Placing history: Changing uses of the material past in a historic place

This paper develops a polyphonic and contextualized perspective on the uses of the material past, focusing on historic places. Instead of framing material elements of the past as symbolic resources strategically activated by organizational actors, we investigate how uses of the material past in historic places unfold and change as they are negotiated among multiple actors within evolving sociopolitical contexts. Drawing on a century-long case study of a historic café in Padua (Italy), we introduce the concept of the politics of materiality, i.e. an ongoing negotiation process through which material forms and uses are temporarily stabilized, contested, and reworked. We show how negotiations sustain uses or put them into crisis and how misalignment with the historical context triggers change. In doing so, this study advances a more political, processual and nonlinear understanding of the uses of the material past in organization studies and business history.