at Los Heroes station in the evening of October 5 2007,5almosteight months after the start of the plan. Like Tobalaba station, Los Heroes is a station where twolines intersect (lines 1 and 2), and it is located in the very centre of the city, transforming it into oneof the most demanded nodes of the network.

18: 25 [once we stopped] at the door there is a security guard in a yellow fluorescent jacket whowatches our getting off and shouts that people should let [other passengers] get off before getting on. I hear



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from a loudspeaker (not loudly) a series of indications referring to changing to line 2. I walk along theplatform and I see a security guardmore than 50 years old, slim, bespectacledwearing a yellow jacketand a cap, who has a microphone in his hands and a loudspeaker hanging over his head, just under amakeshift sign made of cloth, with black letters on a white background in a small yellow rectangle (Line2s distinctive color) indicating Combination L2. The guard repeats the same words every time people

get off a train: Combination with Line 2, right next to the escalator, combination with Line 2, right nextto the escalator. I watch a while and he repeats this process mechanically, automatically, when a train getsto the platform After all the people getting off the train have left to change to line 2 the man steppeddown, leaving the microphone hanging on the megaphone

18: 50. Some security guards with yellow fluorescent jackets chat friendly with people waiting to boardthe train, there is a kind of relaxed mood, but the moment train arrives they return to their positions at thepoint where the carriage doors open and keep people from the yellow line marked on the floor that signalsa boundary they should not cross while the train is in movement. Then one of them shouts to the peoplewho are boarding the train, Move to the end of the carriage please, move along please, in order to fill up

the interior spaces more efficiently and introduce the highest number of people per the train. There aremany security guards on the platform, at least one for each door of the train, about 20.

From the notes we can see the relevance of a whole new range of disciplinary devices. Chieflyamong them are important numbers of security personnel dressed in yellow jackets, as can be seenin Figure 5. Although several non-humans are mentionedloudspeakers, makeshift signsthecentral role in the process is carried out by people controlling and directing the flows of users. Thenin practice the disciplining of users was not so much delegated to non-humans, but imposed directly

by security personnel present on the platform. In all, the fieldnotes show a situation in which dis-ciplinary devices seem to be working fine and users, new and old alike, behave in a relatively

coordinated way.A slightly different situation was found when the focus of observation was changed from

Metros infrastructures to the trips of particular users. In order to explore this I will analyse someof the fieldnotes taken while travelling along with Juan, a 56-year-old man who lives in the bor-ough of Recoleta, north of Santiago. He works as a janitor in a school located in the eastern

Figure 5.View of Los Heroes station platform.Source: Wilson Muoz.



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borough of uoa. Before Transantiago he used to travel to work by bus, but now he has to takeline 2 at nearby Zapadores station, then combine with line 5 in Santa Ana station and finally godown on Irarrazaval station where he takes a bus. I joined Juan on one of his morning trips to work.

We enter Zapadores station at 8: 25 when we arrive to the platform there is quite a lot of people already

waiting, Juan says that a lot of people come to this station the train, when it does arrive, is only half fullso we can enter advancing until the opposite door where Juan rest. As we cross other stations the trainsgets packed, in Puente Cal y Canto [station] people push in order to enter and we are forced to squeezeeven more, the loudspeakers say doors closing, a woman expresses her anger making noises (shhhh!),other people say unintelligible things. The train is so packed that I ask Juan if he believes that we are goingto be able to go down in the station in which we have to transfer to line 5, he says that sometimes he cantgo down [there] so he makes an alternative route, going down on Parque OHiggins station and then takinga bus a lot of people go down on Santa Ana station and Juan reaches out just before the doors of thetrain close, it seems that [on his way out] he beat a woman with his backpack without realizing it and shecomplains saying you act like animals! We arrive to the line 5 platform with a lot of people, there isone security guard who says please try to occupy all the available space with a loudspeaker, the platform

is quite full an empty train arrives but we were unable to enter, then we have to wait for the next one [when it does arrive] is quite full but several people go down, so we can make it, but the train is fullanyway we go down on Irarrazaval station, Juan says to me that the trip [on Metro] is quite tiring andthe worst thing is that he has to arrive tired at work.

To travel on Metro Juan performs as a particular kind of user. In terms of circulation he behavesin a relatively disciplined way, following the orders given by the disciplinary devices without prob-lems. But the compliance with these rules of circulation is not without costs. First of all, he issomeone who regularly experiences, and complains about, quite uncomfortable travelling circum-stances, even being forced to change his route to work because of this. Second, he frequently sac-

rifices his good manners, especially to fellow passengers, in order to secure circulation ashappened in the case of the woman he beats with his backpack. As he recognized in a later inter-view such a situation was not infrequent:

The thing that I dont like [about Metro] is all the pushing you have to do to go inside the trains, Imtemperamental and I had had several fights with people because of this for example the other day I wasabout to go inside the train at Parque OHiggins station, I was on the side [of the doors] and a guy grab mefrom here [chest] saying let me go down first and I I didnt accept that then I pushed him back andinsulted him so you keep having fights with people.

Juan does not perform as a barbarian, at least not in the way Metro authorities expected them tobe. From the very beginning he claims to be fairly savvy about traveling in Metro, even knowingdifferent routes to reach the same destination. He also rarely has problems following the orders

provided by the disciplinary devices he finds along the way. But at the same time he is not a client.He does not travel in comfort and neither behaves to fellow passengers in a kind way. A trip byMetro is for him an experience of constant tension in which every other passenger could become a

potential contestant for the scarce space inside trains and stations.

SaintMetro

The first nine pages of Metros annual report for the year 2007 are occupied by a sequence of pic-tures showing a man dressed in an elegant suit who runs, crossing several landmarks of Santiago,after an old-fashioned bowler hat taken from his head by heavy thunder. In the last picture he



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Ureta 611

finally catches it, smiling and raising his left arm in a sign of victory while in the background thestorm began to fade. The images are accompanied by the following captions in large red typeset:

[The year] 2007 was far from looking like a pleasant walk through the square at dusk. We faced a stormthat posed us tremendous challenges. But did not let bad weather immobilize us. We were always in

action to meet the challenges. We travelled great distances; we made tremendous efforts. Weadvanced and exceed ourselves. We can be satisfied with our achievements . (Metro, 2007: 210)

The images and the texts build up a straightforward epic narrative. Due to its integration withTransantiago, metro faced a storm that posed us tremendous challenges. However, besides some

particular, and brief, stoppages in the service, the network was able to resist in an orderly fashion.Such a narrative was widely supported, even by external actors such as government authorities andthe media. Most of them usually identified Metro as the most relevant factor that averted a com-

plete collapse of Transantiago in the difficult first months of operation. For this reason it waspraised, being half-jokingly christened in the media as saintMetro.

Disciplinary devices played a central role in Metro achieving such sanctity. After future userswere performed as barbarians in early 2006, Metro needed to develop a new governmentality todeal with them. In doing so, the heterogeneous and performative character of disciplinary devices

proved to be highly useful, allowing them to mobilize and materially embed this script in the con-crete spaces of stations and trains through multiple combinations of direct physical control (bio-

power) and self-government (technologies of the self). Later on, when an important extra numberof people started to use Metro, they actively collaborated into their incorporation as effective usersof the network, at least in terms of subjects who know how to travel from origin to destination at acertain speed.

However Metros sanctity, as any other, implied also a renounce. As seen above in the case of

Juan, in practice the incorporation by new users of the scripts embedded into the disciplinarydevices of Metro was only partial. While the script contained in the rules of circulation programseemed to be working fine, the good manners one was translated into practices in a much weakerway, at least in the case of users such as Juan. 6Actually in practice the agencies of both kinds ofdisciplinary devices seemed to oppose each other. To be able to circulate in the way Metro expectedthem to do, optimizing their routes but in a highly uncomfortable way, users commonly needed togive up any kind of good manners to each other, even fight actively for the scarce space available.In this sense it can concluded that the Metro effect now operates on the opposite way, turningsubjects usually indifferent to each other into active opponents, knowable but fairly aggressive

barbarians-on-the-move.

Beyond the analysis of the empirical case, this article sought to contribute to the developmentof a research focus on the disciplining of users bodies as a key materialization of organizational

power, an issue largely unexplored until now in organization studies. Making using of a mixture ofFoucauldian and STS conceptual devices, it has proposed the concept of disciplinary devices as areminder that organizational power over bodies is always embedded into sociotechnical entitiesthat are heterogeneous, have agency and perform in multiple ways. Such devices perform into

being in two inter-related ways: as inscriptions of future subjects that the involved actors developduring the design of new services and/or products and as incorporations when human beings haveto start behaving in certain ways to deal with them and with the organization as a whole.

However such devices, as explored in the last empirical section of the article, are always open to

overflowings, to producing effects completely unexpected from the onset. This is especially sowhen dealing with human beings. As Michel Callon (2007: 347) recognizes, humans



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are constantly overflowing. A total, unambiguous configuration is impossible. There is always aremainder, something that hasnt been taken into account. For this reason it is critical for organiza-tions to be highly reflexive when performing such devices, evaluating extensively the possible sce-narios that the introduction of disciplinary devices can bring into being. After all, overflowings haveunexpected effects not only on the organization, but also on the same human beings who wereexpected to be disciplined. Human beings such as Juan can experience more or less degrees of dis-tress, empowerment, happiness, security, etc. as a consequence of their daily encounters with disci-

plinary devices. This last point is elegantly summarized by Ian Hacking (2002: 107) when affirmingthat such devices change the space of possibilities for personhood. What could it mean in gen-eral to say that possible ways to be a person can from time to time come into being or disappear?.

Acknowledgements

This research was supported by a Marie Curie International Incoming Fellowship within the 7th EuropeanCommunity Framework Programme.

Notes

1 The reasons given for such long lasting critical appraisal of Micros were manifold: its informal organi-zation based on hundreds of private entrepreneurs, the lack of integration between services, the decay-ing infrastructures, its negative environmental effects, the aggressiveness of bus drivers towards users,among others (Fernndez, 1994; Hohmann, 1993; Tomic and Trumpen, 2005).

2 Mainly caused by the fact that between 2000 and 2006 the company was mostly focused on the biggestextension of its history, involving the construction of two new underground lines from the scratch.

3 A couple of weeks later the starting date was postponed until February 10, 2007 due to the general delayin preparing several key components, among them Metro.

4 Especially taking into consideration that some of these messages/rules were also reinforced by audio

messages aired constantly through the loudspeakers of trains and stations.5 This session of participant observation was carried out by Wilson Muoz, one of the research assistants

collaborating with the project. All notes and the picture were produced by him.6 A situation that was confirmed by most Metro employees interviewed during fieldwork who talked about

an important worsening of their working conditions, not related to the increase in demand in itself, but tothe constant clashes with passengers.

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Author biography

Sebastian Ureta is an Associate Professor at Departamento de Sociologa, Universidad Alberto

Hurtado in Santiago, Chile. Previously he held a Research Position at the Center for Technologyand Society, Technical University of Berlin, Germany (where most of the research in which thisarticle is based was carried out). His main area of interest is the study of public policy mixingdevelopments from science and technology studies, especially actor-network theory, and govern-mentality theory. Address: Departamento de Sociologa, Universidad Alberto Hurtado, Cienfuegos46, Santiago, Chile. Email: [email protected]

ureta barbarians

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